John Dickson Carr

"A sinister case of deadly poisoned chocolates from Sodbury Cross's high street shop haunts the group of friends and relatives assembled at Bellegarde, among the orchards of 'peach-fancier' Marcus Chesney. To prove a point about how the sweets could have been poisoned under the nose of the shopkeeper, Chesney stages an elaborate memory game to test whether any of his guests can see beyond their 'black spectacles'; that is, to see the truth without...

"At the hand of an outrageous prankster, top hats are going missing all over London, snatched from the heads of some of the city's most powerful people. But is the hat thief the same as the person responsible for stealing the lost story by Edgar Allan Poe, purloined from a private collection, which Dr. Gideon Fell has just been hired to retrieve? Unlike the manuscript, the hats don't stay stolen for long; each one reappears in unexpected and conspicuous...

"'The purpose, the illusion, the spirit of a waxworks. It is an atmosphere of death. It is soundless and motionless... Do you see?' Last night Mademoiselle Duchêne was seen heading into the Gallery of Horrors at the Musée Augustin waxworks, alive. Today she was found in the Seine, murdered. The museum's proprietor, long perturbed by the unnatural vitality of his figures, claims that he saw one of them following the victim into the dark--a lead that...

"In this follow up to It Walks by Night, Inspector Bencolin attempts to piece together a puzzle involving a disappearing street and a set of gallows that mysteriously appears through the thick London fog. And a mythical spirit, Jack Ketch, may be afoot and in the business of wanton execution, leaving Londoners on edge and in fear of the bogeyman. The Lost Gallows is an early gem from one of the great writers of the genre. This edition also includes...

On the verge of a second marriage, a divorcee discovers her first husband has returned, and murder ensues in this chilling tale, which the New York Times Book Review hailed as "one of the most ingeniously constructed mystery stories John Dickson Carr has ever told" After divorcing her husband, Ned, Eve Neill falls in love with banker Toby Lawes and quickly agrees to marry him. But news of the engagement brings Ned back, intent on reclaiming his bride,...

"A classic mystery from the esteemed British Library Crime Classics series. The great magician, Maleger, has bought Schloss Schädel (Castle Skull) on the Rhine and has transformed it into a fitting abode for his stage persona, replete with all the trappings of gothic romance. When a man is seen atop the battlements, running aflame and then plunging to his doom, the calamitous reputation of the Castle seems to have become reality. And when Maleger...

The first deadly walking of the hollow man took place when the side streets of London were quiet with snow and the three coffins of the prophecy were filled at last ... 'The murderer of Dr Grimauld walked through a locked door, shot his victim and vanished. He killed his second victim in the middle of an empty street, with watchers at each end, yet nobody saw him, and he left no footprints in the snow. And so it is up to the irrepressible, larger-than-life...