This page brings together free online books, topic searches, and audiobooks related to mystery and detective fiction, including crime, suspense, amateur sleuths, police investigations, and classic detective stories. The materials range from older public domain works to modern novels.
The Topics section below helps readers find books within the huge Internet Archive collection. Each topic link generates an Internet Archive search focused on that subject. Browsing the topics and selecting those of interest is usually easier and more effective than searching Internet Archive directly.
Sections below Topics provide links to vintage books and audiobooks. See those sections for more information.
Topics – Mystery Novels PDF and Crime Thriller Books
The topic links below lead to Internet Archive search results related to murder mystery and detective novels. Each link opens a books-and-documents search focused on a particular topic.
Search results generally include fully readable books. For some subjects, Internet Archive also contains other media, such as images, audio, or video files. These can be selected from the media options above the search results. Filters on the left side of Internet Archive pages can help narrow search results by year, language, or related subjects.
- Agatha Christie Books
- Assassins
- Atrocities
- Bank Robberies
- Children: Young Adult (Gr. 7-9)
- Cold cases (Criminal investigation)
- Conspiracies
- Crime – Juvenile fiction
- Criminal investigation
- Detective and Mystery Stories
- Detective Mystery Stories
- Drug Traffic Crime
- Edgar Allan Poe Detective Stories
- Edward D. Hoch
- Forensic Scientists
- Gangsters
- Graphic novels
- Hercule Poirot Books
- Human trafficking
- Jacques Barzun
- Kidnapping
- List of Anthony Award Winners and Nominees 1986-2024 (Mysteries)
- List of Top 100 Crime Novels of All Time
- List of Top 100 Mystery Novels of All Time
- Mafia
- Maigret
- Money laundering
- Mysteries and Crime Thriller Novels at HathiTrust
- Mystery Books
Vintage Murder Mystery PDF Books – Crime Thriller Novels PDF Free Download
Vintage books were nearly always published before 1930. They can be read online or downloaded.
MP3 Murder Mystery Books – Librivox Detective Audio Books
These audiobook links lead to public domain recordings from LibriVox at Internet Archive. The books recorded by Librivox volunteers were nearly all published before 1930. Recordings include detective books, murder mysteries, crime novels, Hardy Boys detective novels, Dashiell Hammett novels, and Sherlock Holmes.
All Librivox audiobooks are free and can be streamed online or downloaded for offline listening.
Search for an Author’s Books
Try searching for books by author. In the search bar in this link, in the creator field, replace LAST, FIRST with the author’s name. Save books you like to your Internet Archive account by clicking “Favorite” while logged in.
Related Pages on Century Past
See our Century Past directories for hundreds of webpages of Books; Magazines; Articles, maps, & photos; and Newspapers. You’ll find the same directories on the top Menu. Here are a few suggested pages: