Showing results by publisher "Audible Studios" in Mystery, Thriller & Suspense

"The first concern of an author is to do down his colleagues." In the long, hot Roman summer of AD 74, Falco, private informer and spare-time poet, gives a reading for his family and friends. Things get out of hand, as usual. The event is taken over by Aurelius Chrysippus, a wealthy Greek banker and patron to a group of struggling writers, who offers to publish Falco's work.

For 56 years, the Black Dahlia murder case remained one of the most notorious and high-profile unsolved crimes of the 20th century. Now, Steve Hodel, a 24-year veteran of the Los Angeles Police Department, believes he has finally solved the case. On January 15, 1947, 22-year-old Elizabeth Short - "The Black Dahlia" - was found dead in a vacant lot in Los Angeles, her body horribly mutilated, bisected at the waist, and posed in a bizarre manner.

Simon Serrailler is faced with that most complicated of investigations - a cold case. Freak weather and flash floods all over southern England. Half of Lafferton is afloat. A landslip on the Moor has closed the bypass and, as the rain slowly drains away, a shallow grave - and a skeleton - are exposed. It doesn’t take long to identify the remains as those of the missing teenager, Harriet Lowther, last seen carrying a tennis racket while waiting for a bus. But that was 16 years ago.

In the south of France, where hatred simmers in the heat, a man seemingly admired, and certainly feared, drops dead at a dinner party. All of the guests fall under suspicion, including Welsh-Canadian professor Cait Morgan. A criminologist who specializes in profiling victims, Cait sets out to solve the murder - and clear her name. Add to this the disappearance of an ancient Celtic gold collar said to be cursed and there you have the ingredients for a Nicoise salad of death, secrets, and lies.

“And you are telling me,” said Gil Cunningham, “that David Drummond vanished away forty years ago and is now returned, seemingly not a day older?” “That’s about the sum of it,” agreed Sir William Stewart. In Sir William’s remote part of Scotland it seems almost possible that a young boy could have been stolen away by the fairies and returned forty years later, no older – and if he isn’t Davie Drummond, who is he? And then he suffers a succession of near-fatal ‘accidents’.

Detective Michael Palermo built his career on his unique ability to inhabit two worlds at once: the world of law enforcement and the underworld of New York’s crime family organizations. Palermo participated in over 2,000 arrests while maintaining close relationships with the kingpins of organized crime - ties that allowed him to stay one step ahead of the rest of the New York City Police Department. This true crime drama takes you inside the police force at its most corrupt.

The year is 1931. The new and luxurious transatlantic liner Empress of Britain is on her eastward passage. Among the first-class passengers on board are two English confidence tricksters, making a discreet exit from a little awkwardness they have left behind them in the United States.

Abandoned by each of her children’s fathers, Shelley Tremayne’s having a tough time raising six kids alone. When she sees a TV newscast about five boys committing a horrible crime and recognizes her eleven-year-old son Joey in the surveillance camera footage, her life becomes infinitely worse. Although Joey swears he only witnessed the incident, the other boys point to him as the instigator, a charge supported by the evidence. But Shelley simply can’t accept that her Joey could be responsible for such a heinous act.

Julius Caesar has taken his legions north into mighty battles with the Gallic tribes. But as his successes mount, overwhelming ambition and new alliances begin to threaten his friendship with Marcus Brutus, brother-in-arms and fellow warrior. Although the conquest of Gaul has made Caesar a hero all over again, his victories on the battlefield cause still more rivalries at home. And ultimately Caesar and Brutus will have to choose whether to cross the Rubicon - together or singly - and to take the fight to Rome itself.

Terrorism, duty, and personal safety collide when Jake Pendleton, an investigator for the NTSB, is called to investigate an aircraft accident in Savannah, Georgia during the St. Patrick's Day celebration. The accident, which at first appears to be quite run-of-the-mill, turns out to be anything but. Since Jake is not willing to pretend there are no suspicious circumstances and more than the usual share of rather unlikely "coincidences," he sets off a veritable avalanche of secrets, violence and treachery.

It is still the War of 1812 and Jack Aubrey - with his tetchy, sardonic friend Stephen Maturin - has set course across the South Atlantic to intercept a powerful American frigate outward bound to play havoc with the British whaling trade. If they do not come up with her before she rounds the Horn, they must follow her into the Great South Sea and as far across the Pacific as she may lead them.

Eleven months after discovering a brutal double murder in a sleepy Northumbrian town, Detective Chief Inspector Kate Daniels is still haunted by her failure to solve the case. Then the brutal killing of a man on Newcastle’s Quayside gives Daniels another chance to get it right, and her first case as Senior Investigating Officer. When Daniels recognises the corpse but fails to disclose the fact, her personal life swerves dangerously into her professional life. But much worse, she is now being watched. As Daniels steps closer to finding a killer, a killer is only a breath away from claiming his next victim....

Exclusive to Audible! Listen to a discussion between the author and the narrator of The Widow at the end of this recording. We've all seen him: the man - the monster - staring from the front page of every newspaper, accused of a terrible crime. But what about her: the woman who grips his arm on the courtroom stairs - the wife who stands by him? Jean Taylor's life was blissfully ordinary. Nice house, nice husband. Glen was all she'd ever wanted: her Prince Charming.

In this work Horace Rumpole returns to delight us with seven new cases. We find our hero jousting with the Devil, being wooed by a beautiful violin player, and even up before the Disciplinary Tribunal of the Bar Council.

Greece, home of the ancient Olympic Games, is a favourite destination for Seven Sights Travel, a seedy company which provides escorted tours for wealthy travellers. When Marcus Didius Falco and Helena hear that a young girl and a newly-wed woman, both Roman visitors, have been murdered at Olympia, they both step in to investigate.

His grandfather was a lawman too. That’s how Charles O’Farrell rationalizes his work. He keeps a picture of his ancestor by his bed, a faded sepia portrait of a short, plain-looking man made remarkable only by the long-barreled Colt strapped to his hip. His grandfather killed to make the frontier safe—O’Farrell has the faded newspaper clippings to prove it. In the service of America, O’Farrell kills too. But his killings never make the front page.

When a body is found floating in London's Royal Albert Dock, successful public relations expert Kay Christie is sent to quiet the media, but things get complicated when it emerges that she knew the victim. As events spiral out of control, Kay discovers that those close to her may be harbouring another secret - the story of a missing girl. Can Kay discover the truth before her life unravels and she risks losing everything? In the Wake questions whether we can ever truly leave our pasts behind and explores the lengths that we will go to protect the people that we love.

We think of Sherlock Holmes and Doctor Watson, but far more seductive is the pairing of Holmes and Professor James Moriarty, 'the Napoleon of crime' - a rivalry unparalleled in the world of crime fiction. Fiercely intelligent and a relentless schemer, Moriarty is the super-villain as megastar.

At the top of the world… at the bottom of the sea… a war has begun. Below the polar ice cap, an American nuclear submarine moves quietly in the frigid water, tailing a new Russian sub. But the usual, unspoken game of hide-and-seek between opposing captains ends when the Americans hear sounds of disaster and flooding, and the Russian sub sinks at a depth of a thousand feet. The American sub rushes to help, only to join its former quarry in the deep. The situation ignites tensions around the world.

On the shocking discovery of a passenger's body on the Great Western Railway excursion train, Detective Inspector Robert Colbeck and his assistant, Sergeant Victor Leeming, are dispatched to the scene. Faced with what initially appears to be a motiveless murder, Colbeck is intrigued by the murder weapon - a noose. When it emerges that the victim had worked as a public executioner, Colbeck realises that this must be intrinsically linked to the killer's choice of weapon.