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….

    Now an Edgar Award Nominee!This is the first book about the Detection Club, the world’s most famous and most mysterious social network of crime writers. Drawing on years of in-depth research, it reveals the astonishing story of how members such as Agatha Christie and Dorothy L. Sayers reinvented detective fiction.Detective stories from the so-called “Golden Age” between the wars are often dismissed as cosily conventional. Nothing could be further from the truth: some explore forensic pathology and shocking serial murders, others delve into police brutality and miscarriages of justice; occasionally the innocent are hanged, or murderers get away scot-free. Their authors faced up to the Slump and the rise of Hitler during years of economic misery and political upheaval, and wrote books agonising over guilt and innocence, good and evil, and explored whether killing a fellow human being was ever justified. Though the stories included no graphic sex scenes, sexual passions of all kinds seethed just beneath the surface.Attracting feminists, gay and lesbian writers, Socialists and Marxist sympathisers, the Detection Club authors were young, ambitious and at the cutting edge of popular culture – some had sex lives as bizarre as their mystery plots. Fascinated by real life crimes, they cracked unsolved cases and threw down challenges to Scotland Yard, using their fiction to take revenge on people who hurt them, to conduct covert relationships, and even as an outlet for homicidal fantasy. Their books anticipated not only CSI, Jack Reacher and Gone Girl, but also Lord of the Flies. The Club occupies a unique place in Britain’s cultural history, and its influence on storytelling in fiction, film and television throughout the world continues to this day.The Golden Age of Murder rewrites the story of crime fiction with unique authority, transforming our understanding of detective stories and the brilliant but tormented men and women who wrote them.

    Was this a suicide, or something more sinister? Why was the dead man planning to flee the country? And how is this connected to the shady business dealings of the garage?This classic mystery is set amongst the stunning scenery of a small village in the Lake District. It is now republished for the first time since the 1930s with an introduction by the award-winning crime writer Martin Edwards.

     Featuring two classic Campion mysteries and two special holiday tales, this short story collection from Queen of Crime, Margery Allingham, is the perfect Christmas treat for any Golden Age Crime enthusiast. Filled with traditional British charm, snow covered crime scenes, and just a touch of Christmas magic, these festive stories are perfect for the season. This collection includes ‘On Christmas Day in the Morning’ (1963), ‘Happy Christmas’ (1962), ‘The Case of the Man with the Sack’ (1937), and ‘Word in Season: A Story for Christmas’ (1965). Reviews for Margery Allingham: 'Margery Allingham stands out like a shining light. And she has another quality, not usually associated with crime stories, elegance' – Agatha Christie 'My very favourite of the four Queens of Crime is Allingham' – J. K. Rowling 'Always of the elect, Margery Allingham now towers above them' – The Observer

    Morris.The chance discovery of a young man’s body floating in a Sussex stream provides the first clue to the mysterious disappearance of Sir James Lyttleton, who sent his daughter a curt wire announcing his departure for America before completely vanishing. But this is no ordinary missing persons inquiry – when Sir James’s body turns up inside another man’s coffin, journalist James Dawson and Chief Inspector Candlish of Scotland Yard find themselves on the trail of a particularly ruthless and ingenious murderer.This Detective Story Club classic is introduced by author and editor Douglas A. Anderson, whose authoritative books on Kenneth Morris led to the discovery of R.A.V. Morris’s true identity.

    "It began with Jimmy Wilson and a conspiracy was helped on by a foot-square piece of yellow paper and a Japanese butler and it enmeshed and mixed up generally ten respectable members of society and a policeman."

    He shall be murdered, even if I have to do it myself!The Hardstaffe family are not the nicest people in the world. In fact, he - schoolteacher, lothario and bully, she - chronic malcontent - and their horsey unmarried adult daughter seem to be prime candidates for murder. A writer planning these deaths, on paper at least, and a young girl, chased by old Hardstaffe, are the only outsiders in a deliciously neat, but nasty, case.Blue Murder was the last of Harriet Rutland’s mystery novels, first published in 1942. This new edition, the first in over 70 years, features an introduction by crime fiction historian Curtis Evans.‘(A) newcomer of exceptional promise’ Howard Haycroft

    You may find it for free on the web. Purchase of the Kindle edition includes wireless delivery.

     When Delia Cathcart and Major Willoughby disappear from their quiet English village one Saturday morning in July 1937, it looks like a simple case of a frustrated spinster running off for a bit of fun with a straying husband. But as the hours turn into days, Inspector Guy Northeast begins to suspect that she may have been the victim of foul play. On the surface, Delia appeared to be a quite ordinary middle-aged Englishwoman content to spend her evenings with her sisters and mother and her days with her beloved horses. But Delia led a secret life — and Guy turns up more than one person who would like to see Delia dead. Except Delia wasn’t the only person with a secret… Never before published in the United States, They Rang Up the Police appeared in England in 1939 and is the first of two books to feature young Inspector Guy Northeast, who, as critics Jacques Barzun and Wendell Hertig Taylor point out, “marks a departure from the norm of the thirties.” About the author… Joanna Cannan was born in Oxford in 1898. Prior to writing detective fiction, her books primarily explored the aftermath of World War I and life in England during the Great Depression. In 1932, she settled in rural Oxfordshire with her husband and four children; all four of her children went on to become writers themselves. She began to write fiction for young readers, and published nine books for children between 1936 and 1957. During the same period she wrote two novels featuring Inspector Guy Northeast, They Rang Up the Police (1939) and Death at The Dog (1941); following a nine-year hiatus from detective fiction, she returned to the genre in 1950 with the introduction of Inspector Ronald Price in Murder Included .

    Damar Greefe is strolling home. It's been a tough day, assisting the police. During this stroll, he feels someone or something watching him -- but when he turns to see who it is, he faces only emptiness. Then he sees a cat staring at him, eyes as green as jade. But when he goes to investigate, the cat has disappears!Then the body of Sir Marcus Coverly is found in a crate headed out to sea. The ensuing investigation leads Dr. Greefe deeper into Egypt's mysteries. And into -- the Green Eyes of Bast!Sax Rohmer was a prolific author of early science fiction and fantasy. He was perhaps best known for creating the super-villian, Dr. Fu Manchu -- a character who went on the become the subject of many films and, in fact, much plundering. (Think about it for a moment: how many evil Chinese Mandarin masterminds have you heard tell of? Remember Ian Fleming's Dr. No? Remember Lo-Pan, from Big Trouble in Little China? Be careful. They're everywhere.)

    And he delivers, too, a chilling invitation to the four men responsible for his conviction: ‘You four, I summon to meet me at the time appointed, at the Assize of the Dying.’The meaning of the sinister words becomes clear almost immediately with two unexpected deaths. And a young couple, convinced that an innocent man has been wrongly condemned, determine to unmask the real murderer—before he strikes again...Murder is committed, too, in ‘Aunt Helen’, a story of blind obsession and psychological suspense that starts with what looks suspiciously like the perfect crime...Two vintage tales of murder most foul from the bestselling pen of Ellis Peters.

    Aylmore, M.P., in the witness-box. And Spargo knew and felt that it was that appearance for which the crowded court was waiting. Thanks to his own vivid and realistic specials in the Watchman, everybody there had already become well and thoroughly acquainted with the mass of evidence represented by the nine witnesses who had been in the box before Mr. Aylmore entered it. They were familiar, too, with the facts which Mr. Aylmore had permitted Spargo to print after the interview at the club, which Ronald Breton arranged. Why, then, the extraordinary interest which the Member of Parliament's appearance aroused?

    

    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 death in what appears to be an impossible crime. But a mysterious man in a fez has been spotted in the fog asking for highly unlikely directions...The resourceful John Christmas takes on the case, unofficially, leading to an ingenious solution no one could have expected, least of all Inspector Hembrow of Scotland Yard.The Studio Crime is the first of Ianthe Jerrold's classic whodunit novels, originally published in 1929. Its impact led to her membership of the elite Detection Club, and its influence can be felt on later works by John Dickson Carr, Ngaio Marsh and Dorothy L. Sayers among others.This edition, the first in over eighty years, features a new introduction by crime fiction historian Curtis Evans.

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