Madeleine Van Norman is found stabbed to death on the night before her wedding. The heiress is found in the library of her sprawling country mansion stabbed with her own Venetian letter-opener. Though a suicide note is found, the list of potential suspects grows. Who would benefit from the rich woman’s death? There is her groom who was having an affair. There are family members who might not want her to marry to save their inheritance. There is the groom’s secret lover. Or could it have been the secretary?

Albert Campion, an eccentric but intelligent and resourceful man, becomes involved in a mysterious crime in Black Dudley, an isolated country estate owned by the wealthy and secretive Dudley family. A grand gathering is taking place at the house, but not all will leave.

"To inherit a great fortune. To inherit a great misfortune." These words, from Nathaniel Hawthorne's notebook, neatly encapsulate the theme of The House of the Seven Gables - that of a family whose fortunes are poisoned by its past misdeeds. The sins of the Pyncheon father are visited upon his children over a period of several generations, until such time as one of his descendants unites with a member of the family he has wronged. Love conquers hate, and new blood washes away the original crime.

Crescent Place was once a peaceful country green surrounded by five tasteful suburban houses and populated by polite, responsible citizens. But as the city enveloped it, the residents built a gate to keep the world out. With each passing year, the subdivision grew stranger and stranger - until it began to look like a time capsule of the 1890s.

Wealthy Sir Hubert Handesley's original and lively weekend house parties are deservedly famous. To amuse his guests, he has devised a new form of the fashionable Murder Game, in which a guest is secretly selected to commit a 'murder' in the dark, and everyone assembles to solve the crime. But when the lights go up this time, there is a real corpse....

It had been a typical New Year's Eve party. But as midnight approaches, Mr. Satterthwaite - a keen observer of human nature - senses that the real drama of the evening is yet to unfold. And so it proves when a mysterious stranger knocks on the door. Who is this Mr. Quin? Mr. Satterthwaite's new friend is an enigma. He seems to appear and disappear almost like a trick of the light. In fact, the only consistent thing about him is that his presence is always an omen - sometimes good, but sometimes deadly....

Agatha Christie's first two Poirot novels, narrated with a general-American accent. The Mysterious Affair at Styles: Someone has poisoned wealthy Emily Inglethorp. But who? And how? Everyone suspects Emily's young husband, Alfred...and Alfred seems to be actually trying to get arrested and charged.... The Murder on the Links: Poirot comes to France in response to a desperate plea for help to find his client already murdered - stabbed in the back and lying in an open grave. Brusque, arrogant Inspector Giraud thinks he knows who did it.

It is 1864 when Lizzie Martin takes up the post of companion to a wealthy widow who is also a slum landlord. Lizzie is intrigued to learn that her predecessor disappeared, supposedly having run off with an unknown man. But when the girl's body is found in the rubble of one of the recently demolished slums around the prestigious new railway station at St Pancras, Lizzie begins to wonder exactly what has been going on.

The tangled destinies of an unusual family are played out against the backdrop of the English countryside where two pretty sisters and a beautiful widow take centre stage in a drama of dangerous flirtation and backstairs gossip. Esther Musgrave, an attractive widow, has her hands full trying to keep her energetic family together – and on speaking terms! Her three daughters, prickly Delia, sensible Meg and carefree Rose, mean everything to her, especially since the death of her husband, Charles.

Though best known for The Scarlet Pimpernel, the Hungarian novelist Baroness Orczy was a prolific and versatile writer who could turn her pen to other genres. So, in the social and literary context of the huge success of Sherlock Holmes, she developed a memorable, but nameless character with remarkable powers of detection. The first stories appeared in The Royal Magazine in 1901, and other series followed. The first collection appeared in book form in 1905.

It's a rainy, uneventful evening in the Oddfellows' Arms until a man bursts into the pub, clearly unstable, and ranting about a body in Fennings' Mill. The police investigate and stumble upon a body-the face smeared with theatrical make-up and a false mustache pasted neatly over the lip. Once the national news descends, Inspector Faddiman calls in Inspector Littlejohn to help him uncover the dark, hidden secrets in this quiet, provincial town. Soon it becomes clear that a lot of people can't, and won't tell the truth.

An impossible grand theft in a posh Brighton hotel. The locked-room murder of an Italian nobleman. The suspicious suicide of a man worth more dead than alive. What are the motives behind these puzzling crimes? In Agatha Christie’s first collection of short stories, eleven mysteries in all, detective Hercule Poirot makes his investigations. Leave it to the unflappable Belgian sleuth and his partner, Captain Arthur Hastings, to put the pieces together.

John Griffith "Jack" London was an American author, journalist, and social activist. He was a pioneer in the then-burgeoning world of commercial magazine fiction and was one of the first fiction writers to obtain worldwide celebrity and a large fortune from his fiction alone. This collection includes "Love of Life", "A Day's Lodging", "The White Man's Way", "The Story of Keesh", "The Unexpected", "Brown Wolf", "The Sun-Dog Trail", and "Negore, the Coward".

Two-time Emmy Award nominee ( The Good Wife) and Audie Award winner for best narrator Alan Cumming here narrates Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's first-rate Yuletide whodunit "The Adventure of the Blue Carbuncle". Cumming adds his personal flair to the mystery classic and turns in an outstanding performance of the great detective Sherlock Holmes and his pal, Watson.

Summertime—as the temperature rises, so does the potential for evil. From Cornwall to the French Riviera, whether against a background of Delphic temples or English country houses, Agatha Christie’s most famous characters solve complicated puzzles as the stakes heat up. Pull up a deckchair and enjoy plot twists and red herrings galore from the bestselling fiction writer of all time.