Detective Sergeant Sholto Lestrade investigates strange affairs at a popular circus and uncovers evidence of murder under the big top.

"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...

Adrian Gray was born in May 1862 and met his death through violence, at the hands of one of his own children, at Christmas, 1931. Thus begins a classic crime novel published in 1933 that has been too long neglected - until now. It is a riveting portrait of the psychology of a murderer. Each December, Adrian Gray invites his extended family to stay at his lonely house, Kings Poplars. None of Gray's six surviving children is fond of him; several have...

"August, 1856. Wilkie Collins and Charles Dickens are spending the summer at Knebworth House, the magnificent Hertfordshire home of fellow writer Lord Edward Bulwer-Lytton, where they are putting on a charity performance of one of Lord Edward's most successful plays, The Lady of Lyon. But the dress rehearsal is disrupted by the discovery of a body lying in the centre of the stage, shot to death. With everyone involved in the play coming under suspicion,...

Ah, it's an academic conference, with all the egos, the scandals, the terrifyingly petty squabbles on display. Well….perhaps not so petty. Professor Andrew Basnett has returned to his old university for a meeting of the Botanical Association, an event that should be entirely benign, except that he can't help being just a little curious about Carl Judd, an artist who was murdered here just two years ago. And, of course, about Stephen Sharland, who's...

Charlotte Frayne's boss, Mr. Gilmore, travels to Europe in the fall of 1936 on a mysterious trip, leaving her in charge of the detective agency. The redoubtable Mrs. Jessop hires Charlotte to investigate the untimely death of her son, a disfigured and injured veteran of the Great War. The police ruled it a suicide, but Mrs. Jessop doesn't agree and wants Charlotte to find out what really happened. On the same day, Charlotte...

A beautiful heiress has been found dead on a train. A playboy has been stabbed through the heart during a costume ball. An elderly woman suspects that she is being slowly poisoned to death. A prince fears for his reputation when his fiancée is embroiled in another man's murder. A forgotten recluse makes headlines after he is shot in the head. Who but Agatha Christie could concoct such canny crimes? Who but Belgian detective Hercule Poirot could possibly...

A compelling British police procedural starring the mild-mannered Detective Inspector Thanet from "a modern-day version of Agatha Christie" (Booklist). Change is coming to the Sturrenden police station. After twenty years at the helm, the superintendent has retired, and Det. Inspector Luke Thanet is now reporting to a brusque, ambitious upstart recently promoted from Cardiff. A new chief means turf wars and bureaucratic infighting. With the station...

"Inspector Luke Thanet and his wife, Joan, are among the guests when Member of Parliament Hugo Fairleigh opens the grounds of his beautiful Georgian mansion, Thaxden Hall, for the annual village fete." "It's a cloudless summer's day, an idyllic afternoon for innocent enjoyment. Then sudden death casts its shadow over the proceedings." "At first, nobody is particularly surprised when Isobel Fairleigh, Hugo's elderly mother, is found dead in her bed....

Plans for peaceful seaside holidays rarely work out well in the world of classic British mysteries. Retired professor Andrew Basnett, for example, envisioning sandcastles and the blessings of a pale English sun on his pale English skin, is startled to meet his nephew, Peter, on the beach. He's more startled (and not entirely thrilled) when Peter gets him invited to dinner with a celebrity novelist. And he's extremely startled when the novelist's sister-in-law...