Mary Roberts Rinehart
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The first novel by Mary Roberts Rinehart, America's queen of crime This is the story of how a middle-aged spinster lost her mind, deserted her domestic gods in the city, took a furnished house for the summer out of town, and found herself involved in one of those mysterious crimes that keep our newspapers and detective agencies happy and prosperous. So says Rachel Innes, the spinster in question and one of the most remarkable heroines in American...
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Washington, D.C.-based attorney Lawrence Blakely has been asked by his partner to deliver some important documents to a client in Pittsburgh. In the course of his return trip, the occupant of the train berth opposite his - the lower ten, which Blakely was supposed to have taken - is savagely murdered. Was Blakely the intended victim, and did the crime have something to do with his briefcase full of vital evidence? When the murder weapon turns up underneath...
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"In my criminal work, everything that wears skirts is a lady, until the law proves her otherwise," declares Jack Knox, attorney at law and narrator of this sprightly mystery. Jack's cautiously chivalrous observation is prompted by the beauty and distress of his newest client, Margery Flemming. It seems that Margery's father, a crooked politician, has been missing for over a week. Unwilling to involve the police in her father's corrupt activities,...
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Philadelphia socialite Sara Lee leaves behind her fiancé and her comfortable life to open a kitchen in England for soldiers fighting the Great War. When she meets the mysterious Belgian spy Henri, she finds her loyalties torn-as well as her heart. Rinehart's 1918 novel draws on her experiences as a war correspondent.
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Mary Roberts Rinehart (August 12, 1876 – September 22, 1958) was an American writer, often called the American Agatha Christie,[1] although her first mystery novel was published 14 years before Christie's first novel in 1922. Rinehart is considered the source of the phrase "The butler did it" from her novel The Door (1930), although the novel does not use the exact phrase. Rinehart is also considered to have invented the "Had-I-But-Known" school...
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Mrs. Pittman's well-to-do Pittsburgh family didn't approve of her marriage, so the young bride moved away and lost touch with her relatives. Years later, she has returned to her native city as a widow and now runs a boarding house, one of the only jobs available to respectable women in the early twentieth century. Rooms at Mrs. Pittman's place are cheap because of the annual floods from the Allegheny River, which inundate the building's basement and...
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Looking for adventure, an erstwhile medical student joins the crew of a yacht and finds himself adrift in a sea of murder Medical school left Leslie with a diploma, a new dress suit, and an incipient case of typhoid fever. While convalescing, he hatches a plan to postpone embarking on a career as a surgeon by launching instead on an epic voyage of adventure, mystery, and romance on the high seas. When Leslie signs up as a steward aboard the private...
8) The Bat
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A supervillain stalks the countryside, and it will take a spinster to bring him to heel For months, the city has lived in fear of the Bat. A master criminal hindered by neither scruple nor fear, he has stolen over one million dollars and left at least six men dead. The police are helpless, the newspapers know nothing-even the key figures of the city's underworld have no clue as to the identity of the Bat. He is a living embodiment of death itself,...
9) The Door
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In a quiet old mansion, an aging spinster contemplates questions of murder Elizabeth Bell runs a quiet household, with no family and no more than the usual number of servants. She passes her time thinking about crime and working on her biography of a relative. When a young cousin comes to stay, life in the house becomes uncharacteristically lively. First, cousin Judy burns a hole in Miss Bell's desk. Next, they spy a burglar on the staircase-a shadowy...
10) The Yellow Room
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In a nearly empty house, a young woman finds herself alone with a killer As far as Carol Spencer is concerned, the war has spoiled everything. She and Don had been engaged for years and were on the verge of marriage when he was shot down in the South Pacific, leaving Carol on the verge of spinsterhood at twenty-four. She wants to take some kind of job in the war effort, but her invalid mother demands that Carol accompany her to the family's summer...
11) The Album
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On a quiet cul-de-sac, an elderly invalid is slaughtered with an axe Crescent Place was once a peaceful country green surrounded by five tasteful suburban houses and populated by polite, responsible citizens. But as the city enveloped it, the residents built a gate to keep the world out. With each passing year, the subdivision grew stranger and stranger-until it began to look like a time capsule of the 1890s. In these houses are a husband and wife...
12) The Wall
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An unwelcome visitor arrives at a seaside home to find that death awaits her there The house called Sunset has been Marcia's summer home for her entire life. Both of her parents died there, and she and her brother spent their youth exploring its rambling hallways and seaside grounds. They love the old house, but Marcia's sister-in-law has never taken to it. Juliette loathes the sea, and soon comes to loathe her husband, as well. After they divorce,...
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In a crumbling mansion, two sisters hide from the world, afraid for their lives The Birches was one of the grand mansions of the 1920s, with a ballroom, tennis courts, and, of course, a swimming pool. But after the crash of '29, when Lois and Judith's father killed himself to escape his debts, the family turned the summer home into a fulltime retreat from the world. Decades later, Judith is the queen of New York society, a fast-living beauty whose...
14) Bab: A Sub-Deb
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Bab, seventeen, tells her story in the form of school papers and diary entries. Her adventures and comments, resulting from her inability to be a debutante because of her young age, are laugh out loud funny. Rinehart was known for humor as well as mystery during her lifetime, and this 1916 romp showcases her skill in both areas.
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Illness, jealousy, and murder poison the atmosphere in an ultrawealthy community Pat comes from the village of Beverly, a charming country suburb whose inhabitants hate everything about the patch of gaudy mansions that have sprung up around it. The gaudiest of all belongs to Maud Wainwright, a bullish old widow whose famous dining room table has room for an even hundred. Orphaned and near destitute, Pat goes to work for Mrs. Wainwright, finding her...
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When the owner of a popular health spa dies, a mysterious stranger is enlisted to impersonate the heir and fulfill the odd contents of the will. Then the real heir turns up... This 1912 mystery-romance-farce has all the ingredients that make "the queen of the thriller" a fan favorite to this day.
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In 1914, journalist and mystery writer Mary Roberts Rinehart traveled to Europe alone to cover World War I for the Saturday Evening Post. This collection of her writing encompasses her observations on her travels-from being received by King Albert in Belgium and recording his first authorized statement on the war, to meeting Winston Churchill, to traveling to the English and French front lines as the first correspondent permitted there.
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Three tales from a mystery master whose "literary distinction lies in the combination of love, humor and murder that she wove into her tales" (The New York Times). The Episode of the Wandering Knife: What's a mother to do? When her daughter-in-law is slashed to death, the first thing is to hide the hunting knife that's sure to implicate her innocent son. But it doesn't stay hidden for long. It's just turned up in a second victim, only to vanish once...
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Small-town physician Dick Livingston would like nothing better than to marry church-choir singer Elizabeth Wheeler. He doesn't dare, though, till he clears up the mystery of his own past. Ten years ago, Dick lost his memory. Could he really be a killer without knowing it? A 1922 classic of psychological mystery and suspense.
20) Tish Marches On
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Tish takes it upon herself to attend a coronation and save a king A naive observer might not immediately see a connection between the newspaper accounts of a man found naked on a church steeple, a constable attacked from the sky, and a grocer assaulted by "balloon bandits." But these stories are tied together by a single word: Tish, the nutty maid who has never let old age get in the way of a good time. When her nephew announces a trip to England...