We all know the basics of punctuation. Or do we? A look at most neighborhood signage tells a different story. Through sloppy usage and low standards on the internet, in email, and now text messages, we have made proper punctuation an endangered species. In Eats, Shoots & Leaves, former editor Lynne Truss dares to say, in her delightfully urbane, witty, and very English way, that it is time to look at our commas and semicolons and see them as the wonderful...

"The luxurious Blue Train carries its passengers across France, from dreary wintertime England to the sunny French Riviera. When it arrives at Nice, a guard attempts to wake serene Ruth Kettering from her slumber. But she will never wake again -- she has been killed, and a heavy blow has disfigured her features almost beyond recognition. What is more, her precious rubies are missing and her ever-present maid was dismissed from the train back in Paris....

"Charles Dickens's first historical novel-set during the anti-Catholic riots of 1780-is an unparalleled portrayal of the terror of a rampaging mob, seen through the eyes of the individuals swept up in the chaos. Those individuals include Emma, a Catholic, and Edward, a Protestant, whose forbidden love weaves through the heart of the story; and the simpleminded Barnaby, one of the riot leaders, whose fate is tied to a mysterious murder and whose beloved...

"The villagers of Chipping Cleghorn are agog with curiousity when the Gazette advertises 'A murder is announced and will take place on Friday, October 29th, at Little Paddoks at 6.30 p.m.' A childish practical joke? Or a spiteful hoax? Unable to resiste the mysterious invitation, the locals arrive at Little Paddocks at the appointed time when, without warning, the lights go out and a gun is fired. When they come back on, a gruesome scene is revealed....

In this Orwellian dramatization, religion becomes a tool of repression and social control to force women into the roles of stay-at-home wives, domestic staff, prostitutes, or surrogate mothers. They have no rights to their bodies or property and are completely dependent upon men. Those women who have had at least one child find themselves forced into the role of breeding machine, producing children for childless couples. References to 20th-century...

The beautiful bronzed body of Arlena Stuart lay face down on the beach. But strangely, there was no sun and Arlena was not sunbathing…she had been strangled. Ever since Arlena’s arrival the air had been thick with sexual tension. Each of the guests had a motive to kill her, including Arlena’s new husband. But Hercule Poirot suspects that this apparent “crime of passion” conceals something much more evil.

At midnight Neil Griffon's home is broken into and he is abducted by masked men. When he wakes up, hours later, Neil discovers that 'unless he cooperates' his kidnappers will destroy his father's racing stable, his precious horses and even Neil himself. Returning to the stables, Neil can tell no one about his ordeal, or his kidnappers' threats of violence if he does not comply with their demands. Trapped, Neil refuses to surrender - and devises an...

Suspicious events at a Middle Eastern archaeological excavation site intrigue the great Poirot as he investigates Murder in Mesopotamia.

Bleak House, Dickens's most daring experiment in the narration of a complex plot, challenges the reader to make connections - between the fashionable and the outcast, the beautiful and the ugly, the powerful and the victims. Nowhere in Dickens's later novels is his attack on an uncaring society more imaginatively embodied, but nowhere either is the mixture of comedy and angry satire more deftly managed. Bleak House defies a single description. It...

"Hard Times is perhaps the archetypal Dickens novel, full as it is with family difficulties, estrangement, rotten values and unhappiness. It was published in 1854 and it is the story of the family of Thomas Gradgrind, and occurs in the imaginary Coketown, an industrial city inspired by Preston. Gradgrind is a man obsessed with misguided 'Utilitarian' values that make him trust facts, statistics and practicality more than emotion and is based upon...