Francis Wheatley Winn, Senior Tutor at St Thomas' s College, is ready for a cosy night of dining, port, and pleasant company. Ernst Brendel, Viennese lawyer and crime specialist, has come to Oxford to lecture in Law, and the regular residents of St Thomas's are pleased to have such an interesting guest to liven up their after dinner chat. Talk soon turns to murder, and Winn finds the subject altogether unpalatable, even if his colleagues seem to relish the details of past cases Brendel has...

Anthony Newton has fallen hopelessly in love with the beautiful Cynthia, and feels desperate to secure her hand, putting an end to his carefree bachelor days. But there is one small problem. Cynthia is only nineteen, and Anthony, at thirty-six, is thought rather too old for her. Tearing himself from her side, Anthony goes on a great Arctic adventure, purely for the purpose of giving Cynthia time to be young, and test his own feelings towards her. For the three years he is away battling the...

Late at night in the Senior Common Room of St Thomas's College, Ernst Brendel is persuaded by his companions to relate a tale of murder, blackmail, and corruption. A wager is made, half a crown to the first person to guess the murderer correctly. But the game is not so simple. The crime involves four friends, each with the potential to be the murderer – or the victim.Brendel employs the art of 'pre-detection', uncovering motive and cause before the crime has even been committed. Bu...

Richard Temperley arrives at Euston station early on a fogbound London morning. He takes refuge in a nearby hotel, along with a disagreeable fellow passenger, who had snored his way through the train journey. But within minutes the other man has snored for the last time—he has been shot dead while sleeping in an armchair.Temperley has a brief encounter with a beautiful young woman, but she flees the scene.When the police arrive, Detective Inspector James discovers a token a...

An island republic goes to insane lengths to canonize its most famous residentJuanita di Perli was a young woman when she decided to live the rest of her life on a table-top. She called it God's will, but for the order of nuns that sprang up around her, Juanita's devotion was a curse. For decades they did the bidding of the holy grouch, and the entire island of San Juan el Pirata sighed with relief when she died.Twenty years later, the islanders fight for Ju...

No one would have guessed that death lurked nearby, and that only a little distance from the glitter and glamour of a house party, two victims lay silent on the floor. On a fine autumn weekend, Lord Aveling hosts a party at his country house. 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 tak...

From the Golden Age author of Green for Danger. "You have to reach for the greatest of Great Names to find Brand's rivals in the subtleties of the trade" ( The New York Times).Sir Richard's family has spent years waiting for him to die, but despite his weak heart, the old man simply refuses to cooperate. In the meantime, he makes their lives miserable by changing his will every few months, depending on which of his strange brood ...

Description "He is dead. It is quite impossible that he should have killed himself. He has been murdered. About half an hour ago. By a long knife passed under the left shoulder-blade into the heart."On a fog-bound London night, a soirée is taking place in the studio of artist Laurence Newtree. The guests include an eminent psychiatrist, a wealthy philanthropist and an observant young friend of Newtree's, John Christmas. Before the evening is over, Newtree's neighbour is found stabbed to de...

In a lonely East Anglian parish, the village pub becomes a crime scene after closing time. The victim is a newcomer with few friends and fewer allies among tight-knit locals who distrust outsiders. A Yard inspector is sent to sort fact from old stories, only to find doors closed, tales practiced, and a run of bad luck that seems to follow anyone not born there. When odd traces suggest a carefully planned entry and exit, the case turns from a simple stabbing to a problem of timing, access, ...

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.

From Agatha Christie's favorite American author—an amateur detective examines the mysterious reappearance of a woman who vanished 100 years ago.One hundred years earlier, a beautiful guest had disappeared from the wealthy Vauregard household, along with the second volume in a set of the collected works of Byron. Improbably enough, both guest and book seem to have reappeared, with neither having aged a day. The elderly Mr. Vauregard is inclined to believe the young w...

Long-lost relatives and priceless jewels turn a wedding upside downFor all the Kellings' quirks, no other family in Boston is more adept at throwing a wedding. So when Max Bittersohn's wife, Sarah Kelling, offers to organize his nephew's nuptials, Max is smart enough to stay out of her way. But when the art-fraud investigator stumbles onto a family mystery, he is drawn into something far more serious than the question of who will catch the bouquet.Stolen yea...