Black Coffee


Charles Osborne - 1998
    But darkness brings death and Hercule Poirot has to untangle family strife, love and suspicious visitors tangle in order to clarify the murderer and prevent disaster.

The Burden


Mary Westmacott - 1956
    But Laura's emotions towards her sister changed dramatically one night, when she vowed to protect her with all her strength and love. While young Shirley longs for freedom and romance, Laura has to learn that loving can never be a one-sided affair, and the burden of her love for her sister has a dramatic effect on both their lives. For too long she had stayed quietly in the background of her stunning sister. Now there was a man that knew that Laura could love as passionately as her beutiful sister - if only she were given the chance. A story of consequences when love turns to obsession….

The Monogram Murders


Sophie Hannah - 2014
     She is terrified – but begs Poirot not to find and punish her killer. Once she is dead, she insists, justice will have been done.Later that night, Poirot learns that three guests at a fashionable London Hotel have been murdered, and a cufflink has been placed in each one’s mouth. Could there be a connection with the frightened woman? While Poirot struggles to put together the bizarre pieces of the puzzle, the murderer prepares another hotel bedroom for a fourth victim...

The Floating Admiral


The Detection ClubAnthony Berkeley - 1931
    But when an old sailor lands a rowing boat containing a fresh corpse with a stab wound to the chest, the Inspector's investigation immediately comes up against several obstacles. The vicar, whose boat the body was found in, is clearly withholding information, and the victim's niece has disappeared. There is clearly more to this case than meets the eye - even the identity of the victim is called into doubt. Inspector Rudge begins to wonder just how many people have contributed to this extraordinary crime and whether he will ever unravel it. . .In 1931 Agatha Christie, Dorothy L. Sayers, and 10 other crime writers from the newly formed Detection Club collaborated in publishing a unique crime novel. In a literary game of consequences, each author would write one chapter, leaving G.K. Chesterton to write a typically paradoxical prologue and Anthony Berkeley to tie up all the loose ends. In addition, all of the authors provided their own solutions in sealed envelopes, all of which appeared at the end of the book, with Agatha Christie's ingenious conclusion acknowledged at the time to be 'enough to make the book worth buying on its own'. The authors of this novel are G.K. Chesterton, Canon Victor Whitechurch, G.D.H. Cole and Margaret Cole, Henry Wade, Agatha Christie, John Rhode, Milward Kennedy, Dorothy L. Sayers, Ronald Knox, Freeman Wills Crofts, Edgar Jepson, Clemence Dane and Anthony Berkeley.©1931, 2011 The Detection Club (P)2017 HarperCollins Publishers

The New Annotated Sherlock Holmes: The Novels


Arthur Conan Doyle - 1966
    Klinger's brilliant new annotations of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's 56 short stories in 2004 created a Holmes sensation. Here, in this eagerly awaited third volume, Klinger reassembles Doyle's four seminal novels in their original order, with over 1,000 new notes, 350 illustrations and period photographs, and tantalizing new Sherlockian theories. Inside, readers will find: A Study in Scarlet (1887)—a tale of murder and revenge that tells of Holmes and Dr. Watson's first meeting; The Sign of Four (1889)—a cinematic tale of lost treasure; The Hound of the Baskervilles (1901)—hailed as the greatest mystery novel of all time; and The Valley of Fear (1914)—a fresh murder scene that leads Holmes to solve a long-forgotten mystery. Whether as a stand-alone volume or as a companion to the boxed short stories, this classic work illuminates the timeless genius of Conan Doyle for an entirely new generation. Slipcased hardcover; two-color text; 300 illustrations.

The Moving Target


Ross Macdonald - 1949
    Now one of Sampson's friends may have arranged his kidnapping.Lew Archer follows the clues from the canyon sanctuaries of the mega-rich to jazz joints where you get beaten up between sets.Welcome to the first Lew Archer, private investigator - a roving conscience who walks the treacherous frontier between criminal guilt and human sin. You are sure to find that Ross Macdonald's "The Moving Target" blends sex, greed, and family hatred into an explosively readable crime novel.

The Four Just Men


Edgar Wallace - 1905
    A device in the members' smokeroom and a sudden magnesium flash that could easily have been nitro-glycerine leave Scotland Yard baffled. Even Fleet Street cannot identify the illusive Manfred, Gonsalez, Pioccart and Thery - FOUR JUST MEN dedicated to punishing by death those whom conventional justice can not touch.

Hag's Nook


John Dickson Carr - 1932
    Gideon Fell is entertaining young American college graduate Tad Rampole at Yew Cottage, Fell's charming home in the English countryside. Within sight of his study window is the ruin of Chatterham Prison, perched high on a precipice known as Hag's Nook. The prison's land belongs to the Starberth family—whose eldest sons must each spend an hour in the prison's eerie "Governor's Room" to inherit the family fortune.Rampole is especially interested in the family, having met the young and beautiful Dorothy Starberth on the train from London. He readily agrees when Fell and the local reverend, Thomas Saunders, ask him to accompany them as they watch and wait for badly frightened Martin Starberth to complete 'his hour' in the prison. Martin has every reason to be afraid; more than one Starberth heir has met an untimely end. Will his turn come tonight?

Brat Farrar


Josephine Tey - 1949
    The stranger, Brat Farrar, has been carefully coached on Patrick's mannerism's, appearance, and every significant detail of Patrick's early life, up to his thirteenth year when he disappeared and was thought to have drowned himself. It seems as if Brat is going to pull off this most incredible deception until old secrets emerge that jeopardize the imposter's plan and his life.

Malice Aforethought


Francis Iles - 1931
    The tennis party exists for other reasons - and charmingly mannered infidelity is now the most popular pastime in the small but exclusive Devonshire hamlet of Wyvern's Cross. Which is why, in his own garden, the host, Dr Edmund Bickleigh, is desperately fighting to conceal the two things on his mind: a mounting passion for Gwynfryd Rattery - and the certain conviction that he is going to kill his wife ...

The Friends of Eddie Coyle


George V. Higgins - 1970
    But a cop named Foley is on to Eddie and he's leaning on him to finger Scalisi, a gang leader with a lot to hide. And then there's Dillon-a full-time bartender and part-time contract killer--pretending to be Eddie's friend. Wheeling, dealing, chasing, and stealing--that's Eddie, and he's got lots of friends.

The Mystery of the Yellow Room


Gaston Leroux - 1907
    When her locked door is finally broken down by her father and a servant, they find the woman on the floor, badly hurt and bleeding. No one else is in the room. There is no other exit except through a barred window. How did the attacker escape?First published in 1907, this intriguing and baffling tale is a classic of early 20th-century detective fiction. At the heart of the novel is a perplexing mystery: How could a crime take place in a locked room which shows no sign of being entered? Nearly a century after its initial publication, Leroux's landmark tale of foul play, deception, and unbridled ambition remains a blueprint for the detective novel genre. Written by the immortal author of The Phantom of the Opera, this atmospheric thriller is still a favorite of whodunit fans everywhere."The finest locked room tale ever written." — John Dickson Carr, author of The Hollow Man.

The Unfinished Clue


Georgette Heyer - 1933
    His arrogance and abrasive manner had alienated his wife, her sister, his house guests, his wayward son, even a desperate friend. Of course, his attentions to one attractive young guest in plain view of her husband simply multiplied the possible suspects in his murder.

Trent's Last Case


E.C. Bentley - 1913
    Feared but not loved, Manderson has no one to mourn him when the gardener at his British country estate finds him facedown in the dirt, a bullet buried in his brain. There are bruises on his wrist and blood on his clothes, but no clue that will lead the police to the murderer. It will take an amateur to—inadvertently—show them the way. Cheerful, charming, and always eager for a mystery, portrait artist and gentleman sleuth Philip Trent leaps into the Manderson affair with all the passion of the autodidact. Simply by reading the newspapers, he discovers overlooked details of the crime. Not all of his reasoning is sound, and his romantic interests are suspect, to say the least, but Trent’s dedication to the art of detection soon uncovers what no one expected him to find: the truth. Delightfully irreverent yet ingeniously plotted, Trent’s Last Case is widely regarded as a masterwork of the mystery genre.

The Flight of the Falcon


Daphne du Maurier - 1965
    The woman, he gradually comes to realise, was his family's beloved servant many years ago, in his native town of Ruffano. He returns to his birthplace, and once there, finds it is haunted by the phantom of his brother, Aldo, shot down in flames in '43.Over five hundred years before, the sinister Duke Claudio, known as The Falcon, lived his twisted, brutal life, preying on the people of Ruffano. But now it is the twentieth century, and the town seems to have forgotten its violent history. But have things really changed? The parallels between the past and present become ever more evident.