"George Furnace, flight instructor at Baston Aero Club, dies instantly when his plane crashes into the English countryside. People who knew him are baffled - Furnace was a first-rate pilot, and the plane was in perfect condition - and the inquest records a verdict of death by misadventure. An Australian visitor to the aero club, Edwin Marriott, Bishop of Cootamundra, suspects that the true story is more complicated. Could this be a dramatic suicide...

On a fine autumn weekend, Lord Aveling hosts a hunting party at his country house, Bragley Court. Among the guests are an actress, a journalist, an artist, and a mystery novelist. The unlucky thirteenth is John Foss, injured at the local train station and brought to the house to recuperate--but John is nursing a secret of his own. Soon events take a sinister turn when a painting is mutilated, a dog stabbed, and a man strangled. Death strikes more...

Never, even in his most optimistic moments, had he visualised a scene of this nature himself in one arm-chair, a police officer in another, and between them ... a mystery. The Reverend Dodd, vicar of the quiet Cornish village of Boscawen, spends his evenings reading detective stories by the fireside but heaven forbid that the shadow of any real crime should ever fall across his seaside parish. But the vicar s peace is shattered one stormy night when...

When Miss Pongleton is found murdered on the stairs of Belsize Park station, her fellow-boarders in the Frampton Hotel are not overwhelmed with grief at the death of a tiresome old woman. But they all have their theories about the identity of the murderer, and help to unravel the mystery of who killed the wealthy Pongle . Several of her fellow residents even Tuppy the terrier have a part to play in the events that lead to a dramatic arrest. This classic...

"On Christmas Eve, heavy snowfall brings a train to a halt near the village of Hemmersby. Several passengers take shelter in a deserted country house, where the fire has been lit and the table laid for tea-- but no one is at home. Trapped together for Christmas, the passengers are seeking to unravel the secrets of the empty house when a murderer strikes in their midst. This classic Chrstmas mystery is now republished for the first time since the 1930s,...

"Two classic cases featuring Detective Inspector Littlejohn. In the winter of 1940, the Home Guard unearth a skeleton on the moor above the busy town of Hatterworth. Twenty-three years earlier, the body of a young textile worker was found in the same spot, and the prime suspect was never found--but the second body is now identified as his. Soon it becomes clear that the true murderer is still at large... Nathaniel Wall, the local quack doctor, is...

Jim Henderson is one of six guests summoned by the mysterious Edwin Carson, a collector of precious stones, to a weekend party at his country house, Thrackley. The house is gloomy and forbidding but the party is warm and hospitable except for the presence of Jacobson, the sinister butler. The other guests are wealthy people draped in jewels; Jim cannot imagine why he belongs in such company. After a weekend of adventure, with attempted robbery and...

Mystery crime fiction written in the Golden Age of Murder

An eager London crowd awaits the trial of Victoria Lamartine, hotel worker, ex-French Resistance fighter, and the only logical suspect for the murder of her supposed lover, Major Eric Thoseby. Lamartine—who once escaped from the clutches of the Gestapo—is set to meet her end at the gallows.

One final opportunity remains: the defendant calls on solicitor Nap Rumbold

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"The British Secret Service, working to uncover a large-scale blackmail ring and catch its mastermind 'The Spider,' find themselves at the country residence Feltham Abbey, where a fancy-dress ball is in full swing. In the chaos of celebration, Sir Ralph Feltham is discovered dead and Tony, a bewildered yet curious guest, sets out to make sense of the night's activities as well as the motives of the other benevolent-appearing partygoers. This classic...

"An enigmatic young woman named Laura Dousland stands on trial for murder, accused of poisoning her elderly husband, Fordish. It seems clear that the poison was delivered in a flask of Chianti with supper, but according to the couple's servant in the witness-box, the flask disappeared the night Fordish died, and all attempts to trace it have come to nothing. The jury delivers its verdict, but this is just the end of the beginning of Marie Belloc Lowndes's...