The very first collection of superb short stories featuring Hercule Poirot and Captain Hastings? First there was the mystery of the film star and the diamond? then came the ?suicide? that was murder? the mystery of the absurdly cheap flat? a suspicious death in a locked gun-room? a million dollar bond robbery? the curse of a pharaoh?s tomb? a jewel robbery by the sea? the abduction of a Prime Minister? the disappearance of a banker? a phone call...

Harold March, the rising reviewer and social critic, was walking vigorously across a great tableland of moors and commons, the horizon of which was fringed with the far-off woods of the famous estate of Torwood Park. He was a good-looking young man in tweeds, with very pale curly hair and pale clear eyes. Walking in wind and sun in the very landscape of liberty, he was still young enough to remember his politics and not merely try to forget them....

"Ablinding snowstorm - and a homicidal maniac - traps a small party of friends in an isolated estate. Out of this deceptively simple setup, Agatha Christie fashioned one of her most ingenious puzzlers, which in turn would provide the basis for The Mousetrap, the longest-running play in history ..."--

A superbly crafted collection of thirteen tightly plotted tales that treats readers to murder, mystery, and mayhem in the world of horseracing. With his remarkable blend of unrelenting suspense, finely tuned narrative, and lean, stylish prose, New York Times bestselling author Dick Francis proves that he is as much a master of the short story as he is of the novel in this thrilling collection.

Roger Ackroyd knew too much. He knew that the woman he loved had poisoned her brutal first husband. He suspected also that someone had been blackmailing her. Then, tragically, came the news that she had taken her own life with an apparent drug overdose. However the evening post brought Roger one last fatal scrap of information, but before he could finish reading the letter, he was stabbed to death. Luckily one of Roger?s friends and the newest resident...

Agrand treasure for fans of the grande dame of mystery, The Harlequin Tea Set and Other Stories brings together nine rare and brilliant Christie tales of murder and detection that span nearly half a century of her storytelling genius. In "The Mystery of the Spanish Chest," Hercule Poirot unravels the psychological conundrums that motivate a killer. . . . In "The Actress," a great star's shady past becomes the plaything of a blackmailer. . . . In "The...

A teenage murder witness is drowned in a tub of apples... At a Hallowe'en party, Joyce?a hostile thirteen-year-old?boasts that she once witnessed a murder. When no-one believes her, she storms off home. But within hours her body is found, still in the house, drowned in an apple-bobbing tub. That night, Hercule Poirot is called in to find the 'evil presence'. But first he must establish whether he is looking for a murderer or a double-murderer...

The RETURN OF SHERLOCK HOLMES relates several of Holmes' adventures where he confronts many an odious character ... The eponymous blackmail artist in THE ADVENTURE OF CHARLES AUGUSTUS MILVERTON, is requested to call at 221B Baker Street, where we find that Holmes has been hired by Lady Eva Blackwell to retrieve some compromising letters ... And in THE ADVENTURE OF THE GOLDEN PINCE-NEZ, Inspector Stanley Hopkins visits Holmes and tells him of the murder...

The murder of Colonel Protheroe -- shot through the head -- is a shock to everyone in St Mary Mead, though hardly an unpleasant one. Now even the vicar, who had declared that killing the detested Protheroe would be 'doing the world at large a favour, ' is a suspect -- the Colonel has been dispatched in the clergyman's study, no less. But the picturesque English village of St Mary Mead is overpopulated with suspects. There is of course the faithless...