The Cask by Freeman Wills Crofts

THIS book introduced to the public a new Master of Detective Fiction, and Mr. Crofts is now a very famous name indeed to the many enthusiastic students of detective novels. It has all the great virtues; a mysterious murder cunningly conceived and carried out; the strongest suspicion ingeniously thrown on an innocent man; a subtle alibi brilliantly shattered by an unfaltering process of analysis. The book is flawless in design and presents an intellectual problem of supreme interest. The lover of detective stories can want nothing better. As the Outlook said, “In construction and invention Mr. Crofts has no living equal.”

7 to 12 

by Anna Katharine Green is a detective novel presented as one of her earlier tales.  It is a quick, fast-paced mystery sure to have the reader turning pages.

6 Seconds of Darkness by Octavius Roy Cohen

Energetic sleuth David Carroll, whose probe into police corruption has made him unpopular at headquarters, is put in charge of an investigation into the shooting murder of civic reformer Edward Hamilton -- and the three people trying to confess to the crime! It develops into an unusual and interesting plot.

 The Woman Aroused by Ed Lacy

Principal Characters
GEORGE JACKSON
Since splitting up with his wife, he had seen her occasionally but then he met Lee—and no other woman would do!
HENRY CONLEY
He came to George with $7,000. When he died George didn't know what to do with the money—or Henry's wife either!
LEE CONLEY
Tall, voluptuous. Next to her Lady Godiva looked like the winner of a baby contest. But no man could unlock the secret she kept from the world!
FRANCIS F. HENDERSON
George's retired neighbor. He played poker to win money and loved to look into his neighbor's windows. He gave his age as reason enough for both forms of indulgence.
JOE COLLINS
Worked for same company as George. A middle-aged Romeo, he got quite a shock when his son came home from overseas and acted just like him!
WALT COLLINS
Joe's son. His father had planned for him to go to college when he was discharged but the Army had taught Walt a lot, and he was changed now, changed into a wise guy—with angles!
FLO JACKSON
George's estranged wife. She saw him every now and then and they tried to start over, but when Lee came into the picture, her chances sank to a new low!

 Prince Zaleski by M. P. Shiel

If you find Holmes and Poirot insufficiently cerebral, a little too everyday action hero, then Zaleski is the detective for you. Exiled and lovelorn, he broods alone (but for a black manservant, of whom frankly the less said the better) in a wing of a ruined abbey set among cypresses and poplars. We first see him reclining beside a partially-unwrapped mummy, "discarding his gemmed chibouque and an old vellum reprint of Anacreon". From the opulent, narcotic haze of this sanctum he declines to shift for the first two adventures, unravelling otherwise insoluble mysteries of ancestral curses and ancient gems simply from what is reported to him by the narrator Shiel, who might thus be considered a far more poetically-inclined Watson. Shiel considered himself Doyle's superior, and the solutions are exactly the sort of thing someone might come up with when they're trying to outdo Holmes but haven't twigged the very precise - if indefinable - limits of fairness in a puzzle; everything hinges on word association, dubious scholarship and the like, such that the reader's reaction is less likely to be 'Good heavens!' that 'You what?' But in Holmes the intricate solutions were only ever part of the appeal, and in Zaleski they're barely even that. It's the atmosphere that matters. And in the last of these three original stories*, that atmosphere is whipped into such a ferment that you start to wonder if Shiel (the writer) was receiving some distorted yet overwhelming vision of the future. True, there is the line at which one can only respond with a hollow laugh, where Zaleski tells his friend that war will doubtless be extinct within their lifetimes. But otherwise...an epidemic of murder and insanity which begins in Germany. Eugenic tirades. Visions of a future society in which technological advancement goes hand-in-hand with sacrificial hecatombs devoted to preserving the purity of the race. And the story is entitled 'The S.S.'.

Fifty Years A Detective by Thomas Furlong
Thirty five true stories told by a man who was a detective for fifty years. A remarkable book.
This hardcover book is equipped with a colorful  dust jacket.  It is great for gifts, libraries, and home libraries.
There is a paperback available HERE and an epub available HERE.

The Obstinate Murderer by Elizabeth Sanxay Holding
“Elisabeth Sanxay Holding's novel, THE OBSTINATE MURDERER, is decidedly different from the average story of its type. With a beautiful country guest house for background, the author draws the reader into the sinister web of fear and terror which holds the occupants of the house in its grasp. Van Cleef, the detective, becomes one of the central characters in a charming romance which affords him some relief from the horrible chain of events which follows. “As usual, it is just one little stroke, far too clever, which gives the murderer away, but the mystery connoisseur must be wide-awake to discover it.”
This is an epub, suitable for ALL devices and computers.  Microsoft Edge and a few other browsers can audibly READ it to you.  A quality paperback is available at low cost HERE.

A Traitor in London by Fergus Hume is a British tale of espionage and mystery.
A murder in the quiet English village of Chippingholt is only the first in a series of trials that will shape the lives of Brenda Scarse and her lover Harold Burton. Who is the mysterious stranger, so closely resembling Brenda's father, who was seen near the scene of the crime? And why does the dead man's widow seem so unconcerned?

This EPUB is readable on all devices and on every web browser on every computer and cell phone. Kindle, Nook, Ipod, Ipad, Android, Windows, and Mac all support this format. This EPUB has no encryption, so one can safely and easily move it from one device to another, or share it with others.

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Fergus Hume has a number of volumes available HERE 

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Doorway to Death by Dan Marlowe
On the streets of a big city people smile and the lights are bright. But there is an alley world of darkness, double-dealing and death; in this world you need muscles and brains to take a step--and only the lucky ones live long. These two worlds meet in Hotel Duarte. Johnny Killain had a fistful of experience with both worlds--and with Hotel Duarte. Lurid and sexy, this is a thrilling tale.
Dan J. Marlowe was a middle-aged businessman who, in the personal turmoil after the death of his wife of many years, decided to abandon his old life. He started writing, and his first novel was published when he was 45.

Marlowe's most famous book and his best-known character arrived from Fawcett Gold Medal Books in 1962 ("The Name of the Game Is Death").

Alley Girl by Jonathan Craig
Alley Girl is a hard book, cold and cruel, peopled with toughs and alcoholics, a nymphomaniac and an unfaithful wife, a savage cop and a young pervert. It is also a fine novel, written with rare and stark simplicity by the talented young author, Jonathan Craig.

The Adventures of Dr. Thorndyke by R. Austin Freeman
From the writer:
"

The peculiar construction of the first four stories in the present collection will probably strike both reader and critic and seem to call for some explanation, which I accordingly proceed to supply.

In the conventional “detective story” the interest is made to focus on the question, “Who did it?” The identity of the criminal is a secret that is jealously guarded up to the very end of the book, and its disclosure forms the final climax.

This I have always regarded as somewhat of a mistake. In real life, the identity of the criminal is a question of supreme importance for practical reasons; but in fiction, where no such reasons exist, I conceive the interest of the reader to be engaged chiefly by the demonstration of unexpected consequences of simple actions, of unsuspected causal connections, and by the evolution of an ordered train of evidence from a mass of facts apparently incoherent and unrelated. The reader’s curiosity is concerned not so much with the question “Who did it?” as with the question “How was the discovery achieved?” That is to say, the ingenious reader is interested more in the intermediate action than in the ultimate result.

The offer by a popular author of a prize to the reader who should identify the criminal in a certain “detective story,” exhibiting as it did the opposite view, suggested to me an interesting question.

Would it be possible to write a detective story in which from the outset the reader was taken entirely into the author’s confidence, was made an actual witness of the crime and furnished with every fact that could possibly be used in its detection? Would there be any story left when the reader had all the facts? I believed that there would; and as an experiment to test the justice of my belief, I wrote “The Case of Oscar Brodski.” Here the usual conditions are reversed; the reader knows everything, the detective knows nothing, and the interest focuses on the unexpected significance of trivial circumstances.

By excellent judges on both sides of the Atlantic—including the editor of Pearson’s Magazine—this story was so far approved of that I was invited to produce others of the same type.

Three more were written and are here included together with one of the more orthodox character, so that the reader can judge of the respective merits of the two methods of narration.

Nautical readers will observe that I have taken the liberty (for obvious reasons connected with the law of libel) of planting a screw-pile lighthouse on the Girdler Sand in place of the light-vessel. I mention the matter to forestall criticism and save readers the trouble of writing to point out the error."

Tracked by Wireless by William Le Queux
In the early days of wireless telecommunications, people wondered what harm the idea could do.  This mystery by Le Queux takes the idea to its fullest extent.

A Phantom Lover by Vernon Lee

A Phantom Lover by Vernon Lee

An eerie ghost tale about an artist who is hired to paint a portrait, but, there is a problem. Is the portrait he is to paint, alive? Or, is it something else. A an eerie novel that has the ability to frighten and puzzle the reader.

Murder in a Black Letter by Poul Anderson
This is a Cock Robin Mystery introducing Trygve Yamamura--judo expert, Samurai sword connoisseur and private detective--triple threat to San Francisco crime. These combined skills enable him to keep his own head attached while finding out who removed someone else's with honorable Japaneses weapon. This is a good old-fashioned detective story, a genuine whodunit, with a good deal of suspense thrown in.

The Men From The Boys by Ed Lacy

Starts out with a bang: As if I wasn't feeling bad enough it had to be one of those muggy New York City summer nights when your breath comes out melting. With my room on the ground floor and facing nothing, I lay in bed and sweated up the joint. The summer hadn't been too rough till the last few days, about the time my belly went on the rocks, when it became a Turkish bath. I stared up at the flaky ceiling and wished the 52 Grover Street Corporation would install air conditioning. Almost wished I was the house dick at a better hotel. No, I didn't wish that—I had a sweet deal at the Grover. With my police pension, the pocket money the hotel insisted was a salary, and my various side rackets, I was pulling down over two hundred dollars a week in this flea bag— all of it tax free. Turning over to reach a cool part of the sheet, this warm, queasy feeling bubbled through my gut. I belched and snapping on the table light took a mint. All I had on was shorts, but they were damp and as I started to change them, there was a knock on the door. When I said, “Yeah?” Barbara opened the door, fanning her face with a folded morning paper. She never slopped around in a kimono or just a slip. Barbara was always neat in a dress and underthings, and shoes, not slippers. Which was one reason I let her work the hotel steadily. Her simple face might have been cute—ten years ago. Now it held that washed-out look that comes with the wear and tear. But her legs were still cute, long and slim. She closed the door and leaned against it. “My—what a lump of man.”

The False Faces by Louis Joseph Vance

On the muddy verge of a shallow little pool the man lay prone and still, as still as those poor dead whose broken bodies rested all about him, where they had fallen, months or days, hours or weeks ago, in those grim contests which the quick were wont insensately to wage for a few charnel yards of that debatable ground.

Nobody by Louis Joseph Vance

A thrilling mystery by Louis Joseph Vance.
Louis Joseph Vance (September 19, 1879–December 16, 1933) was an American novelist, born in Washington, D. C., and educated in the preparatory department of the Brooklyn Polytechnic Institute. He wrote short stories and verse after 1901, then composed many popular novels. His character Michael Lanyard, also known as The Lone Wolf, was featured in eight books and 24 films between 1914 and 1949 and also appeared in radio and television series.
Vance was married in 1898 and had a son born in 1899, but he was separated from his wife when he was found dead in 1933. He was in a burnt armchair inside his New York apartment. He had been intoxicated at the time of death, and a cigarette had ignited some benzene (used for cleaning his clothes or for his broken jaw) that he had on his body. He had recently returned from the West Indies, where he had gathered material for a new book. The death was ruled accidental. 

The Sign of the Four by Arthur Conan Doyle

This, the second Sherlock Holmes mystery, begins with Holmes himself in a cocaine-induced haze, interrupted by the arrival of a distressed and beautiful young lady. Each year following the strange disappearance of her father, Miss Morstan has received a rare and lustrous pearl. Now, on the day she is summoned to meet her anonymous benefactor, she comes to consult with Holmes and Watson.

The Golden Silence by A. M. Williamson and C. N. Williamson

Set in Algeria a hundred years ago, the story is full of the wonder and mystery of the desert. The action is dramatic and the descriptions are done with rare power. The story will bring a new type of Williamson novel to all those who love tales of mystery, romance, and adventure.

A Plot for Murder by Frederic Brown

  It's set in New York City in pre-television times. Our hero (using the term very loosely) is Bill Tracy, a former hard-drinking newspaperman who's now a hard-drinking writer for a popular radio soap opera named "Millie's Millions." It's in the tradition of the silent-screen series "The Perils of Pauline" and every episode sees Millie facing new dangers and troubles and (to the huge relief of her fans) surviving by the skin of her teeth. It pays well, but cranking out five inane episodes a week is boring, soul-destroying work.

Eleven Possible Cases by Anna Katharine Green

Eleven mystery and detective stories about crime and lust. Anna Katharine Green has been called the mother of the detective novel. These are her shorter works, eleven of them. Enjoy!

Dark Hollow by Anna Katharine Green

A murder is committed in Dark Hollow and the proprietor of a neighboring inn is convicted and hanged. Twelve years later events take a turn, and the judge who convicted the man confesses that he himself was the murderer. Meanwhile the man who was hanged was proved to have been a murderer before that time, and for a crowning touch his daughter and the son of the judge are happily united.

Cynthia Wakeham's Money by Anna Katharine Green

A melodramatic mystery, in which a young lawyer is summoned to the house of a dying woman to draw up her will. In a search for her legitimate heirs, he encounters a beautiful woman with a mysterious scar. Events then take a very sinister turn…

Agatha Web by Anna Katharine Green

As a convivial group leaves a dance one night a young man rushes by muttering "Thank God, this night of horror is over"... and soon thereafter cries of "Murder!" alert the group that Agatha Webb has been stabbed to death!  A saintly woman is found stabbed, with her husband, a dementia victim, found asleep with blood on his sleeve; her housekeeper is dead, too. The reprobate son of the town's first citizen acts suspicious; his girlfriend is blackmailing him. Witnesses saw a strange, bearded old man.

Backfire by Dan Marlowe

Marty Donovan is a cop who happens to be in love with Lenore, his partner's wife. When the two cops can't crack a tough case, Lenore suggests a stakeout that's not approved by the department. Her husband is killed, and Marty begins a complicated cover-up as he tries to find the killer.

A Study in Scarlet by Arthur Conan Doyle

A Study in Scarlet is an 1887 detective novel by British author Arthur Conan Doyle. Written in 1886, the story marks the first appearance of Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson, who would become the most famous detective duo in popular fiction. The book's title derives from a speech given by Holmes, a consulting detective, to his friend and chronicler Watson on the nature of his work, in which he describes the story's murder investigation as his "study in scarlet": "There's the scarlet thread of murder running through the colorless skein of life, and our duty is to unravel it, and isolate it, and expose every inch of it."

The story, and its main characters, attracted little public interest when it first appeared. Only 11 complete copies of the magazine in which the story first appeared, Beeton's Christmas Annual for 1887, are known to exist now and they have considerable value. Although Conan Doyle wrote 56 short stories featuring Holmes, A Study in Scarlet is one of only four full-length novels in the original canon. The novel was followed by The Sign of the Four, published in 1890. A Study in Scarlet was the first work of detective fiction to incorporate the magnifying glass as an investigative tool.

The Red Thumb Mark by R. Austin Freeman

Richard Austin Freeman (11 April 1862 London - 28 September 1943 Gravesend) — known as R. Austin Freeman — was a British writer of detective stories, mostly featuring the medico-legal forensic investigator Dr Thorndyke. He claimed to have invented the inverted detective story (a crime fiction in which the commission of the crime is described at the beginning, usually including the identity of the perpetrator, with the story then describing the detective's attempt to solve the mystery) and used some of his early experiences as a colonial surgeon in his novels. A large proportion of the Dr Thorndyke stories involve genuine, but often quite arcane, points of scientific knowledge, from areas such as tropical medicine, metallurgy and toxicology.

The Circular Staircase by Mary Roberts Rinehart

The Circular Staircase is a mystery novel by American writer Mary Roberts Rinehart. The story follows dowager Rachel Innes as she thwarts a series of strange crimes at a summer house she has rented with her niece and nephew. The novel was Rinehart's first bestseller and established her as one of the era's most popular writers. The story was serialized in All-Story for five issues starting with the November 1907 issue, then published in book form by Bobbs-Merrill in 1908.

Rinehart was inspired to write the novel after a visit to Melrose, a Gothic Revival castle in Northern Virginia.

The Circular Staircase pioneered what became known as the "had I but known" school of mystery writing, which often feature female protagonists and narrators who foreshadow impending danger and plot developments by reflecting on what they might have done differently. Rinehart employed this formula in many of her later works, and it inspired dozens of subsequent stories. The novel was adapted for the screen twice: as a silent film in 1915, and for the television series Climax! in 1956. Its best known adaptation was as the play The Bat, which became a major Broadway hit and inspired a number of later works, including several adaptations of its own.

Rachel Innes is a spinster who has had custody of her orphaned niece and nephew since they were children. Halsey and Gertrude are now 20 and 24, respectively, and they talk Rachel into renting a house in the country for the summer.

The first night Rachel is there, there is a mysterious trespasser and something falls down the stairs in the middle of the night. The second night, after Halsey and Gertrude have arrived, there is a murder, and Halsey and the friend he has brought to stay disappear.

Halsey returns a few days later, without his friend and without an explanation, but by then many other developments have occurred, to the chagrin of the residents.

The Daffodil Mystery by Edgar Wallace

Mr. Thornton Lyne, minor poet and head of Lyne's Stores, was found dead in Hyde Park, murdered undoubtedly! The clues were numerous but contradictory...

When Mr. Thomas Lyne, poet, poseur. and owner of Lyne's Emporium insults a cashier, Odette Rider, she resigns. Having summoned detective Jack Tarling to investigate another employee, Mr. Milburgh, Lyne now changes his plans. Tarling and his Chinese companion refuse to become involved. They pay a visit to Odette's flat. In the hall, Tarling meets Sam, convicted felon and protégé of Lyne. Next morning Tarling discovers a body. The hands are crossed on the breast, adorned with a handful of daffodils.

Arsene Lupin vs Herlcok Sholmes by Maurice Leblanc

Arsene Lupin vs Herlock Sholmes. A very thinly disguised Sherlock Holmes takes on Arsene Lupin in solving a mystery.