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Author
Series
Lexile measure
1070L
Language
English
Formats
Description
The final and unfinished novel of Charles Dickens, "The Mystery of Edwin Drood" begins a tale that revolves around John Jasper, choirmaster and opium addict, who is the guardian of his orphaned nephew Edwin Drood. Before the death of his parents, Edwin was promised to marry Rosa Bud, but their affections have cooled upon reaching adulthood. This angers Neville Landless, twin brother of Helena and from Ceylon, who quickly develops feelings for Rosa....
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How odd, Anne Beddingfeld thought, that the stranger caught her eye, recoiled in horror, and fell to his death on the rails of Hyde Park Underground Station. Odder still was a doctor in a brown suit who pronounced him dead and vanished into the crowd. But what really aroused Anne's suspicion was when she learned of the doctor's link to the murder of a famous ballerina, a fortune in hidden diamonds, and a crime-lord embroiled in blackmail. And most...
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"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..."
Author
Series
Series by G.K. Chesterton volume no. 5
Language
English
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Description
Harold March, the rising reviewer and social critic, was walking vigorously across a great tableland of moors and commons, the horizon of which was fringed with the far-off woods of the famous estate of Torwood Park. He was a good-looking young man in tweeds, with very pale curly hair and pale clear eyes. Walking in wind and sun in the very landscape of liberty, he was still young enough to remember his politics and not merely try to forget them....
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Criminals beware - there is no eluding the extraordinary mind of Father Brown Dr. Orion Hood is one of the eminent thinkers of his day, a psychologist whose expert opinion on human nature is sometimes sought by the police. Usually, he is called on to solve only the most spectacular crimes - a nobleman murdered, a diplomat poisoned - but today a more ordinary problem presents itself. An amiable little priest named Father Brown asks Dr. Hood to help...
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English
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Wherever ravishing Virginia Revel went, death seemed sure to follow. First her husband died. The next to perish was a foreign prince whose ruthless power was matched by his scandalous passions. Then a bungling blackmailer followed them into the grave. Now on an isolated estate where a master murderer mingled with the aristocratic guests, Virginia could turn to only one person to prove her innocence and end her nightmare. And she could only pray that...
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First published in 1911, The Innocence of Father Brown is a series of stories involving one of the greatest characters in the history of detective fiction, G.K. Chesterton's Father Brown. A Roman Catholic priest, Father Brown has an uncanny insight to human evil. In contrast with the aristocratic arch-villains of the Sherlock Holmes stories, Father Brown solves mysteries involving local murders by small town crooks, narrowing the suspect list down...
10) The big four
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Lexile measure
800L
Language
English
Formats
Description
Number One was the greatest criminal brain of all time; Number Two was a multi-millionaire; Number Three was a beautiful Frenchwoman; and Number Four was "the destroyer," the ruthless murderer with a genius for disguise, whose business it was to remove those who interfered with his masters plans. These four, working together, aimed at establishing world dominance. Hercule Poirot was preparing for a voyage to South America when an uninvited guest,...
Author
Lexile measure
720L
Language
English
Description
Bound for the Riviera, detective Hercule Poirot has boarded Le Train Bleu, an elegant, leisurely means of travel, free of intrigue. Then he meets Ruth Kettering. The American heiress - bailing out of a doomed marriage - is en route to reconcile with her former lover. But by morning, her private affairs are made public when she is found murdered in her luxury compartment. The rumour of a strange man loitering in the victim's shadow is all Poirot has...
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First published in a 1841 edition of Graham's Magazine, The Murders in the Rue Morgue is often cited as the first modern detective story. The first of three stories to center around C. Auguste Dupin, Poe's fictional detective, The Murders in the Rue Morgue involves Dupin's investigation of two women's murders. Establishing many of the tropes that would later become common to detective fiction, the story begins with an explanation of Dupin's theory...
Author
Lexile measure
730L
Language
English
Description
"When Hercule Poirot and his associate Arthur Hastings arrive in the French village of Merlinville-sur-Mer to meet their client Paul Renauld, they learn from the police that he has been found that morning stabbed in the back with a letter opener and left in a newly-dug grave adjacent to a local golf course. Among the plausible suspects are Renauld's wife Eloise, his son Jack, Renauld's immediate neighbor Madame Daubreuil, the mysterious 'Cinderella'...
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Poirot Investigates is a eleven-story collection written by Agatha Christie. In the short stories, detective Hercule Poirot solves a variety of mysteries using his typical perspicacity. In The Adventure of the Western Star, a Chinese man warns a famous American film star to return her fabulous diamond jewel, the "Western Star", to the left eye of an idol. In The Tragedy at Marsdon Manor, he investigates a middle-aged man who died just a few weeks...
15) Northwest angle
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English
Description
During a houseboat vacation on the remote Lake of the Woods, a violent gale sweeps through and strands Cork O'Connor and his daughter, Jenny, on a devastated island. Amid the wreckage they discover an old trapper's cabin, and find the body of a murdered teenage girl. Outside under a tangle of branches lies a baby boy, hungry and dehydrated but still very much alive. Then powerful forces intent on securing the child pursue them to the isolated Northwest...
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The Mystery of the Yellow Room (1908) is a novel by French writer Gaston Leroux. Originally serialized in L'Illustration from September to November 1907, The Mystery of the Yellow Room marked the first appearance of popular character Joseph Rouletabille, a reporter and part-time sleuth who features in several of Leroux's novels. Originally a journalist, Leroux turned to fiction after reading the works of Arthur Conan Doyle and Edgar Allan Poe. Often...
17) The Indian bride
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English
Description
When perpetual bachelor Gunder Jomann goes to India for two weeks and comes home married, the Norwegian town of Elvestad is stunned. On the day the Indian bride is supposed to arrive, the battered body of a woman is found in a meadow on the outskirts of town. None of the "good people of Elvestad" can believe that anyone among them would be capable of such a brutal murder. But in his quiet, formal way, Inspector Konrad Sejer understands that good people...
Author
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English
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Description
The recently married Valeria Brinton uncovers an unsettling truth about her new husband, including a false identity and the potential murder of his first wife. Valeria is determined to solve the mystery of her husband's previous marriage and presumed guilt.
Shortly after her wedding, Valeria Brinton learns her husband, Eustace Woodville, has been living a lie. His real name is Eustace Macallan and he was previously accused of murdering his first...
Author
Lexile measure
570L
Language
English
Description
"Ten strangers are lured to an isolated island mansion off the Devon coast by a mysterious "U.N. Owen." At dinner a recorded message accuses each of them in turn of having a guilty secret, and by the end of the night one of the guests is dead Stranded by a violent storm, and haunted by a nursery rhyme counting down one by one...as one by one...they begin to die. Who among them is the killer and will any of them survive?" --Cover, p. 4.