"Even in the early 1930s, Crescent Place is a neighborhood out of the past. The five Victorian mansions and the remote patch of pasture placed between them have the air of the 1890s, even as the city--once miles away from this idyllic retreat--encroaches and surrounds the enclave. But while these rarified residences may appear calm on the outside, their isolated interiors contain dark secrets, prolonged feuds, and generations of high-toned trouble....

"Murder leads to scandal at a wealthy woman's mansion in this mystery from one of the bestselling authors of the 20th century. In an elaborate house known as the Cloisters, Maud Wainwright rules supreme. The queen of society in the small town of Beverly, she has a table long enough to seat one hundred, and she keeps an iron grip on the guest list. Her right-hand woman is Pat Abbott, a local girl who is beautiful, innocent, and kind. Pat has no idea...

Sailor, a small-time crook, arrives in Sante Fe, New Mexico, determined to blackmail Senator McIntyre.

"A strange encounter with a little girl named Claudia and a dead toad sparks elderly detective fiction fan Rachel Murdock's obsessive curiosity, and she winds up renting the house next door just to see how things play out. But soon after she and her cat Samantha move in, Rachel realizes they've landed right in the middle of a deadly love triangle that's created animosity among the three families who now surround her. When Rachel finds Claudia's great-grandmother...

"A wealthy dilettante is on the trail of a killer with a penchant for theatrics in this cozy mystery by the author of Murder on "B" Deck. A strange sight greets Chicago haberdashery clerk Rufus Ker as he prepares to begin his workday by unlocking the door to Bluefield, Inc. A sign is attached to the glass. It reads: Dead man inside! I am dead. This store will not open to-day. Once inside, Rufus is relieved to discover the shop is still in one piece...

Passengers making the transatlantic trip from New York to Cherbourg, France, are looking forward to weeks of relaxation, but after an Italian baroness is found murdered in her luxury cabin the atmosphere is anything but relaxed. When the main suspect goes overboard, there are more questions than answers. Fortunately, a former intelligence officer, Walter Ghost, and a mystery novelist, Dunstan Mollock, are on board, and they set out to solve the crime....

Walking home wearily from an evening spent poring over the books of the Parchly Heights Methodist Ladies' Aid searching for a fifty-eight-cent error, Miss Jennifer Murdock becomes witness to a terrible man, stumbling drunk, arrives home and just as he fumbles with his keys, gunfire erupts and kills him on the spot.

"A successful writer and a B-movie director seem like the perfect match in the Hollywood hills, and with him working to produce her novel for an upcoming film, the pair's recent marriage isn't the only way that they're connected. But when the husband is found murdered on the wife's birthday, using a method of poisoning that was described in one of her books, Victoria suddenly becomes the main suspect as her new happy life comes crashing down around...

"In these classic mystery tales, literature is a matter of life or death. Of crime fiction's many sub-genres, none is so reflexive and so intriguing as the "bibliomystery": stories that involve crimes set, somehow, in the world of books. In Vincent Starrett's "A Volume of Poe," a bookseller is murdered; in Ellery Queen's "The Adventure of the Three R's," the detective tracks the disappearance of a local Missouri author; and a killer stalks the stacks...

They say that Lord Mantling's mansion is haunted--at least, one room of it is. Known as the Red Widow's Chamber, the now-sealed quarters once housed the wife of a guillotine operator in the French Revolution and, since her passing, have been host to a century of unsolved horrors including the death of a man in 1802, the death of a child in 1895, and a number of mysterious mortalities in the years in between. Now, in 1935, eight men and women join...