BRITISH LIBRARY

(P/B) TILL DEATH DO US PART
Crime author Dick Markham is in love again; his fianc?e the mysterious newcomer to the village, Lesley Grant. When Grant accidentally shoots the fortune teller through the side of his tent at the local fair - following a very strange reaction to his predictions - Markham is reluctantly brought into a scheme to expose his betrothed as a suspected serial husband-poisoner. That night the enigmatic fortune teller - and chief accuser - is found dead in an impossible locked-room setup, casting suspicion onto Grant and striking doubt into the hea...
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(P/B) DEATH IN WHITE PYJAMAS
One of the most popular and best-selling authors of the Crime Classics series returns, with two traditional mystery novels of the 1940s featuring charming period detail. These are two excellent examples of John Bude's light-hearted and humorous approach, with welldrawn and authentic period settings and a satisfying whodunit structure, following the traditional rules and style of the Golden Age of the genre. Death in White Pyjamas: At the country home of Sam Richardson, a group of actors have gathered along with their somewhat sinister prod...
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(H/B) THE GHOST STORIES OF M. R. JAMES
The Ghost Stories of M. R. James collects the tales that best illustrate his quiet mastery of the ghost story form. Running through each of these stories is a slowly escalating sense of unease and dread, which ultimately shifts into the wildly uncanny. James' characters exist in a world of ancient objects whose atrocious histories begin to repeat when they are disturbed, and the blinkered repression common to James' narratives only amplifies the shock of the spectral appearance. (From the publisher)...
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(H/B) THE PHILOSOPHY OF COCTAILS
An early description of a cocktail as 'a mix of alcoholic drinks with flavouring ingredients' does nothing to convey the alchemy and speak-easy glamour of these elaborate drinks. The cocktail's humble beginnings as a medicinal tonic through the inclusion of botanicals into distilled spirits such as gin and whiskey, accelerates with the ingenuity of bartenders who created the 'classics' - the Martini, Manhattan and Old Fashioned - in the nineteenth-century, and in the decadence of the Jazz Age and Roaring Twenties. This book explores the jo...
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(P/B) THE WIDOW OF BATH
'There are a dozen clever deceptions in the book, twice as many as most writers would have given us.' - Julian Symons in Bloody MurderHugh Everton was intent on nothing more than quietly drinking in the second-rate hotel he found himself in on England's south coast - and then in walked his old flame Lucy and her new husband and ex-Judge, Gregory Bath. Entreated by Lucy to join her party for an evening back at the Bath residence, Hugh is powerless to resist, but when the night ends with the judge's inexplicable murder he is pitched back int...
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(H/B) A GENERAL HISTORY OF THE LIVES, MURDERS AND ADVENTURES OF THE MOST NOTORIOUS PIRATES

(H/B) THE GOTHIC TALES OF H. P. LOVECRAFT
H.P. Lovecraft is best known for his tales of cosmic horror, in which unnameable nightmares torment the limits of human consciousness. This mastery of weird and unspeakable terror is underpinned by the writer's sizeable contribution to Gothic fiction. This new collection of Lovecraft's stories is the first to concentrate on his Gothic writing and includes tales from the beginning to the very end of the author's career. The writer's weird vision mixes brilliantly with the trappings of earlier Gothic horror to form innovative mosaics of frig...
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(H/B) THE PHILOSOPHY OF TEA
How did drinking the infusions of a unique plant from China become a vital part of everyday life? This gift book presents an entertaining and illuminating introduction to the history and culture of tea, from its origins in the Far East to the flavours and properties of different varieties, and the rituals of tea preparation and drinking around the world. This simple hot beverage is suffused with artistic and religious overtones. The Chinese Ch'a Ching gave very precise guidelines to the preparation and sipping of tea, and the Japanese tea ...
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(P/B) GUILTY CREATURES
"Curiously enough," said Dr. Manners, "I know a story in which the detection of a murder turned on the behavior of a bird: in this instance a jackdaw."Since the dawn of the crime fiction genre, animals of all kinds have played a memorable part in countless mysteries, and in a variety of roles: the perpetrator, the key witness, the sleuth's trusted companion. This collection of fourteen stories corrals plots centred around cats, dogs and insects alongside more exotic incidents involving gorillas, parakeets and serpents - complete with a cus...
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(P/B) QUEENS OF THE ABYSS
It is too often accepted that during the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries it was the male writers who developed and pushed the boundaries of the weird tale, with women writers following in their wake - but this is far from the truth. This new anthology follows the instrumental contributions made by women writers to the weird tale, and revives the lost authors of the early pulp magazines along with the often overlooked work of more familiar authors. See the darker side of The Secret Garden author Frances Hodgson Burnett and the sens...
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(H/B) A GENERAL HISTORY OF THE LIVES, MURDERS AND ADVENTURES OF THE MOST NOTORIOUS HIGHWAYMEN
Captain Charles Johnson's celebrated A General History of the Pirates (1724) is the most famous book about pirates ever written. Buoyed by the volume's runaway success Johnson followed up with the equally engrossing The Lives and Adventures of the Most Famous Highwaymen (1734) which, published here for the first time in two centuries, provides over 50 accounts of the most notorious British criminals of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. These include the famous highwayman William Davis, alias The Golden Farmer, the cross-Channel gen...
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(P/B) THE MAN WHO DIDN'T FLY
A new addition to the British Library Crime Classics Series, Gold Dagger award-winning Margot Bennett was a Scottish crime author and screenwriter. The story was short-listed for the first CWA Gold Dagger award in 1955 and takes place in multiple parts of the U.K. (Ireland, Wales, London). It includes the extremely rare short story from Bennett, 'No Bath for the Browns'. Four men had arranged to fly to Dublin. When their aeroplane descended as a fireball into the Irish Sea, only three of them were on board. With the identities of the passe...
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(P/B) JUMPING JENNY
At a costume party with the dubious theme of 'famous murderers and their victims', the know-it-all amateur criminologist Roger Sheringham is settled in for an evening of beer, small talk and analysing his companions. One guest in particular has caught his attention for her theatrics, and his theory that she might have several enemies among the partygoers proves true when she is found hanging from the 'decorative' gallows on the roof terrace. Noticing a key detail which could implicate a friend in the crime, Sheringham decides to meddle wit...
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(P/B) GREEN FOR DANGER
It is 1942, and struggling up the hill to the new military hospital, Heron's Park, Kent, postman Higgins has no idea that the sender of one of the seven letters of application he is delivering will turn out to be a murderer in a year's time. When Higgins is brought in following injuries from a bombing raid in 1943, his inexplicable death from asphyxiation at the operating table casts four nurses and three doctors under suspicion, and a second death in quick succession invites the presence of the irascible - yet uncommonly shrewd - Inspecto...
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(P/B) THE CORPSE IN THE WAXWORKS
'"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 Duchene was seen heading into the Gallery of Horrors at the Musee 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 Henri Bencolin, head of the Paris police and expert of 'impossible' crimes, cannot possibly...
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(H/B) THE MENU
A curated collection of memorable meals from the last 200 years. With a preface by food historian Polly Russell, and endorsements from Bee Wilson, Pen Vogler and Heston Blumenthal, this book is ideal for lovers of cultural history, folks who are nosey, and those who enjoy the unexpected. From the historically significant to the unexpected, discover: What was eaten at the first Nobel Prize dinner Barack Obama's inauguration dinner choices How the first food was eaten on the moon Who hosted the original Presidential cheese party Why the fir...
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(P/B) THIRTEEN GUESTS
No observer, ignorant of the situation, would have guessed that death lurked nearby, and that only a little distance from the glitter of silver and glass and the hum of voices two victims lay silent on a studio floor. On a fine autumn weekend Lord Aveling hosts a hunting party at his country house, Bragley Court. Among the guests are an actress, a journalist, an artist and a mystery novelist. The unlucky thirteenth is John Foss, injured at the local train station and brought to the house to recuperate - but John is nursing a secret of his ...
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(P/B) MYSTERY IN WHITE
On Christmas Eve, heavy snowfall brings a train to a halt near the village of Hemmersby. Several passengers take shelter in a deserted country house, where the fire has been lit and the table laid for tea - but no one is at home. Trapped together for Christmas, the passengers are seeking to unravel the secrets of the empty house when a murderer strikes in their midst. This classic Christmas mystery is republished for the first time since the 1930s, with an introduction by the award-winning crime writer Martin Edwards. (From the publisher)...
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(P/B THE POISONED CHOCOLATES CASE
Joan Bendix is killed by a poisoned box of liqueur chocolates that cannot have been intended for her to eat. The police investigation rapidly reaches a dead end. Chief Inspector Moresby calls on Roger Sheringham and his Crimes Circle - six amateur but intrepid detectives - to consider the case. The evidence is laid before the Circle and the members take it in turn to offer a solution. Each is more convincing than the last, slowly filling in the pieces of the puzzle, until the dazzling conclusion. (From the publisher)...
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(P/B) SEVEN DEAD
Ted Lyte, amateur thief, has chosen an isolated house by the coast for his first robbery. But Haven House is no ordinary country home. While hunting for silverware to steal, Ted stumbles upon a locked room containing seven dead bodies. Detective Inspector Kendall takes on the case with the help of passing yachtsman Thomas Hazeldean. The search for the house's absent owners brings Hazeldean across the Channel to Boulogne, where he finds more than one motive to stay and investigate. Seven Dead is an atmospheric crime novel first published in...
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