The Crime Club

Mark Treasure #1 An old aristocrat has second thoughts about selling the family mansion to a reactionary group and calls in his friend, London financier Mark Treasure, to stop the sale. From there we encounter murder, treachery, romance, and a valuable Shakespearean manuscript.

One summer evening in 1942, Flossie Rubrick, goes to her husband's wool shed to rehearse a patriotic speech - and disappears. Three weeks later she turns up at an auction, packed inside one of her own bales of wool and very, very dead

What can a woman do? Susan Melville's trust fund is dwindling, her teaching job is terminated, her lover is abroad for the season, and her apartment is going co-op. So naturally Miss Melville decides to shoot herself at a posh society party. Unfortunately, she misses -- and kills the guest of honor instead. When she slips out the door, a stranger follows. He thanks her for doing the job for him, and Miss Melville's new career is born. Of course she has scruples. Miss Melville won't kill just anybody, but she's about to face a job that even she will find a challenge of the most dangerous order, an assignment she just might regret -- for good

During the American Revolution, a woman fights to save her family Several years have passed since American colonists rose up against the tyranny of King George III, yet the war has no end in sight. As the struggle drags on, colonial commander George Washington’s army supports itself by seizing land from those loyal to the Crown. In South Carolina, rebel leaders have their eyes on the Mallam estate, whose owner has fled to Jamaica, leaving his daughter Amity to manage the plantation. As a last-ditch effort to save her family’s land, she marries Simon Mallam, a cousin and a rebel, then travels to Jamaica to learn if her father is alive or dead. There she finds no less turmoil than she left behind. Her father’s sugar plantation, Mallam Penn, is in danger. If the Mallam family is to have any future in the new world, one woman must stave off the armies of two nations.

The year is 1936, and the clouds of war are gathering over Europe. But life in a small English village is peaceful and charming, especially to Sarah Causeley, the new governess at Hallam House. Then someone wages a hate campaign against the Hallams and a killer leaves more than croquet mallets on the lawn.

The death of Swiss art student raises questions about whether she was sexually assaulted before she was killed, so Florentine Marshall Guarnaccia scours the ancient city for answers.

E-book exclusive extras:1) Christie biographer Charles Osborne's essay on The Mirror Crack'd from Side to Side;2) "The Marples": the complete guide to all the cases of crime literature's foremost female detective.The quaint village of St Mary Mead has been glamourized by the presence of screen queen Marina Gregg, who has taken up residence in preparation for her comeback. But when a local fan is poisoned, Marina finds herself starring in a real-life mystery—supported with scene-stealing aplomb by Jane Marple, who suspects that the lethal cocktail was intended for someone else. But who? If it was meant for Marina, then why? And before the final fade-out, who else from St Mary Mead’s cast of seemingly innocent characters is going to be eliminated?

The request to involve himself in the case of Marie-Therese Laniel prompts numerous recollections for Kenworthy, and these flashbacks reveal Marie-Therese’s life as a series of sudden crises.

Stacey Orpington doesn't mind escorting the Orpington jewels from a Massachusetts museum the London exhibition where they'll be displayed. She's rather less keen on the hat box they're in, especially as a number of other plane passengers are carrying the same hat box with the same key. Then her hat box goes missing and the thief turns up dead, leading Stacey and her newly acquired companions on a hunt to find the right hat box before more people die.

When Lacy Wales receives a frantic letter from a long-lost friend, Rose Murphy Mendez, she hesitates only briefly before showing it to her nice new lawyer boss, Hiram Bascom, and asking his advice. Neither of them can decide if the letter is really a desperate plea for help or the crazed ravings of a deranged woman. Against Bascom's better judgment, Lacy leaves the Manhattan town house where she lives with her widowed stepmother, Inez, and drives to the village in upstate New York where Rose is hiding out. At her distraught friend's request, Lacy serves her a soothing drink of whiskey, and before her horrified eyes, Rose drops dead. Wandering about the house in confusion, Lacy thinks she sees something moving on the grounds behind it, but she is not sure there is actually anything there. Suffering shock upon shock, she finds a snapshot in Rose's bedroom with an astonishing and compromising inscription by Lacy's own fiancé, Richard Blake, who is away on one of his frequent hush-hush assignments for the top-secret Washington government agency where he works. Later, Carlos Mendez, Rose's ex-husband and the wealthy owner of an emerald mine, turns out, incredibly, to be related to Inez. These are the opening moves in a story that becomes more and more complex. Is Rose's death an accident or murder? If it is murder, will the police officially accuse Lacy of the crime? Will her fiancé come forth to explain? In what way is Mendez still involved with his ex-wife? How will Lacy cope with her growing and disturbing attraction to Hi Bascom? Why does the subject of emeralds keep coming up?

Virginia and Felix Freer series #6

When Lord Furnival, a left-of-centre dilettante, tries to stage a musical version of the Oberammergau Passion Play in the High Peak of Derbyshire, he does not foresee what strife and tension he is setting in motion.

Horseplay turns deadly... Young Ricky Alleyn has come to the picturesque fishing village of Deep Cove to write. Through the sleepy little town offers few diversions, Ricky manages to find the most distracting one of all: murder. For in a muddy ditch, he sees a dead equestrienne whose last leap was anything but an accident. And when Ricky himself disappears, the case becomes a horse of a different color for his father, Inspector Roderick Alleyn.

Virginia and Felix Freer series #4 Strangers in life, they were companions in death... She was a kind, hard-working woman, devoted to doing her best for others. Yet her good deeds had not been repaid: someone had brought her life to a violent, horrifying end. He appeared to be a quiet, gentle person who would not have harmed a fly. Yet when his body was discovered lying in a pool of blood, it was apparent that his last moments were anything but peaceful. The two murders, coming so close together, had rather upset Virginia Freer. She had known both victims, if only casually. She did not know why, but suspicions about the killings gradually began to haunt her--and slowly revealed the links in a bizarre, twisted chain of events that had united the two people in death. But not before murder became a trilogy...

A girl is charged with murder but goes mute from the time she is told of the death. Sloan and Crosby have to investigate the crime as the original investigating officer has suffered serious injuries in an accident. The victim was employed by the girl's father's business which was completing a local tunnel project at the time and is now working on building a new town in an African country.

> The reading of the will of legendary diva Antonia Byrne turns out to hold some unpleasant surprises for her nearest and dearest: one way or another, none of them get quite what they are expecting. >And when a quirk of Fate maroons the mourners in a tiny snowbound mountain village for Christmas, it is inevitable that feelings will be far from festive. >But what no one could predict is that one of their number has lethally sinister intentions and when the final curtain falls, it turns out to be Antonia herself who has had the last laugh ...

From the blog In Reference To Murder: " Marshal Guarnaccia finds a jeweler dying in an apparent suicide from slashed hands and a barbiturate overdose, uttering his last words, "It wasn't her." The only witnesses to the crime are a blind man and a notoriously untruthful 91-year-old woman. Although the case seems to be a dead end, the Marshal refuses to let it go, fighting his way through bureaucratic red tape, hordes of tourists, the soggy July heat, the secret police known as Digos and the dead Dutchman's troubled past in order to reach the truth. The dead man is known as a "Dutchman" even though his father was Dutch and his mother Italian. Marshal, lower down the police hierarchy than a Lieutenant or Magistrate, is nonetheless a dedicated, sensitive and caring officer, not particularly articulate but with a subtle humor who patiently helps the young and inexperienced officer in charge of the case. The city and culture that is Florence becomes another character, focusing on the importance of family, place and tradition."

A member of the Senior Citizens' Recycling Center has turned up dead in a part of Boston where he would never have been found alive. Why did he go there? How did he get there? Why was he killed? And what are the mysterious purple soda cans all about? And Tigger? What is she doing hanging around? Sarah and Max Bittersohn want to discover the answers to these questions before Dolph and Mary Kelling's charitable work is sabotaged and the SCRC given a bad name.

You called the police. That was the first thing to do. You did it at once... Yet Matthew Tierney found himself sitting in a chair, staring at the strangled body of his wife; he was paralyzed by shock, unable to reach for the telephone on a nearby table. Perhaps it was this delay in calling the police that made him a prime suspect (an airtight alibi notwithstanding) or perhaps it was the substantial inheritance that his wife had recently come into--and that was now his. Tierney, however, has a few ideas of his own about who might have wrapped a cord neatly around his wife's throat. His investigation takes him to the lovely seaside resort where she had often vacationed, and where it seems that murder, too, is now on a holiday. For Tierney's prime suspect--his wife's lover--is found dead...and evidence again points a finger directly at Matthew Tierney...

Inspector C.D. Sloan of the Callehsire C.I.D. makes his first appearance here as he looks into the murder of a nun at the Convent of St. Anselm. First published in 1966, The Religious Body was Aird's first book and immediately established herself as one of the leading exponents of the post-WWII English traditional mystery.

Andrew Basnett series #5 Retired botany professor Andrew Basnett returns to Knotlington, where he'd taught at the university years before, and finds that although it has been two years since the death of artist Carl Judd, his murder is still a subject of hot dispute. Giles Farmoor, Andrew's friend and former student, insists that Andrew can ferret out the truth from the tangle of people and events surrounding the murder and its sordid aftermath. Stephen Sharland has been convicted of the murder, but his wife and Judd's widow maintain his innocence. And now more people are being murdered, the rumor of blackmail has surfaced, and the ugliness of two years past has been exhumed. What event could have precipitated a renewal of violence? Andrew has little hope of discovering the answers, but he will do his best to help his friends unravel the mystery.

Antony Maitland #11 There hadn't been a murder in Chedcombe in over a hundred years until someone poisoned old Mrs. Randall. Her servants revealed that at Christmas the old lady argued with her grandson Hugo. Her servants testified that on Boxing Day she cut Hugo out of her will and made her penniless godchild, Fran Gifford, her sole heir. The local constabulary noted that on New Year's Eve someone made Mrs. Randall a hot toddy spiked with deadly foxglove. Fran Gifford was in custody the next afternoon. Just two days before trial, Anthony Maitland took the case for the defense. But as soon as Maitland started hunting about for new evidence, a shot in the dark made this case the most difficult test yet of his courtroom skills . . . and his ability to stay alive. - from fictionDb.com

Lill Hodsden was not loved in the village of Todmarsh. Vulgar and flashy herself, she had developed the nasty knack of zeroing in on everyone else's weaknesses and ridiculing them. She was just asking for it. And her own two sons were eager to oblige. In fact, they had it all planned for Saturday night. But by Friday, Lill was dead. Who had done her in? Who had beat them to the punch? Had someone committed the perfect crime in an angry little town where everyone had a perfect alibi—and a perfect motive for murder?

Voyage to Nowhere... The trip aboard the Felice began as a pleasure cruise. Attractive young Sue Gates was certain that the yacht's owner Monty Montgomery intended to announce their engagement. Then terror seized the ship. Monty almost lost his life when he was pushed overboard, the yacht's steward was mysteriously killed, and the ship's engines stopped dead. The passenger list included both lovers and enemies: icily beautiful Celia Hadley...naval officer Stan Brooke...bedridden millionaire Sam Wiley...and Monty's sultry half-sister Lalice. But their intrigues soon gave way to a nightmare of death—for now Sue, Monty, and the others were at the mercy of a murderer as cold as the shrouded sea they sailed...

Andrew Basnett series #6 Andrew Basnett, retired Professor of Botany, does not care for Christmas. Not for him the holly and the ivy, the turkey and trimmings. He prefers to spend it with his like-minded friends the Cahills in the peace of their country home. But peace and goodwill are not to be: the day before Christmas Eve their neighbor, Sir Lucas Dearden, Queen's Counsel (retired), is blown up by a bomb. Many had it in for him--one suspicious character had even inquired for him at the Cahills'. But Sir Lucas had intended spending Christmas with his married daughter in London and had changed his plans at the last minute only because she had been involved in an accident. No one knew he was returning to Berkshire. Had the bomb been meant for someone else? Andrew finds himself caught up in the complex relationships of the Dearden family. When another one of them is murdered, it poses a number of questions: whose account of their relationships and their Christmas activities is to be believed? And why had Sir Lucas so carefully destroyed one page of his memoirs? By the time Andrew returns thankfully to London, he has the answers to all his questions--and rather wishes he hadn't.

A typical British country house murder mystery. A family gathering which ends in murder. The seventy year old head of the family comes back from the U.S. with a much younger bride, this sets his family off into fighting over the new will.

An Inspector George Felse Mystery

Asked to speak at a conference on the topic of riot control, Inspector Kenworthy of Scotland Yard grows utterly perplexed when an obscure government agency is linked to a crime involving a gang of football hooligans.

From the Collins Crime Club blurb: "One day in spring, 1941, Kay Bryant walked along the bombed London street in which she had rented a bed-sitting-room before the war. She had come to see what the Blitz had done to Little Carberry Street, but now that she had seen its emptiness and stillness there was a chance she might be able to forget some of the horror associated with No. 10 and at last blot out its grim memories or murder. It began when a gun was found hidden in the room of a new tenant – a gun which proved to be the weapon used against the room’s former occupant, found shot on Hampstead Heath. The police, led by Inspector Cory, were convinced that the murderer would be found among the denizens of No. 10, yet to Kay this seemed impossible, for all of them were her friends. But as she talked with them about the murder, each put forward the name of a different suspect, and each made out an undeniably strong case. One of them had judged correctly, and a further death took place."

Perce Spender, a working-class Londoner, is unexpectedly transformed into the twelfth Earl of Ellesmere when a distant relative dies. But he would rather be warming a bar stool in his local pub, and he's taken up residence at Chetton Hall only until arrangements can be made to sell it. Getting rid of the family estate displeases at least one of Perce's greedy offspring, however, and on the morning after a family party the new Earl is found dead. The Chief Constable's plethora of suspects is not the social-register list he was anticipating--one of Perce's sons is now in jail, one ought to be, one daughter is a bit too curious about the will, and daughter-in-law Dixie, now the new Countess of Ellesmere, has been keeping company with a small-time crook.

Detective Nero Wolfe and his assistant Archie Goodwin solve a series of crimes at a large corporation called Naylor-Kerr, which employs not only a large number of attractive, gossipy women, but also an apparent murderer. Archie takes an undercover job at Naylor-Kerr but quickly his cover is blown and his romantic life entangled.