Historical Detective

Well, it's no wonder. The plot - suspicion for an elderly woman's murder falls on her mysterious lodger - is from Agatha Christie. The wonderful character happens to be the world's most famous sleuth, Hercule Poirot.

Christmas Eve, and the Lee family's reunion is shattered by a deafening crash of furniture and a high-pitched wailing scream. Upstairs, the tyrannical Simeon Lee lies dead in a pool of blood, his throat slashed. When Hercule Poirot offers to assist, he finds an atmosphere not of mourning but of mutual suspicion. It seems everyone had their own reason to hate the old man....

This latest novel in the Bangalore Detectives Club mystery series takes the listener deep into the historical era surrounding the visit by Edward, Prince of Wales, to Bangalore in 1921. When the prince begins a tour of a number of Indian cities, he encounters passionate crowds demanding independence from Britain, with rioting on the streets of Bombay in November 1921.

The incomparable Booker Prize winner’s next great crime novel - the story of a family whose secrets resurface when a parish priest is found murdered in their ancestral home. Detective Inspector St. John Strafford has been summoned to County Wexford to investigate a murder. A parish priest has been found dead in Ballyglass House, the family seat of the aristocratic, secretive Osborne family.

Among the towering red cliffs of Petra, like some monstrous swollen Buddha, sits the corpse of Mrs.Boynton. A tiny puncture mark on her wrist is the only sign of the fatal injection that killed her. With only 24 hours available to solve the mystery, Hercule Poirot recalled a chance remark he'd overheard back in Jerusalem: "You see, don't you, that she's got to be killed?" Mrs. Boynton was, indeed, the most detestable woman he'd ever met....

After five years abroad, Charity Halliwell returns to Loxby Manor, the home of dear friends—and her lost love. No longer a young girl, she is now haunted by a painful secret and the demise of her dreams. She hopes to find a place of healing and happiness, but instead she encounters a darkness lurking in the shadows of the once-familiar house. Then her friend, Seline, disappears the very night of her arrival, and Charity is determined to uncover the truth. Her only hope is the man who broke her heart.

Agatha Christie’s debut novel, The Mysterious Affair at Styles, features the first appearance of the eccentric Belgian Detective Hercule Poirot. Poirot must use his unusual methods and his singular charm to solve the murder of the rich, elderly Emily Inglethorpe. Fortunately, Poirot’s old friend Arthur Hastings happens to be staying at Styles Court, an Essex country manor, at the time of the murder, and he is a ready right-hand man during Poirot’s investigation.

Framed in the doorway of Hercule Poirot's bedroom stands an uninvited guest, coated from head to foot in dust. The man stares for a moment, then he sways and falls. Who is he? Is he suffering from shock or just exhaustion? Above all, what is the significance of the figure 4, scribbled over and over again on a sheet of paper? Poirot finds himself plunged into a worldof international intrigue, risking his life - and that of his twin brother - to uncover the truth.

Beautiful young Elinor Carlisle stood serenely in the dock, accused of the murder of Mary Gerrard, her rival in love. The evidence was damning: only Elinor had the motive, the opportunity, and the means to administer the fatal poison. Yet, inside the hostile courtroom, only one man still presumed Elinor was innocent until proven guilty: Hercule Poirot was all that stood between Elinor and the gallows.

A far-from-warm welcome greets Hercule Poirot as he arrives for lunch at Lucy Angkatell's country house. A man lies dying by the swimming pool, his blood dripping into the water. His wife stands over him, holding a revolver. As Poirot investigates, he begins to realize that beneath the respectable surface lies a tangle of family secrets and everyone becomes a suspect.

When an executed original of a secret treaty between England and France, known as the French Treaty, is stolen from the country estate of Lord Halifax, Scotland Yard asks Joanna, Dr. John Watson, Jr., and Dr. John Watson, Sr., to use their detective skills to participate in the hunt for the missing treaty. As the government becomes more restless to find the missing document and traditional investigative means fail to turn up the culprit, Joanna is forced to devise a clever plan to trap the thief and recover the missing treaty.

A few weeks after marrying an attractive widow, Gordon Cloade is tragically killed by a bomb blast in the London blitz. Overnight, the former Mrs. Underhay finds herself in sole possession of the Cloade family fortune. Shortly afterward, Hercule Poirot receives a visit from the dead man's sister-in-law who claims she has been warned by "spirits" that Mrs. Underhay's first husband is still alive. Poirot has his suspicions when he is asked to find a missing person guided only by the spirit world.

London, 1945. The capital is shrouded in the darkness of the blackout, and mystery abounds in the parks after dusk. During a stroll through Regent's Park, Bruce Mallaig witnesses two men acting suspiciously around a footbridge. In a matter of moments, one of them has been murdered; Mallaig's view of the assailant but a brief glimpse of a ghastly face in the glow of a struck match. The murderer's noiseless approach and escape seems to defy all logic, and even the victim's identity is quickly thrown into uncertainty.

Three young women share a London flat. The first is a coolly efficient secretary. The second is an artist. The third interrupts Hercule Poirot's breakfast, confessing that she is a murderer - and then promptly disappears. Slowly, Poirot learns of the rumors surrounding the mysterious third girl, her family, and her disappearance. Yet hard evidence is needed before the great detective can pronounce her guilty, innocent, or insane.

When new bride Kaveri Murthy reluctantly agrees to investigate a minor crime to please her domineering mother-in-law—during the blood moon eclipse, no less—she doesn't expect, once again, to stumble upon a murder. With anti-British sentiment on the rise, a charismatic religious leader growing in influence, and the fight for women's suffrage gaining steam, Bangalore is turning out to be a far more dangerous and treacherous place than Kaveri ever imagined—and everyone's motives are suspect.

In Nicholas Meyer's The Return of the Pharaoh, Sherlock Holmes returns in an adventure that takes him to Egypt in search of a missing nobleman, a previously undiscovered pharaoh's tomb, and a conspiracy that threatens his very life.

During the height of the Great War, playboy Prince Harry, the third in line to the British throne, vanishes in thin air while horseback riding in Hyde Park The strikingly handsome playboy prince is initially believed to have arranged his disappearance so he can enjoy a brief rendezvous with one of his secret lovers. But when his absence continues on for days, the royal family grows concerned and summons Scotland Yard, who can only recover scant, unrevealing clues.

Lord Rosemorran has purchased a wax figure of a beautiful reclining woman and asks Stoker to incorporate a clockwork mechanism to give the Rosemorran Collection its own Sleeping Beauty in the style of Madame Tussaud’s. But when Stoker goes to cut the mannequin open to insert the mechanism, he makes a gruesome discovery: this is no wax figure. The mannequin is the beautifully preserved body of a young woman who was once very much alive. But who would do such a dreadful thing, and why?

According to the courts, Jacko Argyle bludgeoned his mother to death with a poker. The sentence was life imprisonment. But when Dr. Arthur Calgary arrives with the proof that confirms Jacko's innocence, it is too late - Jacko died behind bars followinga bout of pneumonia. Worse still, the doctor's revelations reopen old wounds in the family, increasing the likelihood that the real murderer will strike again.

When one of his cats accidentally discovers a rare Victory Disc, the Vinyl Detective and his girlfriend, Nevada, are whisked into the world of big band swing music and a mystery that began during the Second World War. Hired to track down the rest of the highly sought-after recordings of the Flare Path Orchestra, our hero will discover that the battles of the last world war aren’t over yet. And if all this sounds simple, it’s only because we haven’t mentioned drive-by shootings, murderous neo-Nazis, or that slight case of being buried alive....