Catalog Search Results
Author
Series
Language
English
Formats
Description
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...
Author
Series
Language
English
Formats
Description
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...
Author
Language
English
Formats
Description
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...
Author
Language
English
Formats
Description
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...
Author
Language
English
Formats
Description
"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,...
6) The Bat
Author
Series
Language
English
Formats
Description
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,...
Author
Language
English
Formats
Description
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.
8) The Wall
Author
Language
English
Formats
Description
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,...
Author
Language
English
Formats
Description
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...
Author
Language
English
Formats
Description
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...
11) The Door
Author
Language
English
Formats
Description
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...
Author
Language
English
Formats
Description
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...
13) The Album
Author
Language
English
Formats
Description
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...
14) The After House
Author
Language
English
Description
Just out of the hospital and totally out of funds, Ralph Leslie jumped at the chance to sign aboard millionaire Marshall Turner's luxurious super-yacht as steward to the passengers lodged in its after house. His job was easy sailing until one sultry summer night, when the dream voyage suddenly became a nightmare of blood and terror. One ship's officer was thrown overboard. Another was hacked to death with an ax. The killer struck again and again,...
16) Two Flights Up
Author
Language
English
Description
A boarder comes to live with three women and finds them frighteningly strange From the outside, it seems like the three women of the Bayne house are frozen in time. There is Mrs. Bayne, an aging widow obsessed with propriety; her sister, Margaret, a spinster whose desperate loneliness is eating her from the inside out; and young Holly, a beautiful creature with a vibrancy that fades a little each day. Her only hope is Furness Brooks, a playboy with...
17) The Red Lamp
Author
Language
English
Description
After inheriting an old seaside house, a professor finds it haunted by supernatural mysteries Though he likes to joke about the spirit world, William Porter does not really believe in ghosts. As a professor, he cannot afford to take seriously that which goes bump in the night. But his wife, Jane, is prone to visions, like the one she had last summer about William's uncle Horace lying dead on the floor-a dream that came just hours before they got the...
Author
Language
English
Description
On trial for murder, a young bride recalls the steps that led her to the dock The state has accused beautiful young Elinor Norton of murder, and she refuses to mount a defense. Guilt is written all over her elegant features, but her childhood best friend refuses to believe it when Elinor confesses to the crime. Forced into a dull marriage against her will, Elinor is just beginning to adjust to life with Lloyd when she meets the man who will tear her...
Author
Series
Language
English
Description
When a friend comes to her with a problem, Tish springs into action-no matter how much trouble it's going to cause In the title tale of this collection by Mary Roberts Rinehart, after a long, chaotic life, Tish Carberry retires to her apartment, hoping for a bit of peace and quiet. But why, her friends wonder, does it sound like someone's practicing riflery in her living room? No one would be surprised if Tish had converted her parlor into a shooting...
20) Locked Doors
Author
Language
English
Description
A thrilling, gripping tale of fear, menace, and mystery in which Miss Adams becomes enmeshed, when she plays the double game of nurse and detective in a large, eerie house where doors are barred at night!
In Interlibrary Loan
Didn't find what you need? Items not owned by Penticton Public Library can be requested from other Interlibrary Loan libraries to be delivered to your local library for pickup. Items must be over 1 year old.
Didn't find it?
Can't find what you are looking for? Try our Materials Request Service for new books published this year. Submit Request