Mary Roberts Rinehart

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...

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.

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...

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,...

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...

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...

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.

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.

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...

#1 New York Times–Bestselling Author: Three witty whodunits from the Golden Age of mystery, featuring the crime-solving nurse nicknamed Miss Pinkerton . . . Miss Pinkerton A supposed suicide has the homicide squad suspicious, despite its locked-room location-so they ask nurse Hilda Adams to keep watch at the mansion while tending to the dead man's bedridden aunt . . . The Haunted Lady Elderly widow Eliza Fairbanks claims someone's...