The Charlie Chan series #1 The novel, which takes place in 1920s Hawaiʻi, spends time acquainting the reader with the look and feel of the islands of that era from the standpoint of both white and non-white...
Biggers had always been interested in mystery fiction, but his interest in Hawaii clearly stems from a 1919 vacation in Honolulu. While there, he read a newspaper article on a Chinese detective named Chang Apana....
Baldpate Inn has a mystery and seven keys. The novelist has one. The other six fall into the hands of six apparent lunatics: 1. a hermit who flees from barbers and women has a key, 2. a peroxide blonde who "just...
Allan, Lord Harrowby, son and heir of James Nelson Harrowby, came to Lloyds of London with a most unusual request for insurance. He knew that Lloyds took out policies on unusual risks. And what he wanted was...
Lord Peter Wimsey investigates the sudden appearance of a naked body in the bath of an architect at the same time a noted financier goes missing under strange circumstances. As the case progresses it becomes...
Created by Baroness Orczy, author of the famous Scarlet Pimpernel series, The Old Man In the Corner was one of the earliest armchair detectives, popping up with so many others in the wake of the huge popularity...
Orlando: A Biography is an influential novel by Virginia Woolf, first published on 11 October 1928. A semi-biographical novel based in part on the life of Woolf's lover Vita Sackville-West, it is generally considered...
The Sorrows of Satan is an 1895 faustian novel by Marie Corelli. It is widely regarded as one of the world's first bestsellers, partly due to an upheaval in the system British libraries used to purchase their...
A man mysteriously murdered at night, the figures 2x4 x 1x2 scrawled on his shirt front, a broken shoe-polish label beside him. Cleek solved it. Can you?
In 1922, F. Scott Fitzgerald announced his decision to write "something new--something extraordinary and beautiful and simple + intricately patterned." That extraordinary, beautiful, intricately patterned, and...
The Red House, stately mansion home of Mark Ablett, is filled with very proper guests when Mark's most improper brother returns from Australia. When the maid hears an argument in the study it isn't long before...
Hiring themselves out as “young adventurers willing to do anything” is a smart move for Tommy and Tuppence. All Tuppence has to do is take an all-expenses-paid trip to Paris and pose as someone named Jane...
A year or so before the beginning of World War I, a young woman named Lisa la Giuffria is seduced by a white magician, Cyril Grey, and persuaded into helping him in a magical battle with a black magician and...
Kangaroo is an account of a visit to New South Wales by an English writer named Richard Lovat Somers, and his German wife Harriet, in the early 1920s. This appears to be semi-autobiographical, based on a three-month...
A historical adventure set during the Hundred Years' War. The story follows a young man as he leaves the shelter of an abbey in England and becomes involved with Edward, the Black Prince's campaign in Spain....
Vast gold robberies--a murder of which a nobleman stands accused, with jealousy for the motive--these apparently unrelated mysteries give scope for Cleek's most ingenious solutions.
An ex-cracksman turned Scotland Yard detective, Cleek's slim and faultlessly dressed form is topped by an india-rubber-like face, of which he has remarkable control. With the power to distort and transform his...
The Mutineer: A Romance of Pitcairn Island by Louis Becke and Walter Jeffery: The tale of the mutiny of His Majesty's armed ship Bounty, which led to the founding of the Pitcairn community, is well known. All...
In her first published mystery, Agatha Christie introduces readers to the heroic detective, Hercule Poirot. This is a classic murder mystery set in the outskirts of Essex. The victim is the wealthy mistress...
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