* MURDER MYSTERY CRIME STORIES DETECTIVE * 300+ RARE ANCIENT BOOKS on DVD * 

This is the ultimate rare historical books collection for all books lovers! Consisting of rare and ancient original books derived from the 1800's and 1900's or earlier. These books have been digitized for your viewing pleasure. Books are in PDF/TXT file format, which is easily accessible, readable, and printable right off your computer. 


Titles Include:

The Three Apples (Arabian Nights, Volume 1) 1901 (In this tale, a fisherman discovers a heavy locked chest along the Tigris river and he sells it to the Abbasid Caliph, Harun al-Rashid, who then has the chest broken open only to find inside it the dead body of a young woman who was cut into pieces.)

Zadig by Voltaire 1910 (Written in 1748 this is one of the earliest examples of detective fiction which features a main character who performs feats of analysis.)

Bel and the Dragon (Jewish Apocryphal story, the world's Oldest Locked Room Mystery)

The Story of Susanna (Jewish Apocryphal story, the world's Oldest Courtroom Drama)

Eumenides by Aeschylus (2500 year old work with a Jury Trial)

The Trail of the Serpent by Mary E Braddon 1861 ("A strong argument can be made that Mary Elizabeth Braddon’s The Trail of the Serpent is a detective story — perhaps the first full-length one." Yahoo FictionMags)

Caleb Williams by William Godwin 1831 (considered by some to be the first crime novel)

Confessions of a Justified Sinner by James Hogg 1824 (part-gothic novel, part-psychological mystery, part-curio, part-metafiction, part-satire, part-case study of totalitarian thought, it can also be thought of as an early example of modern crime fiction)

The Bride of Lammermoor by Sir Walter Scott 1875 (fictional account of an actual murder)

Historical Mysteries by Andrew Lang 1904 (14 Mysteries)

Tales of Mystery and Imagination by Edgar Allen Poe 1908

The House of Seven Gables by Nathaniel Hawthorne 1894

Bleak House by Charles Dickens 1906

Armadale by Wilkie Collins 1897

The Mysteries of Paris, Volume 1 by Eugene Sue 1845

The Mysteries of Paris, Volume 2 by Eugene Sue 1845

The Mysteries of Paris, Volume 3 by Eugene Sue 1845

The Wandering Jew by Eugene Sue 1889 Volume 1

The Wandering Jew by Eugene Sue 1889 Volume 2

The Wandering Jew by Eugene Sue 1889 Volume 3

History of the Thirteen by Honore be Balzac 1896

The Leo Frank Case - The Inside Story of Georgia's Greatest Murder Mystery 1913

The House Opposite - a Mystery (1902) by Elizabeth Kent

The Murder of Edwin Drood Recounted by PT Carden 1920

The mystery in the Drood Family by M Saunders 1914

Mystery of a Hansom Cab by Fergus Hume 1889

The Wrong Box by Robert Louis Stevenson 1911

The New Arabian Nights by Robert Louis Stevenson 1905

Adventures of Sherlock Holmes by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (Illustrated) 1892

The Return of Sherlock Holmes by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (Illustrated) 1905

The Hound of the Baskervilles by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle 1902

His Last Bow - a Reminiscence of Sherlock Holmes by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle 1917

The Chronicles of Martin Hewitt by Arthur Morrison 1896

The Red Triangle, Further chronicles of Martin Hewitt, Investigator by Arthur Morrison 1903

The Hole in the Wall by Arthur Morrison 1903

A Thief in the Night by EW Hornung 1905

The Experiences of Loveday Brooke, Lady Detective by C. L. Pirkis 1894(perhaps the first female sleuth)

Hilda Wade by Grant Allen (completed by Conan Doyle) 1900

Pudd'nhead Wilson by Mark Twain (uses Detective skills)

The Old Man in the Corner by Baronness Orczy 1908

The Mystery of the Green Ray by William Le Queux 1915

The Count's Chauffeur by William Le Queux 1908

The Passenger from Scotland Yard by HF Wood 1888

The Great Tontine by Hawley Smart 1882

The Red Thumb Mark by R. Austin Freeman 1908 (perhaps the first story involving fingerprint evidence)'

John Silence by Algernon Blackwood (psychic detective) 1915

The Triumph of Eugene Valmont by Robert Barr (early Poirot like detection) 1906

The Gentle Grafter by O. Henry 1919

The Beetle by Richard Marsh 1917 (a mix of horror and detective story)

The Childerbridge Mystery by Guy Boothby 1902

The Circular Staircase by Mary Roberts Rinehart 1908

The Man in lower Ten by Mary Roberts Rinehart 1909

In the Fog by Richard Harding Davis 1901

At the Villa Rose by A. E. W. Mason 1910

Arsène Lupin: An Adventure Story by by Maurice Leblanc 1909 (Arsene Lupin was France's Sherlock Holmes)

Arsene Lupin versus Herlock Sholmes (yes, it really is spelled that way in this book) by Maurice Leblanc 1910

The Hollow Needle by Maurice Leblanc (there's even a character in here named "Holmlock Shears) 1910

813 by Maurice Leblanc (Lupin’s greatest case...also in Kindle format)

Uncle Abner: Master of Mysteries by Melville Davidson Post 1918 (kindle format also) (considered by one blogger to be the finest collection of American detective stories since Poe)

Strange Schemes of Randolph Mason by Melville Davidson Post 1896

Terence O'Rourke, Gentleman Adventurer by LJ Vance 1905

The Lone Wolf by LJ Vance 1914 (probably the first gentleman crook)

The Achievements of Luther Trant 1910 (maybe the first psychological detective)

The Insidious Dr. Fu-Manchu by Sax Rohmer 1920

The Silent Bullet (Scientific Sleuth) by Arthur Reeve 1910

The Secret House by Edgar Wallace 1919

The Four Just Men by Edgar Wallace 1920 (the prototype of the modern thriller)

The Lodger by Marie Belloc Lowndes 1914 (A haunting mystery tale that revolves around the Jack the Ripper murders, this novel was the basis for several films)

The Red House Mystery by AA Milne 1922, a famous whodunit by the author of the Winnie the Pooh books.

Six Cent Sam (Mr. Dunton's Invention, Greaves' Disappearance, Raxworthy's Treasure, The John North Mystery, A Model Murder, The Symposium)

Twelve Scots Trials by William Roughead 1913 (The Parson of Spott, The doom of Lady Warriston, Touching one Major Weir, a warlock, The ordeal of Philip Stanfield, The ghost of Sergeant Davies, Katharine Nairn, Keith of Northfield, "The wife o'Denside", Concerning Christina Gilmour, The St. Fergus affair, The Dunecht mystery, The Arran Murder)

The Dark House - A Knot Unravelled by George Manville Fenn 1885

Library of the World's Best Mystery and Detective Stories, Volume 1 by Julian Hawthorne 1908

Library of the World's Best Mystery and Detective Stories, Volume 2 by Julian Hawthorne 1908

Library of the World's Best Mystery and Detective Stories, Volume 3 by Julian Hawthorne 1908

Library of the World's Best Mystery and Detective Stories, Volume 4 by Julian Hawthorne 1908

Library of the World's Best Mystery and Detective Stories, Volume 5 by Julian Hawthorne 1908

Library of the World's Best Mystery and Detective Stories, Volume 6 by Julian Hawthorne 1908 (101 Tales in 6 Volumes)

The Black Cap - New Stories of Murder and Mystery (14 stories)

The Mystery of the Boule Cabinet- a Detective Story by B Stevenson 1912

Masterpieces of Mystery, Volume 1 by Joseph French 1922

Masterpieces of Mystery, Volume 2 by Joseph French 1922

Masterpieces of Mystery, Volume 3 by Joseph French 1922

Masterpieces of Mystery, Volume 4 by Joseph French 1922 (About 36 tales in all)

The Innocence of Father Brown by GKC 1911

The Man Who Was Thursday - A Nightmare by GKC 1908

Trent's Last Case by EC Bentley 1913

A Mediaeval Burglary by TF Tout 1916

Satan Absolved - a Victorian mystery (poem) by WS Blunt 1899

The Great Crime of 1860 by Joseph Whitaker Stapleton (this is now the basis of a new bestseller called the Suspicions of Mr Whicher)

The Leavenworth Case: a Lawyer's Story by Anna Katharine Green 1906

The Filigree Ball, being a full and true account of the solution of the mystery concerning the Jeffrey-Moore Affair by Anna Katharine Green 1903

A Strange Disappearance by Anna Katharine Green 1879

The Woman in the Alcove by Anna Katharine Green 1906

The Amethyst Box by Anna Katharine Green 1905

The Circular Study by Anna Katharine Green 1905

The House of the Whispering Pines by Anna Katharine Green

Room Number 3 and other Mystery Stories by Anna Katharine Green 1913

THE MILL MYSTERY BY ANNA KATHARINE GREEN

The Golden Slipper and other Problems for Violet Strange by Anna Katharine Green 1915

True Stories of Crime from the District Attorney's Office by Arthur Cheney Train 1908
Contents: THE WOMAN IN THE CASE, FIVE HUNDRED MILLION DOLLARS, THE LOST STRADIVARIUS, THE LAST OF THE WIRE-TAPPERS, THE FRANKLIN SYNDICATE, A STUDY IN FINANCE, THE "DUC DE NEVERS", A FINDER OF MISSING HEIRS, A MURDER CONSPIRACY, A FLIGHT INTO TEXAS, A CASE OF CIRCUMSTANTIAL EVIDENCE

Bucholz and the Detectives by Allan Pinkerton 1880

The Maurice Mystery by John Esten Cooke 1885

The Big Bow Mystery by Israel Zangwill 1895 (The Big Bow Mystery was the first locked room murder novel. It has been almost continuously in print since 1891 and has been used as the basis for three commercial films.)

The Hunt Ball Mystery by William Magnay 1918

The Dark House - A Knot Unravelled by George Manville Fenn 1885

The Mystery of the Yellow Room by Gaston Leroux in wordpard and text format
(In 1898, Elisabeth, Empress of Austria-Hungary, was on the quay at Lake Geneva awaiting the steam ferry to Montreux when, without warning or apparent motive, the anarchist Luigi Lucheni plunged a needle file into her heart. Because of the very thin nature of the wound, the Empress did not realise that she had been fatally injured and walked unaided to her cabin, where she collapsed and soon died.[citation needed] It is not known whether she locked the cabin door behind her - which would have created the appearance of a locked room murder. At least one prominent French locked room expert, Roland Lacourbe, believes that this notorious event was the inspiration for Gaston Leroux's The Mystery of the Yellow Room)

Hide and Seek; Or, The Mystery of Mary Grice: A Novel by Wilkie Collins 1898

The mystery of Edwin Drood by Charles Dickens 1870

Famous Mysteries: Curious and Fantastic Riddles of Human Life by John Elfreth Watkins - 1919
(The Strange Case of Marie Lafarge - The most baffling of all French murder mysteries involved the daughter of one of Napoleon's favorite officers, Colonel Cappelle, of the Old Guard. This beautiful girl was also the granddaughter of the famous Duke of Orleans (Philippe Egalite) and of his companion and housekeeper, Mme. de Genlis.)
  
The Woman in White by Wilkie Collins 1893
(The Woman in White is an epistolary novel written by Wilkie Collins in 1859, serialized in 1859-1860, and first published in book form in 1860. It is considered to be among the first mystery novels and is widely regarded as one of the first (and finest) in the genre of 'sensation novels'.)

The Moonstone by Wilkie Collins 1874 (considered the first detective novel in the English language)
  
No Name by Wilkie Collins 1893
(The story begins in 1846, at Combe-Raven in West Somersetshire, the country residence of the happy Vanstone family. When Andrew Vanstone is killed suddenly in an accident and his wife follows shortly thereafter, it is revealed that they were not married at the time of their daughters' births, making their daughters "Nobody's Children" in the eyes of English law and robbing them of their inheritance. Andrew Vanstone's elder brother Michael gleefully takes possession of his brother's fortune, leaving his nieces to make their own way in the world. Norah, the elder sister, accepts her misfortune gracefully, but the headstrong Magdalen is determined to have her revenge. Using her dramatic talent and assisted by wily swindler Captain Wragge, Magdalen plots to regain her rightful inheritance.)

The Ghost's Touch by Wilkie Collins (part of "I Say No"; Or, The Love-letter Answered: And Other Stories by Wilkie Collins) 1893
  
Masterpieces of Mystery by Joseph Lewis French 1920

Mysteries of Police and Crime: A General Survey of Wrongdoing and Its Pursuit by Arthur Griffiths 1899

Twenty-five Years of Detective Life by Jerome Caminada 1895
  
Fifty Years a Detective by Thomas Furlong 1912

Why Some Men Kill; Or, Murder Mysteries Revealed by George A. Thacher 1919

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