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Nocturnal TalesMystery audiobooks for quiet evenings

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248 complete mysteries, every one free to listen to. Search by title or place, or choose a detective below.

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Cover illustration for The Adventure of the Dead Man's Violin

London, November 1898. A black-edged note arrives at Baker Street before breakfast: "My brother has been found dead. Last night I heard him playing in a locked and empty room.

1 hr 31 minNo. 203

Cover illustration for The Adventure of the Red Chessman

London, 1891: a young woman arrives at Baker Street carrying a chess piece her father tried to burn — a red pawn carved from Indian ivory and stained the colour of old blood — and every Tuesday for seven weeks another piece has arrived by post with no letter and no demand, just the slow deliberate assembly of a game Colonel Sir Alistair Morven cannot bear to finish; as Sherlock Holmes and Dr.

1 hr 24 minNo. 147

Cover illustration for Sherlock Holmes and the Bells of Dunmere Abbey

Yorkshire coast, November: a baronet is found dead in his locked study with salt water pooled near the hearth, seaweed pressed beneath the bolted door, and no earthly way in or out — for three consecutive nights before his death a bell tolled from beneath the sea, the drowned monks of Dunmere Abbey ringing judgment upon the house above the cliffs — and when Sherlock Holmes arrives he finds a replaced bell-pull with a new cord married to an old tassel, pale cave sand in a locked drawer, candle wax beneath the desk, the name of a long-wrecked ship no one will speak aloud, and a housekeeper whose thirty-two years of spotless loyalty may have been thirty-two years of waiting; entirely fictional in homage to classic detective fiction, The Bells of Dunmere Abbey is a locked-room mystery about guilt remembered, grief obeyed, and the human habit of dressing wickedness in a shroud when plain clothes would do.

2 hr 35 minNo. 143

Cover illustration for The Adventure of the Briarbank Papers

London and Wimbledon, spring 1902: when brilliant electrical engineer Laurence Brooke is found stabbed through the chest with a Moorish paper-knife in the locked study of Briarbank House — his safe unlocked, a sealed packet of technical papers missing, and a jealous painter-husband conveniently placed at the scene by a dog-walker's testimony — Sherlock Holmes and Dr.

1 hr 18 minNo. 137

Cover illustration for The Pressed Lemon

The Pressed Lemon

Sherlock Holmes

Hertfordshire, 1898: a fifteen-year-old boy dies in sudden agony after luncheon, and the evidence points to an industrial poison linked to his grandfather’s chemical works—until the Victorian Detective notices the household’s smallest routine detail: a daily pressed lemon, a kitchen ice-chest that should have been empty, and fruit injected by syringe; as grief hardens into suspicion inside Maybury House, the inquiry turns from public scandal to private tyranny, where loyalty, dependence, and long-trained silence prove more corrosive than any compound, and a murder meant for one man strikes another instead; inspired by historical crime of its era while remaining entirely fictional, The Pressed Lemon is an original classic-detective mystery about accidental victims, domestic power, and the fatal cost of “ordinary” cruelty.

1 hr 8 minNo. 134

Cover illustration for The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes : The Blackwood Reliquary (The Archive)

Denham, 1892: a reliquary vanishes and a man dies upon the bell-stair, and the village responds with whispers—devotion, theft, and piety worn like armour—until the Consulting Detective and his loyal companion arrive to read the church itself as evidence: an altered bell-rope, organ pipes that conceal more than music, pawnbroker ledgers, and clues arranged with the tidy discipline of a hymn; The Blackwood Reliquary is an original Victorian-style mystery about quiet motives, misjudgment, and the single small detail that turns certainty into truth.

45 minNo. 127

Cover illustration for The Adventure of the Indiscreet Photograph

In spring 1902, Sherlock Holmes is summoned to the West End when a celebrated Bond Street couturier is found dead in his bath with a telephone receiver in his hand, and what looks like a tidy accident becomes a ruthless design: a suspicious call that places the victim “alive” at the wrong hour, a Mayfair luncheon poised on money and engagement, and an American fashion journal that reveals betrayal in New York before London ever applauded; as Holmes and Dr.

1 hr 27 minNo. 115

Cover illustration for The Seventh Day Bill

The Seventh Day Bill

Sherlock Holmes

In autumn 1894, Sherlock Holmes is summoned from Baker Street to a rain-soaked county town where a chapel coronet is stolen, an innocent youth is arrested on a description that fits his borrowed clothes, and the case explodes into violence when a prison warder is shot dead during a staged “escape” and a bill-poster is murdered before he can speak; as Holmes and Dr.

1 hr 48 minNo. 113