A Red badge mystery

Fiftieth in the long-running mystery series with Dr Launcelot Priestley. >In the Norfolk Broads one of identical twin brothers drowns in a boating trip tragedy. From the second the survivor plans to step quietly into the shoes (and wealth) of his unfortunate sibling, events take a decidedly dangerous turn. >It emerges that far from being the respectable citizen everyone thought, his brother was involved in some extremely dubious enterprises. The survivor attempts to hide himself away at a rest home where his brother had stayed the previous year - but this proves unsuccessful in shielding him from danger. >The suspicions of the doctor who runs the home give Superintendent Waghorn the first clue he needs to begin to unravel the case – as well as providing the `two graphs' of the title – and with Priestley's help he manages to track the criminal.

Murder comes to a quiet town... Even if her neighbors had believed Molly Pulliam's incoherent story of something hiding behind the lilac bush, it would have made no real difference in the end. Eventually she would have opened the door to her deadly visitor. Her murder rocked the quiet valley community. Unlike an occasional stabbing in a bar in downtown Albuquerque, this tragedy came frighteningly close to home. The Sheriff's officers, however, had no reason to question the very small boy who was visiting his cousin Eve Quinn, and it would have helped him if they had. Eve, a slender fair-haired girl, was too preoccupied with getting over a disastrous engagement to wonder what the mysterious treasure was that Ambrose wanted her to get for him in the toolshed, or why the usually indeflectible little boy wouldn't go into the shed himself. And so the killer, driven by his twisted hate, was free to knock on another door, to greet another victim. This is the beginning of an absorbing novel of secrets new as well as almost forgotten, and of murder hiding behind a familiar face.

Abby, an Abyssian housecat, wanders outside after one of her owners leaves a door ajar, but, after being chased up a tree, she can't get down.

Ghosts of the past. When lovely actress Sue Wales moved into the big mansion in Connecticut, every lengthening shadow, every ripple of water, every whisper of wind in the giant elms, reminded her of her sister, Paula. Here Paula had come as a bride, wed to a man she passionately loved, though many others feared and hated him. And here Paula's corpse was found, victim of an evil that no one dared name. Now Sue was following in her sister's footsteps, footsteps that led through a labyrinth of terror to the yawning abyss of the grave.

Forty-fifth in the long-running mystery series with Dr Launcelot Priestley. > The author, whose mysterious death is investigated in this book, was a certain Mr. Nigel Ebbfleet, who after years of writing without success produced a “best seller” and then astonished his publisher by announcing that he had quite decided never to write another line and was retiring to a country cottage to live a quiet life. His subsequent murder might lead some readers to suspect the publisher; but Jimmy Waghorn and Dr. Priestley, proof against such hasty assumptions, reached a very curious conclusion.

Contains nine short mystery stories by Agatha Christie, including the title work about a young couple who open a new guest house, not realizing one of their first customers is a murderer.