The Fashion in Shrouds


Book Description

A custom-made killer shocks the fashionable London set in “one of the finest murder books ever written” featuring gentleman sleuth Albert Campion (The New Yorker). Albert Campion’s sister is a success in her own right. A top fashion designer, she works for a legendary couturier and dresses Georgia Wells, the best-dressed actress in the world. Albert also has a connection to Georgia, but his is based on failure, not success. Georgia’s former fiancé disappeared nearly three years ago, and Campion has never been able to find him. Until now . . . The victim’s remains—discovered by Campion in a deserted country house—point to suicide. But the man’s father assumes it was foul play. In a rarified world of wealth and privilege where silence and secrets can be bought, the investigation won’t be easy, especially when another death takes center stage. This time, the victim is Georgia’s current husband—and starring in the role of prime suspect: Albert’s sister. “Top ranking whodunit in Dorothy Sayers tradition . . . Plus sale for non-mysteryites as first rate novel of fashionable London. Suspense—humor—well planned, well written.” —Kirkus Reviews Praise for Margery Allingham “Margery Allingham stands out like a shining light.” —Agatha Christie “The best of mystery writers.” —The New Yorker “Allingham was a rare and precious talent.” —The Washington Post “Don’t start reading these books unless you are confident that you can handle addiction.” —The Independent




The Fashion in Shrouds


Book Description




More Work for the Undertaker


Book Description

“A top-notch mystery full of keen characterization, humor, old English atmosphere, a charmingly decadent family, and a few sudden deaths.” —The New York Times A beggarwoman on a bench arouses Albert Campion’s curiosity—and helps Scotland Yard lure him into a case of family dysfunction. The seemingly destitute woman is none other than a member of the eccentric Palinode family, which has recently lost two of its members. The police suspect a poisoner is on the loose, which is why Campion is willing to go undercover as a lodger in the boardinghouse where they live. As the recently deceased are exhumed, Campion becomes acquainted with the old-fashioned, out-of-the-ordinary family members, who talk in crossword puzzle clues, sneak out at night, and cook vats of stinky food in the basement to save money. And if that’s not enough to keep Campion on his toes, the local undertaker seems to be digging himself into a hole . . . Praise for Margery Allingham “Margery Allingham stands out like a shining light.” —Agatha Christie “The best of mystery writers.” —The New Yorker “Don’t start reading these books unless you are confident that you can handle addiction.” —The Independent “One of the finest Golden-Age crime novelists.” —The Sunday Telegraph “Spending an evening with Campion is one of life’s pure pleasures.” —The Sunday Times




Traitor's Purse


Book Description




Shrouds of Glory


Book Description

Groom, author of Forrest Gump and other fiction, provides a thoughtful narrative account of Confederate leader General Hood, as well as his military cohorts, troops, and nemeses, from their bizarre cat-and-mouse chase through Georgia and Tennessee to the horrors of the charge at Franklin. Excellent bandw photographs, maps. Annotation copyright by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR




The Case of the Late Pig


Book Description

A man is killed five months after his funeral, in a tale by “one of the greatest mid-20th-century practitioners of the detective novel” (Alexander McCall Smith). Private detective Albert Campion is summoned to the village of Kepesake to investigate a particularly distasteful death. The body turns out to be that of Pig Peters, freshly killed five months after his own funeral. Soon other corpses start to turn up, just as Peters’s body goes missing. It takes all Campion’s coolly incisive powers of detection to unravel the crime. The Case of the Late Pig is, uniquely, narrated by Campion himself. In Allingham’s inimitable style, high drama sits neatly beside pitch-perfect black comedy. A heady mix of murder, romance, and the urbane detective's own unglamorous past make this an Allingham mystery not to be missed. “My very favourite of the four Queens of Crime is Allingham.”—J. K. Rowling “Margery Allingham deserves to be rediscovered.”—P.D. James




Hide My Eyes


Book Description

Private detective Albert Campion hunts a serial killer in London’s theatre district, in this crime novel from “the best of mystery writers” (The New Yorker). A spate of murders leaves Campion with only two baffling clues: a left-hand glove and a lizard-skin letter-case. These minimal leads, and a series of peculiar events, set the gentleman sleuth on a race against time that takes him from an odd museum of curiosities hidden in a quiet corner of London to a scrapyard in the East End. Margery Allingham shows her dark edge in Hide My Eyes and evokes the sights, sounds, and inimitable atmosphere of 1950s London, once again proving herself “one of the finest ‘golden age’ crime novelists” (Sunday Telegraph). “Allingham has that rare gift in a novelist, the creation of characters so rich and so real that they stay with the reader forever.” —Sara Paretsky “Allingham’s characters are three-dimensional flesh and blood, especially her villains.” —Times Literary Supplement




Green for Danger


Book Description

Set in a military hospital during the blitz, this novel is one of Brand's most intricately plotted detection puzzles, executed with her characteristic cleverness and gusto. When a patient dies under the anesthetic and later the presiding nurse is murdered, Inspector Cockrill finds himself with six suspects--three doctors and three nurses--and not a discernible motive among them.




The Victorian Book of the Dead


Book Description

Macabre tales of death and mourning in Victorian America.




Shroud


Book Description

‘Shroud will not be easily surpassed for its combination of wit, moral complexity and compassion. It is hard to see what more a novel could do’ Irish Times Dark secrets and reality unravel in Shroud, the second of John Banville's three novels to feature Cass Cleave, alongside Eclipse and Ancient Light. Axel Vander, distinguished intellectual and elderly academic, is not the man he seems. When a letter arrives out of the blue, threatening to unveil his secrets – and carefully concealed identity – Vander travels to Turin to meet its author. There, muddled by age and alcohol, unable always to distinguish fact from fiction, Vander comes face to face with the woman who has the knowledge to unmask him, Cass Cleave. However, her sense of reality is as unreliable as his, and the two are quickly drawn together, their relationship dark, disturbed and doomed to disaster from its very start.