P. Lovecraft.The Stories included are:The Nameless CityThe FestivalThe Colour Out of SpaceThe Call of CthulhuThe Dunwich HorrorThe Whisperer in DarknessThe Dreams in the Witch HouseThe Haunter of the DarkThe Shadow Over InnsmouthDiscarded Draft of "The Shadow Over Innsmouth"The Shadow Out of TimeAt the Mountains of MadnessThe Case of Charles Dexter WardAzathothBeyond the Wall of SleepCelephaïsCool AirDagonEx OblivioneFacts Concerning the Late Arthur Jermyn and His FamilyFrom BeyondHeHerbert West-ReanimatorHypnosIn the VaultMemoryNyarlathotepPickman’s ModelThe BookThe Cats of UltharThe DescendantThe Doom That Came to SarnathThe Dream-Quest of Unknown KadathThe Evil ClergymanThe Horror at Red HookThe HoundThe Lurking FearThe Moon-BogThe Music of Erich ZannThe Other GodsThe OutsiderThe Picture in the HouseThe Quest of IranonThe Rats in the WallsThe Shunned HouseThe Silver KeyThe Statement of Randolph CarterThe Strange High House in the MistThe StreetThe TempleThe Terrible Old ManThe Thing on the DoorstepThe TombThe Transition of Juan RomeroThe TreeThe UnnamableThe White ShipWhat the Moon BringsPolarisThe Very Old FolkIbidOld BugsSweet Ermengarde, or, The Heart of a Country GirlA Reminiscence of Dr. Samuel JohnsonThe History of the Necronomicon

    He was just about to step out onto the floor when he caught a sudden thin ray of red from under the drooping lid of Smaug's left eye. He was only pretending to be sleep! He was watching the tunnel entrance!Whisked from his comfortable hobbit-hole by Gandalf the wizard and a band of dwarves, Bilbo Baggins finds himself caught up in a plot to raid the treasure hoard of Smaug the Magnificent, a large and very dangerous dragon.

    Not a nasty, dirty, wet hole, filled with the ends of worms and an oozy smell, nor yet a dry, bare, sandy hole with nothing in it to sit down on or to eat: it was a hobbit-hole, and that means comfort.Written for J.R.R. Tolkien’s own children, The Hobbit met with instant critical acclaim when it was first published in 1937. Now recognized as a timeless classic, this introduction to the hobbit Bilbo Baggins, the wizard Gandalf, Gollum, and the spectacular world of Middle-earth recounts of the adventures of a reluctant hero, a powerful and dangerous ring, and the cruel dragon Smaug the Magnificent. The text in this 372-page paperback edition is based on that first published in Great Britain by Collins Modern Classics (1998), and includes a note on the text by Douglas A. Anderson (2001).

    This Penguin Classics edition brings together a dozen of the master's tales-from his early short stories "Under the Pyramids" (originally ghostwritten for Harry Houdini) and "The Music of Erich Zann" (which Lovecraft ranked second among his own favorites) through his more fully developed works, "The Dunwich Horror," The Case of Charles Dexter Ward, and At the Mountains of Madness. The Thing on the Doorstep and Other Weird Stories presents the definitive corrected texts of these works, along with Lovecraft critic and biographer S. T. Joshi's illuminating introduction and notes to each story.Contains the following tales:- The Tomb- Beyond the Wall of Sleep- The White Ship- The Temple- The Quest of Iranon- The Music of Erich Zann- Imprisoned with the Pharaohs aka Under the Pyramids- Pickman's Model- The Case of Charles Dexter Ward- The Dunwich Horror- At the Mountains of Madness- The Thing on the Doorstep

    Henry's short stories are known for their wit, wordplay, warm characterization and clever twist endings.

    The trouble began in Venice ...'Mihály has dreamt of Italy all his life. When he finally travels there on his honeymoon with wife Erszi, he soon abandon her in order to find himself, haunted by old friends from his turbulent teenage days: beautiful, kind Tamas, brash and wicked Janos, and the sexless yet unforgettable Eva. Journeying from Venice to Ravenna, Florence and Rome, Mihály loses himself in Venetian back alleys and in the Tuscan and Umbrian countryside, driven by an irresistible desire to resurrect his lost youth among Hungary's Bright Young Things, and knowing that he must soon decide whether to return to the ambiguous promise of a placid adult life, or allow himself to be seduced into a life of scandalous adventure.Journey by Moonlight (Utas és Holdvilág) is an undoubted masterpiece of Modernist literature, a darkly comic novel cut through by sex and death, which traces the effects of a socially and sexually claustrophobic world on the life of one man.Translated from the Hungarian by the renowned and award-winning Len Rix, Antal Szerb's Journey by Moonlight (first published as Utas és Holdvilág in Hungary in 1937) is the consummate European novel of the inter-war period.

    Based on Cronin's own experiences as a physician, The Citadel boldly confronts traditional medical ethics, and has been noted as one of the inspirations for the formation of the National Health Service.The Citadel has been adapted into several successful film, radio, and television productions around the world, including the Oscar-nominated 1938 film starring Ralph Donat, Rosalind Russell, Ralph Richardson, and Rex Harrison.

    In the words of Isaac Bashevis Singer, "What he did in his short life was enough to make him one of the most remarkable writers who ever lived." Weaving myth, fantasy, and reality, Sanatorium Under the Sign of the Hourglass, is, to quote Schulz, "an attempt at eliciting the history of a certain family . . . by a search for the mythical sense, the essential core of that history."

    Jane always believed her father was dead until she accidentally learned he was alive and well and living on Prince Edward Island. When Jane spends the summer at his cottage on Lantern Hill, doing all the wonderful things Grandmother deems unladylike, she dares to dream that there could be such a house back in Toronto... a house where she, Mother, and Father could live together without Grandmother directing their lives — a house that could be called home.

    Somerset Maugham–the author of the classic novels Of Human Bondage and Up at the Villa–introduces us to Julia Lambert, a woman of breathtaking poise and talent whose looks have stood by her forty-six years. She is a star UK stage actress–-so good, in fact, that perhaps she never stops acting.It seems that noting can ruffle her satin feathers, until a quiet stranger challenges Julia's very sense of self. As a result, she will endure rejection for the first time, her capacity as a mother will be affronted, and her ability to put on whatever face she desired for her public will prove limited. In Theatre, Maugham subtly exposes the tensions and triumphs that occur when acting and reality blend together, and–for Julia–ultimately reverse.

    The first half is a carefully researched, day-by-day recreation of the raid by Rogers' Rangers on the Indian village at Saint-François-du-Lac, Quebec (or Saint Francis, to the Americans troops), a settlement of the Abenakis, an American Indian tribe. The second half of the novel covers Rogers' later life in London, England and Fort Michilimackinac, Michigan. Roberts' decision to cover the novel's material in two distinct halves followed the actual trajectory of Rogers' life.

    Their death leaves Marjorie well provided for but terribly lonely. Soon she is consumed with the desire to find the family she has never known. But how can she find them when she knows nothing about them--and when Evan Brower, her handsome, wealthy neighbor, seems determined to make her forget about her unknown family entirely?Then Marjorie finds a letter from Mrs. Wetherill, written shortly before her death, in which she tells Marjorie her real father's name and last known address! And so Marjorie's search begins--a search for a family to call her own; a search that will ultimately change her life and bring her a love more wonderful than anything she has ever known.

    We come to know and love this girl, called Small Bird by her family, through the events of her colorful childhood and her marriage to Tutankhaten, a boy of royal birth. Her efforts to save the kingdom from conniving priests and soldiers were gallant and dramatic.While the fate of the Queen is unknown, in her story Lucile Morrison ventures to suppose a satisfying ending to the romance. An extraordinarily accurate, vivid picture of domestic and court life which will enrich any study of the culture of ancient Egypt.Illustrations by Franz Geritz, done in the style of ancient Egypt, help set the mood of Ankhsen­amon's story as the clock is turned back more than three thousand years. Color frontispiece and newly recolored map end pages.

    Hindus and Moslems, Brahmins and Untouchables, western missionaries and British colonial bureaucrats, the famous novelist brings to life the social conditions of the last decade of the British Raj.

    Fans and initiates will be highly entertained.

    First published in 1937, Genzaburō Yoshino’s How Do You Live? has long been acknowledged in Japan as a crossover classic for young readers. Academy Award–winning animator Hayao Miyazaki (Spirited Away, My Neighbor Totoro, Howl’s Moving Castle) has called it his favorite childhood book and announced plans to emerge from retirement to make it the basis of a final film. How Do You Live? is narrated in two voices. The first belongs to Copper, fifteen, who after the death of his father must confront inevitable and enormous change, including his own betrayal of his best friend. In between episodes of Copper’s emerging story, his uncle writes to him in a journal, sharing knowledge and offering advice on life’s big questions as Copper begins to encounter them. Over the course of the story, Copper, like his namesake Copernicus, looks to the stars, and uses his discoveries about the heavens, earth, and human nature to answer the question of how he will live. This first-ever English-language translation of a Japanese classic about finding one’s place in a world both infinitely large and unimaginably small is perfect for readers of philosophical fiction like The Alchemist and The Little Prince, as well as Miyazaki fans eager to understand one of his most important influences.

    Summer Moonshine involves Sir Buckstone Abbott trying to sell what is probably the ugliest home in England, as well as a complicated love quadrangle.

    The indifference and contempt of most of the people around him only reinforces his sense of destiny, for in Iceland poets are as likely to be scorned as they are to be revered. Over the ensuing years, Olaf comes to lead the paradigmatic poet's life of poverty, loneliness, ruinous love affairs, and sexual scandal. But he will never attain anything like greatness.As imagined by Nobel Prize winner Halldor Laxness in this magnificently humane novel, what might be cruel farce achieves pathos and genuine exaltation. For as Olaf's ambition drives him onward-and into the orbits of an unstable spiritualist, a shady entrepreneur, and several susceptible women-World Light demonstrates how the creative spirit can survive in even the most crushing of environments, and even the most unpromising human vessel.

    Set in Weimar Germany soon after Germany's catastrophic loss of World War I, the story follows a young gambler who loses all in Berlin, then flees the chaotic city, where worthless money and shortages are causing pandemonium. Once in the countryside, however, he finds a defeated German army that has camped there to foment insurrection. Somehow, amidst it all, he finds romance - it's The Year of Living Dangerously in a European setting. Fast-moving as a thriller, fascinating as the best historical fiction, and with lyrical prose that packs a powerful emotional punch, Wolf Among Wolves is the equal of Fallada's acclaimed Every Man Dies Alone as an immensely absorbing work of important literature.

    Lovecraft, part of the Cthulhu Mythos universe of horror fiction. It was written in August 1933, and first published in the January 1937 issue of Weird Tales.Daniel Upton, the story's narrator, begins by telling that he has killed his best friend, Edward Derby, and that he hopes his account will prove that he is not a murderer ...

    Over the next two years the magazine ran all 15 of the original stories that were eventually published in 1937 as The Education of Hyman Kaplan.

    They’re not the only survivors; with them are four babies. Immediately the sisters set out to make the island a home for themselves and the little ones. A classic tale of courage and dedication from a Newbery Medalist author.

    The father is a dustman and the mother a washerwoman, but because they are poor the children find even greater opportunities for adventure in their ordinary lives.

    It tells of an ordinary American family overtaken by the devastating epidemic of the Spanish influenza of 1918. The book begins on the day before the armistice in a small midwestern town, and the events are seen from the perspective, in turn, of eight-year-old Peter Morison--called Bunny; of his older brother, Robert; and of their father. They are witnesses to a domestic tragedy that is written with beauty and a quite magnificent tenderness. William Maxwell has been described by The Washington Post as "one of America's most distinguished and distinctive stylists." John Updike has said that "Maxwell's voice is one of the wisest in American fiction; it is, as well, one of the kindest." The Times Literary Supplement declares that "Maxwell offers us scrupulously executed, moving landscapes of America's twentieth century, and they do not fade." The Saturday Review said,"They Came Like Swallows is one of those rare tales in which child-hood is reflected in the simplicity and intensity of its own experience."

    Then she falls helplessly in love with architect Keith Morrell, who is investigating a series of mysterious happenings at his deserted family home--and who is engaged to another woman! Suddenly Daphne finds herself drawn into a world of money and social intrigue as her faith is tested to its limits.

    The first table of contents (at the very beginning of the ebook) lists the titles of all novels included in this volume. By clicking on one of those titles you will be redirected to the beginning of that work, where you'll find a new TOC that lists all the chapters and sub-chapters of that specific work.

    Full of memorable characters and masterfully composed narrative, these short stories constitute a wonderful addition to any personal library, and are not to be missed by discerning collectors of Runyon's work. The stories contained herein include: Beach of Promise, Romance in the Roaring Forties, Dream Street Rose, The Old Doll's House, Blood Pressure, The Bloodhounds of Broadway, Tobias the Terrible, The Snatching of Bookie Bob, The Lily of St. Pierre, Earthquake, and more. Alfred Damon Runyon (1880 1946) was an American newspaperman and author, best remembered for his short stories about the world of Broadway in New York City that resulted from the Prohibition era. This volume is being republished now in an affordable, modern edition complete with a specially commissioned new biography of the author."

    The Complete Memoirs of George Sherston includes "Sherston's Progress" and both "Memoirs,"

    He is so lazy that he always misses school and spends all his time in bed. He is so lazy that eventually his family forgets about him and moves away…without him. Alone and scared, Walter heads out into the world to search for his family. He travels through a dark forest and soon meets a turtle and some frogs. Walter decides to create a new home on Mouse Island. His froggy friends live nearby, and Walter tries to teach them things. With his own island—and friends who depend on him—Walter must learn to take care of himself. There is no time to be lazy! But will Walter ever see his family again? First published in 1937 and back in print for the first time in decades with Marjorie Flack’s own illustrations, this is a classic tale of adventure and friendship, and the importance of perseverance. An introduction from noted librarian Nancy Pearl is included.

    The Gift is the last of the novels Nabokov wrote in his native Russian and the crowning achievement of that period in his literary career.  It is also his ode to Russian literature, evoking the works of Pushkin, Gogol, and others in the course of its narrative:  the story of Fyodor Godunov-Cherdyntsev, an impoverished émigré poet living in Berlin, who dreams of the book he will someday write--a book very much like The Gift itself.

    So, when he is fired from the bank the same day it is robbed, the blame quickly falls to him. Unable to defend himself, Jason flees town. Joyce begs her wealthy friend Rowan to help prove Jason’s innocence, but now Rowan has also gone missing.

    Susan Gaylord is talented, loving, equipped with a strong moral sense, and adept at anything she puts her hand to, from housework to playing the piano to working with marble and clay. But the intensity of her artistic calling comes at a price, isolating her from other people—at times, even from her own family. When her husband dies and she remarries, she finds herself once again comparing the sacrifice of solitude to that of commitment. With a heroine who is naturalistic yet compellingly larger than life, This Proud Heart is incomparable in its sympathetic study of character. This ebook features an illustrated biography of Pearl S. Buck including rare images from the author’s estate.

    During his lifetime, his work found little critical regard, but word of his remarkable talents gradually won him an international readership. This volume brings together his complete fiction, including three short stories and his final surviving work, Sanatorium Under the Sign of the Hourglass. Illustrated with Schulz's original drawings, this edition beautifully showcases the distinctive surrealist vision of one of the twentieth century's most gifted and influential writers.

    Although Edith Wharton is best known for her novels The Age of Innocence and The House of Mirth, this extensive collection of her short fiction shows her to be a master of all its varieties. Wharton's stories ... owe their enduring power to portray the emotional consequences of life in a rarefied world."—The New York TimesThe Pelican --The Other Two --The Mission of Jane --The Reckoning --The Last Asset --The Letters --Autres Temps ... --The Long Run --After Holbein --Atrophy --Pomegranate Seed --Her Son --Charm Incorporated --All Souls' --The Lamp of Psyche --A Journey --The Line of Least Resistance --The Moving Finger --Expiation --Les Metteurs en Scene --Full Circle --The Daunt Diana --Afterward --The Bolted Door --The Temperate Zone --Diagnosis --The Day of the Funeral --Confession --

    Jenny, the heroine of Silver Snaffles, talks to Tattles the pony every day, and then, one day, he says: “Through the Dark Corner, and the password is Silver Snaffles.” This is the start of Jenny’s adventures with the ponies.

    With this two-volume set, The Library of America presents the finest of Wharton's achievement in short fiction: 67 stories drawn from the entire span of her writing life, including the novella-length works The Touchstone, Sanctuary, and Bunner Sisters, eight shorter pieces never collected by Wharton, and many stories long out-of-print.Her range of setting and subject matter is dazzling, and her mastery of style consistently sure. Here are all the aspects of Wharton's art: her satire, sometimes gentle, sometimes dark and despairing, of upper-class manners; her unblinking recognition of the power of social convention and the limits of passion; her merciless exposure of commercial motivations; her candid exploration of relations between the sexes.The stories range with cosmopolitan ease from her native New York to the salons and summer hotels of Newport, Paris, and the Italian lakes. The depth of her response to World War I is registered in such works as "The Marne." Of particular interest are the remarkable stories, which treat occult and supernatural themes rarely encountered in her novels, such as the classic ghost stories "The Eyes" and "Pomegranate Seed."

    In Last and First Men the protagonist is "mankind" in an ultimate definition — intelligence. Star Maker, in a sense its sequel, is concerned with the history of intelligence in the entire cosmos.

    Religious Novel, originally published by Little, Brown and Company.

    Harrington's washing.--The human element.--The alien corn.--The vessel of wrath.--The door of opportunity.--Neil MacAdam.

    Higginbotham's catastrophe --Wakefield --The great carbuncle --David Swan --The hollow of the three hills --Dr. Heidegger's experiment --Legends of the Province House --The ambitious guest --Peter Goldthwaite's treasure --The Shaker bridal --Endicott and the Red Cross --From Mosses from an old manse : The birthmark --Young Goodman Brown --Rappaccini's daughter --Mrs. Bullfrog --The Celestial railroad --The procession of life --Feathertop : a moralized legend --Egotism ; or, the bosom serpent --Drowne's wooden image --Roger Malvin's burial --The artist of the beautiful --From the snow image : The snow image : a childish miracle --The Great Stone Face --Ethan Brand --The Canterbury pilgrims --The devil in manuscript --My kinsman, Major Molineux

    Three classic Greek tragedies are translated and critically introduced byEdith Hamilton.

    

    

    The book has that indescribable quality, charm." (B-O-T Editorial Review Board)

    It is a masterly historical novel, rich in language, character, and plot--a panoramic story of passion, tragedy, and resilience.

    Picket-Stake Hendry has spent thirty years roaming the Calico Mountains in search of gold. Finally, in a lonely little canyon far from civilization, he strikes the mother lode, and as soon as he gets home to register the claim, he’ll be a millionaire. But before he can make it to Cosmos, a bandit attacks him.   Cosmos sheriff Johnny Hendry prefers playing cards to fighting crime, and he’s kept the peace in this rough-and-tumble western town by letting bandits do whatever they want. But when he hears that Pick, his adoptive father, has been murdered, he vows bloody vengeance. For the sake of the old prospector, he will clean up Cosmos—or die where he stands.   This incredible story of frontier justice from author Luke Short, winner of a special Western Heritage Trustees Award and the Western Writers of America’s Levi Strauss Golden Saddleman Award, is a classic of the genre.

    Questions of love, marriage and relationships occupy much of Jainendra’s works, taking them into the realm of the internal and the intimate. In The Resignation, Jainendra tells the story of Mrinal, a young woman whose uncompromising idealism results in her family and society rejecting her completely. Almost seventy-five years after it was written, the story of Mrinal’s struggle against stultifying social norms and her fierce individualism remain startlingly relevant.

    Keeler's magnificent imagination, and his wonderfully wide knowledge of many subjects are allowed full play in this, his latest book. In addition to giving us a fast-moving, confounding mystery, the author gives us glimpses into the fields of philosophy, burglars' tools and methods, satirical magazine writing, railroad engineering, the law, the fourth dimension, plumbing, surgery, psychiatry -- and crystal gazing!"'The Chameleon' affords the reader continual excitement and a typical Keeler ending."

    In these works Wharton turns from portraying the monied and the mannered to probing inscrutable psyches and souls. The New England of these tales-which range from light comedy to horror-becomes a metaphor for fierce poverty, cultural barrenness, and an oppressive Puritan heritage that both fascinated and repelled Wharton. Thus the frigid, engulfing winter of Starkfield buries Ethan Frome in a living death. That sense of moral and emotional confinement also appears in "The Angel at the Grave," as a young woman senses she has been "walled alive into a tomb hung with the effigies of dead ideas." In "The Lamp of Psyche," a visit to Boston relatives sheds new light on a woman's marriage; "Xingu" gently satirizes the snobbery of small-town "huntresses of erudition"; "Bewitched" and "All Souls'" explore the theme of witchcraft. Barbara A. White's insightful introduction suggests that in these stories Wharton "seems to have projected onto New England aspects of herself that she most feared: repression, coldness, inarticulateness, mental starvation, and even lack of high culture."

    

    

    Follows this family from the 16th to the 20th century.

    Garlanded with extravagant praise on its release, it was reprinted several times but fell into neglect and has now been out of print for almost 50 years. Although it takes its inspiration from the life, writings, and correspondence of the great Irish satirist Jonathan Swift, I Live Under a Black Sun is set during and after World War I. The novel follows Jonathan Hare, writer and misogynist, a character very much based on Swift, through his tragic relationships with two women who are likewise based on real people in Swift's life. Luxurious, angular, poetic, and sprinkled with allusions to Swift's most famous works and correspondence, I Live Under a Black Sun is a work that will surely entrance a whole new generation of readers. Highlighting a forgotten classic that has been out of print for nearly half a century, this is a fictionalized biography of Jonathan Swift and his tragic relationships with "Stella" and "Vanessa," updated to a time during and after World War I. Luxurious, angular, and poetic, it is a story unlike any other.

    

    Kessinger Publishing is the place to find hundreds of thousands of rare and hard-to-find books with something of interest for everyone!

    The Bulldog Drummond stories follow Captain Hugh "Bulldog" Drummond, a wealthy former WWI officer of the fictional His Majesty's Royal Loamshire Regiment, who, after the First World War, spends his new-found leisure time as a private detective.Here the complete collection, including:BULLDOG DRUMMONDTHE BLACK GANGTHE THIRD ROUNDTHE FINAL COUNTTHE FEMALE OF THE SPECIESTEMPLE TOWERTHE RETURN OF BULLDOG DRUMMONDKNOCK-OUTBULLDOG DRUMMOND AT BAYTHE CHALLENGEThis edition is annotated and is with an Active Table of Contents and has With a detailed bibliography of Herman Cyril McNeile, aka Sapper.

    Daniel Drew, fifteen years old, came to the "Fox and Stars" at Deptford to earn his living as a stable boy. Before his days at the inn were over, Dan found himself a part of the life of the town and also deep in adventure, for a band of highwaymen known as the "Stingers" preyed upon all the eastern country back of the coast, and their final raids took place in Deptford itself.Mr. Meader knows the New Hampshire country, its history, its people, and its horses. And, as his hosts of readers know, he is a master of the art of telling a stirring and convincing story."More than just an adventure story, for Mr. Meader's prose is a pleasure in itself. He makes one feel the keen dusk of a New England Fall, the bitter catastrophe of a blizzard, the beauty of a good horse...all woven into a narrative wihch has the flavor of real living in those lusty days." -The New York Times Book Review

    Ironically, however, a secret act of kindness proves her undoing, causing her manipulations to lead to drastic and untoward results. Ivy Compton-Burnett is a master of the well-chosen phrase and telling juxtaposition. In this, one of the lightest and most comic of her novels, she presents a large cast of vivacious and quick-witted characters who, under the cloak of polite conversation, set about each other with verbal swords.--from the back cover of the Allison & Busby edition, 1984

    A delicacy and a grave beauty which make their own quiet appeal.' Times'Reid has written one of the finest studies of the mental, sexual, spiritual life of the adolescent without ever mentioning the words.' Glasgow Herald

    

    

    

    And only Robert P. Tristram Coffin could have woven this story of the majestic Kennebec and the people who lived beside it, from the Popham Plantation in the early 1600s to the 1930s. His intimate knowledge of the Maine landscape, his love for ships and the men who sailed them, and his warm feeling for the people who farmed the Kennebec's banks enrich every page.

    It is a weird adventure of the spirit on which he leads us. For, mistake not, despite the apparently realistic description of the endless reaches of the desert, of the topless towers of the snow-capped mountains, of the huddling villages in which men rot away in poverty and disease, this Central Asia of Prokosch's is not actual place upon the face of the earth. Like Xanadu, like Arcadia, like Atlantis or Aea or Poictesme, it is a phantom manufactured by a restless mind. ...Whatever the meaning of this book, and there will be much debate on that score, its wild lyrinative splendor and its profound emotional content mark it as a memorable novel.

    Run by the eponymous Miss Penwell, the establishment is a quiet haven, away from the hustle and bustle of city life. But no longer. For when Miss Penwell's childhood friend Vera Carter returns from a trip to London, she and her son are tailed by two ruthless blackmailers. But these are only the first of a number of suspicious new arrivals at the hotel. Tensions run high until, one fatal evening, three deaths occur. But were they suicides? Or was there foul play? As death stalks the cliffs and country lanes of Colpen, Inspector Hook must discover the truth and ensure that justice is served. But before the case is through, he will discover that truth is nothing without evidence - and justice is a very slippery concept indeed...

    Today it enjoys the status of a classic novel that is widely read, relished by those who remember their own "old bunch."Meyer Levin's reputation rests on this novel and on the best-selling Compulsion, his recreation of a Chicago murder trial. Before his death in 1981, he was an associate editor of Esquire and wrote for such magazines as The New Yorker and The Saturday Evening Post.

    Peaceful, that is, until the body of Douglas Bonar is discovered with its head bashed in. Not that “Squire” Bonar would be greatly missed, for Bonar was an outsider - a rude, overbearing, self-made man from up North who rubbed most people the wrong way and furthermore had had the audacity to try trample on that most cherished of country freedoms, the right of passage on an ancient footpath. Bonar’s murder, and the subsequent investigation, would roil the placid surface of the town of Chesworth, for Chesworth, as most such towns, has its share of secrets which people wish to remain buried. There is one person in town, however - the retired schoolmistress Miss Perks - who seems to know all these secrets. Does she know who killed Douglas Bonar?