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...

Mary Roberts Rinehart (August 12, 1876 – September 22, 1958) was an American writer, often called the American Agatha Christie,[1] although her first mystery novel was published 14 years before Christie's first novel in 1922. Rinehart is considered the source of the phrase "The butler did it" from her novel The Door (1930), although the novel does not use the exact phrase. Rinehart is also considered to have invented the "Had-I-But-Known" school...

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...

Looking for adventure, an erstwhile medical student joins the crew of a yacht and finds himself adrift in a sea of murder Medical school left Leslie with a diploma, a new dress suit, and an incipient case of typhoid fever. While convalescing, he hatches a plan to postpone embarking on a career as a surgeon by launching instead on an epic voyage of adventure, mystery, and romance on the high seas. When Leslie signs up as a steward aboard the private...

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.

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 quiet old mansion, an aging spinster contemplates questions of murder Elizabeth Bell runs a quiet household, with no family and no more than the usual number of servants. She passes her time thinking about crime and working on her biography of a relative. When a young cousin comes to stay, life in the house becomes uncharacteristically lively. First, cousin Judy burns a hole in Miss Bell's desk. Next, they spy a burglar on the staircase-a shadowy...

Tish Carberry, Aggie, and Lizzie embark on three more outrageous adventures in More Tish. After successfully taking on a band of train bandits, the women return home and search for ways to help with the war effort-a search that ultimately takes them to the battlefields of Europe, much to the chagrin of the military. More Tish is the third book in the Tish Carberry series. It includes the stories "The Cave on Thunder Cloud," "Tish Does Her Bit," and...

Stories of domestic anguish and delight from an American master On a transatlantic voyage, a man fills with rage as his wife fusses over her makeup, filling their cramped cabin with powders, oils, and discarded clothes. It would be fine if he could open the porthole, but the porter has ordered it shut-lest a German submarine spot the light. Back in America, an old man with failing health stares out his window and worries about the world. And the wife...

A locked-room murder keeps a nurse-turned-sleuth on guard in this Golden Age mystery. If the dissolute nephew of elderly Juliet Mitchell committed suicide, then why has the Homicide Squad enlisted the help of nurse Hilda Adams at the Mitchell mansion? Because Inspector Patton has his doubts about Herbert's death-even though he died by gunshot in his locked bedroom. The services of the bureau's indispensable sleuth, "Miss Pinkerton," are twofold: to...