If you’re a mystery lover, where better to start than Arthur Conan Doyle? His Adventures of Sherlock Holmes is a collection of short masterpieces of mystery fiction. Agatha Christie’s The Secret Adversary and The Mysterious Affair at Styles are the first novels of a master. Or try the widely loved book The Moonstone by Wilkie Collins, among his many others. A.A. Milne’s only non-Pooh bear story, The Red House Mystery, is quite good.

There’s the Library of the World’s Best Mystery and Detective Stories by a number of authors including Balzac and Guy de Maupassant. Or perhaps try the Czar’s Spy by William Le Queux. Other books to check out are: Black Caesar’s Clan by Terhune, Edgar Wallace’s The Four Just Men, and The Mystery of 31 New Inn by R. Austin Freeman. Historical Mysteries by Andrew Lang researches mystery books from days of old.