Teaching Crime Fiction


Book Description

More than perhaps any other genre, crime fiction invites debate over the role of popular fiction in English studies. This book offers lively original essays on teaching crime fiction written by experienced British and international scholar teachers, providing vital insight into this diverse genre through a series of compelling subjects. Taking its starting-point in pedagogical reflections and classroom experiences, the book explores methods for teaching students to develop their own critical perspectives as crime fiction critics, the impact of feminism, postcolonialism, and ecocriticism on crime fiction, crime fiction and film, the crime short story, postgraduate perspectives, and more.




First Class Murder


Book Description

A murdered heiress, a missing necklace, and a train full of shifty, unusual, and suspicious characters leaves Daisy and Hazel with a new mystery to solve in this third novel of the Wells & Wong Mystery series. Hazel Wong and Daisy Wells are taking a vacation across Europe on world-famous passenger train, the Orient Express—and it’s clear that each of their fellow first-class travelers has something to hide. Even more intriguing: There’s rumor of a spy in their midst. Then, during dinner, a bloodcurdling scream comes from inside one of the cabins. When the door is broken down, a passenger is found murdered—her stunning ruby necklace gone. But the killer has vanished, as if into thin air. The Wells & Wong Detective Society is ready to crack the case—but this time, they’ve got competition.




Death at Greenway


Book Description

"Irresistible... a Golden Age homage, an elegantly constructed mystery that on every page reinforces the message that everyone counts." –New York Times Book Review AGATHA AWARD WINNER! Recommended by New York Times Book Review • Wall Street Journal • Parade • Country Living • Chicago Tribune • South Florida Sun-Sentinel • The Free-Lance Star • St. Louis Post-Dispatch • CrimeReads • Nerd Daily • Red Carpet Crash • and many more! From the award-winning author of The Day I Died and The Lucky One, a captivating suspense novel about nurses during World War II who come to Agatha Christie’s holiday estate to care for evacuated children, but when a body is discovered nearby, the idyllic setting becomes host to a deadly mystery. Bridey Kelly has come to Greenway House—the beloved holiday home of Agatha Christie—in disgrace. A terrible mistake at St. Prisca’s Hospital in London has led to her dismissal as a nurse trainee, and her only chance for redemption is a position in the countryside caring for children evacuated to safety from the Blitz. Greenway is a beautiful home full of riddles: wondrous curios not to be touched, restrictions on rooms not to be entered, and a generous library, filled with books about murder. The biggest mystery might be the other nurse, Gigi, who is like no one Bridey has ever met. Chasing ten young children through the winding paths of the estate grounds might have soothed Bridey’s anxieties and grief—if Greenway were not situated so near the English Channel and the rising aggressions of the war. When a body washes ashore near the estate, Bridey is horrified to realize this is not a victim of war, but of a brutal killing. As the local villagers look among themselves, Bridey and Gigi discover they each harbor dangerous secrets about what has led them to Greenway. With a mystery writer’s home as their unsettling backdrop, the young women must unravel the truth before their safe haven becomes a place of death . . .




Exploring Genre - Crime Fiction


Book Description

Each title in this series of teacher resource books, intended for use with students in Years 9-12, starts with a detailed definition of the genre, followed by an examination of a wide range of texts.




How To Write Crime Fiction


Book Description

This book provides a comprehensive overview of all the different kinds of crime fiction, with examples from successful contemporary writers in each of the different genres, and clear explanations and exercises to help the beginning writer hone their craft, and discover the kind of crime fiction, the plots, the themes, the language, that work best for them.




Teaching Mysteries 101


Book Description

TEACHING MYSTERIES 101 It is the fall of 1970, and Andrea Jackson is beginning her career as a high school English teacher in a small, northern Illinois town. Her challenges begin during the first class of the first day, when her Mystery Stories students come in expecting to learn to be detectives rather than study English. Andrea shares the ups and downs of first-year teaching with her fellow rookie English teachers, Chrissie and Bud. All of them are unsure how to deal with their stern department chairman, Susan, who advises and evaluates them. A few weeks into the school year, one of Andrea’s students falls victim to a crime committed at the high school. To her dismay, the list of suspects includes another of her students and more than one staff member. Andrea’s efforts to navigate first-year teaching, along with her growing curiosity about the crime, fill her days and keep her awake nights. Her life and work become increasingly complicated when the Mystery Stories students insist on investigating the crime — with or without her cooperation. Their efforts, along with her involvement, eventually put all of them in jeopardy.




Miss Marple Tells a Story: A Miss Marple Short Story


Book Description

A classic Agatha Christie short story, available individually for the first time as an ebook.




Murder 101


Book Description

This collection of essays examines how college professors teach the genre of detective fiction and provides insight into how the reader may apply such strategies to his or her own courses. Multi-disciplinary in scope, the essays cover teaching in the areas of literature, law, history, sociology, anthropology, architecture, gender studies, cultural studies, and literary theory. Also included are sample syllabi, writing assignments, questions for further discussion, reading lists, and further aids for course instruction.




Satire


Book Description

Each title in this series of teacher resource books, intended for use with students in Years 9-12, starts with a detailed definition of the genre, followed by an examination of a wide range of texts.




The Centrality of Crime Fiction in American Literary Culture


Book Description

This collection of essays by leading scholars insists on a larger recognition of the importance and diversity of crime fiction in U.S. literary traditions. Instead of presenting the genre as the property of Dashiell Hammett and Raymond Chandler, this book maps a larger territory which includes the domains of Mark Twain, F. Scott Fitzgerald, William Faulkner, Richard Wright, Flannery O’Connor, Cormac McCarthy and other masters of fiction.The essays in this collection pay detailed attention to both the genuine artistry and the cultural significance of crime fiction in the United States. It emphasizes American crime fiction’s inquiry into the nature of democratic society and its exploration of injustices based on race, class, and/or gender that are specifically located in the details of American experience.Each of these essays exists on its own terms as a significant contribution to scholarship, but when brought together, the collection becomes larger than the sum of its pieces in detailing the centrality of crime fiction to American literature. This is a crucial book for all students of American fiction as well as for those interested in the literary treatment of crime and detection, and also has broad appeal for classes in American popular culture and American modernism.