British Library Crime Classics Novels & Stories

“Then it’s not just showing me what’s happened. It’s showing me what will.” Theo reached beside the table again and pulled out a second item from the leather folder. It was slim, bound in deep red linen, the corners worn with time. He hesitated before handing it to her. Her breath caught the moment she saw the title: The Crimson Letter By Isla Ward She stared at it, her hand hovering. “Where did you get this?” “I found it last year,” Theo said quietly. “Tucked behind the books in the library’s upper shelf. I didn’t know what it was at first. Just that it felt… wrong.”

They spoke with excitement, knowing the profits were about to increase. After a while, Victor leaned back in his chair and lit a cigarette. He blew out a cloud of smoke and said, "So, have you heard about the bank robbery? The one everyone’s talking about?" The men exchanged glances, curious where this was going. Victor narrowed his eyes and continued, "I wonder if it was Zagaff Manscent who pulled it off. Robbing a bank in broad daylight... that takes guts." One of his associates, Titus, grinned and said, "If it was Zagaff, then he’s even better than we thought. That man is a legend."

Abigail I didn’t hear the library door open. Curled in the wide armchair by the window, a thick blanket tucked over my legs and a mug of lukewarm tea long forgotten on the little table beside me, I was too deep in the roaring chaos of 1920s London to notice anything else. The novel I’d found, The Blood of Mayfair, was a fever dream of a book with gangsters in bowler hats and singers with too much rouge and too many secrets. I had stumbled across the book purely by chance this afternoon while scanning a high corner shelf. What began as idle curiosity turned into a feverish need to unravel the killer’s identity before the protagonist, a fashion journalist moonlighting as a private investigator

With a helpless little moan, she caught his dark head in her hands, as if to keep him there and capture that exclusive pleasure forever. It was no different for Betty. Had she lain passive beneath him, he knew he would never have forced her. But her mouth clung to his. He felt her shiver with sensation, arching into his hands and mouth as if he were all that she craved. Her blind Acceptance of his every caress sent his ardour spiralling. His blood was boiling, his rod near to bursting the bounds of his skin. But he would not hurry his possession of her, for he wanted the memory of this night to remain branded in her heart forever……

A total letdown. The library itself was just as disappointing. One section was crammed with Italian law books, dry histories of world wars, and mafia men. The other section was romance novels so ancient they might as well have been written on parchment paper, and it didn’t help that most of them were in Italian, which I couldn’t even read. What did I expect? Adrian having a collection of modern, romance, mysteries, or thrillers? This wasn’t some sappy romance novel where the heroine falls in love with a library.

Not knowing what to do within the four walls, sitting under the tutelage of two friends, she spent time reading books. The library is large and caters for every taste, from historical novels to mysticism, 20th century literature and Sherlock Holmes antiquarian collections, the first as far back as 1902. But no matter how much I liked to dive into the worlds of the authors, I was haunted by a thick layer of dust on the shelves and books. I decided to do something useful and clean these treasures from years of dirt.

Emma said, walking deep into the living room. "Thanks." She walked to a set of shelves on the far side of the room, running her fingers over the spines of his books. A lot of them were classics, novels by Dickens, Voltaire, Dumas, Melville, and Hemingway. She smiled when her fingers ran over the spine of not one, but three copies of Mitchell's Gone with the Wind. There were modern novels, too, including Stephen King and Sidney Sheldon, but they didn't look as well read as some of the others.

Mom supported me, not because she understood, but because she loved me and wanted me to be happy. I stood up and walked around the library, feeling a little restless. They had all of the classics, and some of them looked as though they were expensive copies. Other authors that I regularly read, such as James Patterson and Dean Koontz were on the shelves. They even had some of my female favorites, such as Lisa Jackson, Lisa Gardner and Heather Graham Pozzessere. Then I wondered down to another section where I found some more provocative books. They had a lot of erotica books. One huge volume stood out: The Kama Sutra.

She asked, picking up one of the books and dusting the cover. "I do but those aren't mine. They were left by the previous owner," I said, grabbing two bowls from one of the pantries. "What are they about?" "There's some brilliant classics in here," She exclaimed, tracing her fingers over the spines of each book. "Bronte, Austen, Wilde." She named off a few authors. "Oh," She let out, pulling out one of the books at the bottom of the stack and walking over to me. "They've even got some of Freud's philosophies. Here- listen."

He returned his attention to the bookshelf at the rear of his office, the one he’d been browsing when he’d first heard the strange sounds outside, only being made by the cats, after all. The top shelf held purely “literary works.” Poetry collections of Blake, Yeats, Robert Frost, and Shakespeare. Prose collections of Zora Neal Hurston, Hemingway, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Flannery O’Connor, and folktales collected by the Brothers Grimm. Novels, from The Man in the Iron Mask to Madame Bovary, to Villette and Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte, to A Passage to India by E. M. Forster.