
CHRISTMAS MYSTERIES - 20 Thriller Classics in One Volume
Victorian and Edwardian Ghost Stories, Holiday Crimes, and Snowbound Detective TalesBy Arthur Conan Doyle, Wilkie Collins, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Thomas Hardy, Saki, Robert Louis Stevenson, O. Henry, G.K. Chesterton, M.R. James, Catherine Crowe, William Douglas O'Connor, Charles Dickens, John Kendrick Bangs, Louisa M. Alcott, Emmuska Orczy, Grant Allen, Leonard KipLength28h 8m
About this audiobook
CHRISTMAS MYSTERIES gathers twenty classic thrillers in which the season of hospitality, ritual, and domestic reunion becomes a charged setting for crime, secrecy, supernatural disturbance, and detection. Moving among Gothic hauntings, locked-room puzzles, sensation fiction, social satire, adventure, and the emerging detective tale, the volume reveals how Christmas's promise of comfort can intensify unease. Its varied settings and tonal registers—from genial firesides to ominous country houses—situate the anthology within nineteenth- and early twentieth-century popular fiction while demonstrating the remarkable adaptability of mystery to festive culture. The contributors form a distinguished transatlantic and British constellation of Victorian, Edwardian, and American writers, including major innovators of the detective story, the Gothic ghost tale, the sensation novel, and the modern short story. Their collective work reflects a period in which mass-circulation magazines and annual holiday publishing encouraged compact, suspenseful narratives for broad audiences. Across differences of nationality, gender, and literary method, these voices engage anxieties concerning class, family, inheritance, urban modernity, and the uncanny. Ideal for students, mystery enthusiasts, and seasonal readers alike, this volume offers an unusually rich comparative encounter with thriller traditions. It invites readers to trace recurring motifs and contrasting narrative strategies, gaining both historical perspective and the pleasure of twenty carefully juxtaposed tales.
Audiobook details
GenreMystery and Thriller
Length28 hrs 8 mins
Narrated byListen with 1,000+ voices
FormateBook with Audio
Publish dateDec 4, 2016
LanguageEnglish
Table of contents
1POWERS OF DARKNESS (Mystery Classics Series) (Annotated)
2A Christmas Tragedy (Emmuska Orczy)
3What the Shepherd Saw: A Tale of Four Moonlight Nights (Thomas Hardy)
4First Night
5Second Night
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6Third Night
7Fourth Night
8To Be Taken With A Pinch Of Salt: Doctor Marigold's Prescriptions (Charles Dickens)
9Chapter I. To Be Taken Immediately
10Chapter II. Not to Be Taken at Bed-Time
11Chapter III. To Be Taken at the Dinner-Table
12Chapter IV. Not to Be Taken for Granted
13Chapter V. To Be Taken in Water
14Chapter VI. To Be Taken With a Grain of Salt
15Chapter VII. To Be Taken and Tried
16Chapter VIII. To Be Taken for Life
17Mustapha (Sabine Baring-Gould)
18I
19II
20III
21IV
22Markheim (Robert Louis Stevenson)
23The Flying Stars (G.K. Chesterton)
24The Adventure of the Blue Carbuncle (Arthur Conan Doyle)
25The Thieves who couldn't Stop Sneezing (Thomas Hardy)
26Mr Wray’s Cash Box or, the Mask and the Mystery (Wilkie Collins)
27I
28II
29III
30IV
31V
32VI
33VII
34VIII
35IX
36X
37A Chaparral Christmas Gift (O. Henry)
38An Exciting Christmas Eve or, My Lecture On Dynamite (Arthur Conan Doyle)
39The Wolves of Cernogratz (Saki)
40The Story of a Disappearance and an Appearance (M.R. James)
41Letter I
42Letter II
43Letter III
44Letter IV
45Ghosts and Family Legends (Catherine Crowe)
46Preface
471. Round the Fire
48First Evening
49Second Evening
50Third Evening