Ethel Lina White

Every morning, Miss Loveapple blesses her good fortune. She has property, a devoted maid and is young and beautiful. An independent woman, she has a mind never to marry. But a darker mind - one Clarence Club's - has a plan that will leave her accused of murder.About to go on holiday to Switzerland, Miss Loveapple has her fortune told at the village fete, and her good luck is predicted to turn sour. At the station, she stops to buy some white heather, giving her mere seconds to board her train.Though her holiday is not quite what she wished for, she meets all kinds of people, who come between her and many an opportunity for disaster. And when she narrowly misses being killed by jewel thieves, her delayed return helps her make a very important decision.

Helen Capel is hired as a live-in lady-help to the Warren family in the countryside. She enjoys the eccentric household and her duties, but her peaceful and simple life is soon disturbed by a series of mysterious murders in the isolated community. As Helen’s employer, Professor Sebastian Warren, battens down the hatches and locks all the doors of their remote country house, the eight residents begin to feel safe. But somewhere out there lurks a murderer of young girls. As the murders crawl closer to home, Helen starts to wonder if there really is safety in numbers—and what happens when those numbers start to dwindle?

THE house had been barred, locked and shuttered for over eleven years. Lying awake at night in the adjoining house, Elizabeth Featherstonhaugh used to think she heard strange noises in the old empty house—sounds of tappings, creakings, rumblings, footsteps where there were no feet, drawers pulled open where there were no hands, furniture thudding from spot to spot. The two weeks that remained before the house was to be reopened were weeks shot through with terror and menace. For Elizabeth's very presence in the household of Captain Pewter was a threat to the plans of a murderer who had already killed two women and would not hesitate to kill again! This tense, baffling novel is the mystery upon which Paramount's smash movie hit, "The Unseen," was based.

Contains: [Adventure of the Abbey Grange]( / Sir Arthur Conan Doyle A marriage tragedy / Wilkie Collins Lord Chizelrigg's missing fortune / Robert Barr The Fordwych Castle mystery / Emmuska, Baroness Orczy The blue scarab / R. Austin Freeman The doom of the Darnaways / G. K. Chesterton The shadow on the glass / Agatha Christie The queen's square / Dorothy L. Sayers Death on the air / Ngaio Marsh The same to us / Margery Allingham The hunt ball / Freeman Wills Crofts The incautious burglar / John Dickson Carr The long shot / Nicholas Blake. Jeeves and the stolen Venus / P. G. Wodehouse Death in the sun / Michael Innes An unlocked window / Ethel Lina White The wood-for-the-trees / Philip MacDonald The man on the roof / Christianna Brand The death of Amy Robsart / Cyril Hare Fen Hall / Ruth Rendell A very desirable residence / P. D. James The Worcester enigma / James Miles.

The setting for "They See in Darkness" is Oldtown, a picturesque, historic place, home to retired colonial masters, friendly locals, and a wealthy, reclusive sisterhood known locally as the ‘Black Nuns’, a group that is said to have extraordinary healing powers. A series of murders, however, plunge the inhabitants into fear and superstition...

No. 11 India Crescent is officially a dead address. Its absentee owner, General Tygarth, and his wife are reported to be living abroad, but it is so long since they have been seen in the town that few remember them. Only one or two people recall its tragic story of domestic tyranny, ill-starred love and early death; only Mr Spree the lawyer knows that the old General has ordered the house to be closed for a certain number of years. Now, in a fortnight's time, the house is to be reopened. But to Elizabeth Fetherstonehaugh, the young governess at No. 10, the night noises coming from the house next door are fast becoming an obsession ...

Reporter Sonia Thompson discovers threads linking prominent members of Riverpool society with the chamber of horrors in a neglected waxworks museum. Married Lilith Nile is using it as a place to meet Sir Julian. Schoolteacher Miss Monroe is obsessed with the moth-eaten figure of Mary of England. And why does Mr Cuttle, the amorous Alderman, take such a keen interest in the museum? When Sir Julian, having spent the night in the waxworks for a bet, is found dead, and an epidemic of purse-snatching sweeps Riverpool, Sonia realises that she is on the verge of uncovering a sinister plot. Forced to bring matters to a head, Sonia resolves to spend a night alone in the waxworks ...

Best known as the basis for Hitchcock's classic early film, The Lady Vanishes, Ethel White's The Wheel Spins is a gripping and accomplished work in its own right. The plot is deceptively simple, and the premise-a woman meets a mysterious stranger during a long railway journey-is classic. It's easy to see why Hitchcock found this novel so compelling and so well-suited to his particular brand of filmmaking.The protagonist of the story is a young woman named Iris Carr, who suffers a blackout just before she is to board her train for a railway journey across Europe to London. It is an ominous beginning to what will be a very disturbing trip. On board, the still-woozy Iris befriends Mrs. Froy, a fellow Englishwoman who is a little eccentric, but who seems mostly agreeable and benign. Mrs. Froy is the "Vanishing Lady" of Hitchcock's title, and she mysteriously disappears while Iris is napping. Her inexplicable departure throws Iris into a mind-bending mystery that will make her alternately question her sanity and the designs of the people around her. For when she asks about the vanished Mrs. Froy, everyone on board the train adamantly denies ever having seen the old woman. Although Iris is tempted to believe that Mrs. Froy must have been merely a vivid hallucination, perhaps an aftereffect of sunstroke, a few stray, inexplicable details suggest that something much more sinister may be going on...Gripping as the plot is, the novel's true strength is the masterful way in which White subtly builds tension and creates a brooding, ominous atmosphere that hangs over even the most ordinary scenes. She has, therefore, been compared to Edgar Allan Poe, although White also has much in common with Wilkie Collins, Patricia Highsmith and Mary Higgins Clark. Unlike traditional mystery stories or whodunits, which generally open with a crime, White's novels trade on our anticipation of a future transgression and the eventual explanation of unusual events. As a result, The Wheel Spins is charged with an electric atmosphere of expectancy that keeps the reader captivated from beginning to end.