Bird Mystery

Including the brilliantly frightening short story that inspired Alfred Hitchcock's masterpiece, this collection from the author of Rebecca is a classic work of alienation and horror. The chilling stories in this collection echo a sense of dislocation and mock man's dominance over the natural...

Stacey and Laney are twins—mirror images of each other—and yet they’re as different as the sun and the moon. Stacey works hard at school, determined to get out of their small town. Laney skips school and sneaks out of the house to meet her boyfriend. But when Laney disappears one night, Stacey can’t believe she’s just run off without telling her. As the days pass and Laney doesn’t return, Stacey starts dreaming of her twin. The dreams are dark and terrifying, difficult to understand and hard to shake, but at least they tell Stacey one key thing—Laney is alive.

Recently divorced and reluctantly retired, Julia Bird has fled London to enjoy idyllic rural life in the Cotswolds. Determined to have the perfect English garden, her first job is to tear down the old shed, where she unearths much more than she’d bargained for: a body, apparently buried for decades. But who could it be, and who killed them? The police draw a blank, and even the gossip-fest that is the local book club can’t remember anyone going missing in the village.

Charming, devilishly handsome, and talented, Vincent teases the crowd with a reading from his forthcoming novel. Set in a village bearing strange similarities to Berrywick, with characters the audience start to recognize, Vincent hints of dark secrets to be revealed, to gasps of outrage from the room. The meeting ends in uproar, and, just hours later, Vincent’s dead body is discovered behind the bookshelves....

In 1998, the American Jorgenson family had been on a year-long road trip in Australia. One humid, storming night, the mother - Elsa Jorgenson - vanished in an isolated stretch of Australian everglades. Elsa was never seen again. That night, twelve-year-old Lily Jorgenson was left alone and terrified in the family camper—even her teenage sister Iris is missing. When Iris comes racing back through the rain, she refuses to tell where she’s been. Lily is certain her sister is hiding a dark secret.

The annual village celebration at Berrywick House is underway, complete with overdecorated cake stalls, fiercely contested flower competitions, and even a maze for the disappointed losers to hide in. Julia Bird, now a well-known–even notorious–member of the community, with her trusty Labrador, Jake, has thrown herself headlong into the festivities. But her reputation for adding drama to any event stands up yet again when she discovers a dead body in the maze....

When Julia Bird’s ex-husband Peter and his lovely partner Christopher decide to get married in Berrywick, Julia is delighted–after all, who doesn't love a country wedding? Little does Julia know that normally calm and collected Christopher will turn into a full-on Groomzilla–and that by the end of the night, someone will end up dead. The morning after the big day, the jolly nuptial mood turns grim when Julia discovers the lifeless body of the caterer, Desmond. Someone locked him in the cold truck and the poor man froze to death.

'You walk and the harvest moon casts the clearest of shadows. You are nervous. With a moon like that, it is not a night for escaping. It is a night made better for hunting runaway girls.' Himalayas: Unknown Year 'Ten thousand strands of trouble', says Bird's father, watching as Bird's sister braids her hair. On the eve of her 14th year, that trouble finds Bird. Fleeing her home to escape an arranged marriage, she attempts to vanish into a crowd of pilgrims – not knowing that violence is circling, and that it already has its eyes on her.

At the end of Berrywick’s amateur theatre’s latest production, a shot rings out amongst the rapturous applause. But when Julia Bird peeks through the curtain, she sees lead actor Graham is lying still on the stage, his co-actor Oscar looking down at his prop gun in shock. She knows that Graham has been murdered, but with nearly everyone in the village helping with the play, anyone could have tampered with the props. And why was a beloved family man the target?

For Janet MacPhail, photographing retrievers in training is the perfect way to spend an evening. But a photo session at Twisted Lake takes a peculiar turn as Drake, her friend Tom's Labrador, fetches a blood-soaked bag holding an exotic feather and a torn $100 bill. When one of her photography students turns up dead at the lake, Janet investigates a secretive retreat center with help from Australian Shepherd Jay and her quirky neighbor Goldie.

Twenty years ago, the mysterious death of his aunt left Aaron Holbrook orphaned and alone. He abandoned his rural Arkansas hometown vowing never to return, until his seven-year-old son died in an accident, plunging Aaron into a nightmare of addiction and grief. Desperate to reclaim a piece of himself, he returns to the hills of his childhood, to Holbrook House, where he hopes to find peace among the memories of his youth. But solace doesn't come easy. Someone - or something - has other plans.

The Cozy Corgi bookshop finally opens, and Winifred Page and her headstrong corgi, Watson, are ready to welcome their first patrons. With her new best friend, Katie, creating heavenly pastries in the bakery on the top floor of the store, Fred’s dreams are all coming together in delicious and unexpected ways. Fred and Katie are roped into a moonlight snowshoeing hike in hopes of spotting a rare owl. While the endangered bird proves elusive...the murdered man in the snow is hard to miss.

Rose Gardner is trying to build a new normal. One that leaves the Fenton County crime world - including James "Skeeter" Malcolm, the current king - behind. Her best friend and roommate is a big part of that effort, but Neely Kate is busy building her own life anew. She disappeared for a few days, scaring the spit out of Rose - which is why Rose finds it impossible to deny her when she suggests they look for a missing parrot. Only this time Neely Kate isn't interested in the reward money - she's set them up to work with a cranky private investigator.

Detective Sergeant Chris Waters got the call at 05.29 that July morning. This is it, said DCI Reeve, you'll be first there, it's all yours, you're the crime scene manager. Suddenly, after months of waiting and wondering, Waters finds himself in at the deep end, and alone at the scene of a puzzling murder. As the investigation proceeds, the detectives at Kings Lake Central find themselves visiting familiar places and talking to some familiar faces, while old enmities reappear in the incident room. Before this is over, Chris Waters will need to make a career-changing decision.

The South American Boreal: one of the last truly unexplored jungles on our planet. In its dark heart is an ancient crater basin, sealed in by a living cage, making it a time capsule for an ancient, deadly ecosystem. Matt Kearns, Carla Nero and a team of scientist explorers have found their way in. In the crater's sunken interior are creatures from a primordial nightmare. Dangers lurk in every treetop, under every rock or loom monstrously over them. It is a place where mankind is out of time.

When a fame-hungry scientist brings an impossible, living specimen of a creature long thought extinct back from the wild jungles of South America he unwittingly brings along a passenger. Something with the potential to destroy every living thing on our planet. The infestation begins, rapidly overtaking medical resources and resisting all treatment.

What is the connection of "Fowl Relief" and an English golf-playing king? Does the nickname of Jimmy Douglas' great-great-grandfather have any significance? Tie these answers with the other clues and the mystery of the purple bird is solved, but not until Djuna, the brilliant young sleuth, and his pal Jimmy go through an ordeal that almost takes their lives. The boys tangle with an antique dealer and a tiger-skin diary - just to name a few of the events - in their struggle to solve the mystery.

Running from a bad relationship, journalist Jo Sharpe heads home to Arthurville, the drought-stricken town she turned her back on years earlier. While some things have changed - her relationship with her ailing, crotchety father, her new job at the community newspaper - Jo finds that her return has rekindled the grief and uncertainty she experienced during her childhood following the inexplicable disappearance of her mother and baby sister.

His name is Dex. He's huge, terrifying, and has an edge to him that I shouldn't find intriguing, but I do. He's also the enforcer to a rival family, and my current prison guard. Dex wants me. I can see it in his eyes. Feel it in his innocent touch. He could break me with ease. But he hasn't. Instead, he's threatened to cut off any hand that dares to try. If I didn't know any better, I'd say he cares about me. But blood means everything in this world, and we're on opposite sides of a war. After all, I'm the Romano mafia princess. He's nothing but an Allegretti.

Matt Kearns and the remnants of the scientific team return to a ravaged America. Modern medicine has failed to halt the spread of the flesh-consuming parasite, and humans have been forced to hide, even from one another. The infected roam the cities and suburbs of a ruined nation. But the devastating effects on human physiology are only the beginning. Something has been let loose, something that the team were not prepared for - human nature itself.