Wanda McCaddon
101) Wives and daughters
There was only one mystery Agatha Christie could not solve: her own.
Dame Agatha Christie is best known for her detective novels and short stories. She is one of the most popular authors of all time, her novels having sold over four billion copies and having been translated into 103 languages.
On the evening of December 8, 1926, Agatha Christie disappeared from her home in Sunningdale, Berkshire, leaving only a note for her secretary indicating
...103) The Kingless Land
Aglirta is known as the Kingless Land. Once prosperous and peaceful, it has now fallen into lawlessness, studded with feuding baronies engaged in a constant state of war. The only hope for peace lies in the legend of the Sleeping King, destined to rise and restore peace when the Dwaerindim stones are recovered.
Lady Embra Silvertree is the sorceress daughter of a bellicose baron with an eye towards world domination. She has been imprisoned
...They were teachers, students, chemists, writers, and housewives—a singer at the Paris Opera, a midwife, a dental surgeon. They distributed anti-Nazi leaflets, printed subversive newspapers, hid resisters, spirited Jews to safety, transported weapons, and conveyed clandestine messages. The youngest was a schoolgirl of fifteen who scrawled "V" for victory on the walls of her lycée; the eldest, a farmer's wife in her sixties who harbored escaped
...At the height of the French Revolution’s Reign of Terror, a mysterious daredevil rescues French aristocrats from execution and smuggles them out of France. This secretive escape artist is known to the French authorities only by the drawings of a flower, the scarlet pimpernel, that he leaves as his calling card.
Marguerite St. Just has avoided the worst of the revolutionary turmoil. Her recent marriage to the English baronet
...107) Aesop's fables
This 1870 memoir, which was the basis for the musical The King and I, vividly recounts the experiences of Anna Harriette Leonowens, who served as a governess for the sixty-plus children of King Mongkut of Siam and as translator and scribe for the King himself. Bright, young, and energetic, Leonowens was well-suited to her role, and her writings convey a heartfelt interest in the lives, legends, and languages of Siam's rich and poor.
She also
...Meet the woman behind the apron in Noël Riley Fitch's revealing biography of America's favorite cook: Julia Child.
A household name, Julia Child has entered the hearts of millions of Americans through their kitchens. Yet few know the richly varied private life that lies behind this icon. Fitch takes us from her exuberant youth through her years at Smith College, where Julia was at the center of every prank and party. When most of her
...112) Howards End
A man dies with his hand on a radio dial. A disguised aristocrat finds murder at the opening night of a play. A cryptogram produces death in an English churchyard. These are just a few of the situations that confront Scotland Yard's Inspector Roderick Alleyn who, with his lovely wife Agatha Troy, charmed his way through more than thirty novels. Many other colorful characters created by Ngaio Marsh appear throughout this collection as well.
...114) The Bachelors
A barrister, a "priest," a detective, a lovelorn Irishman, a handwriting expert, a heinous spiritual medium…the very British bachelors of Muriel Spark's supreme 1960 novel come in every stripe. First found contentedly chatting in their London clubs and shopping at Fortnum's, the cozy bachelors are not set to stay cozy for long. Soon enough, the men are variously tormented—defrauded, stolen from, blackmailed, or pressed to attend horrid séances—and
...115) The Sultan's Seal
The naked body of a young Englishwoman washes up in Istanbul wearing a pendant inscribed with the seal of the deposed sultan. The death resembles the unsolved murder of another Englishwoman, a governess, ten years before. A magistrate in the new secular courts, Kamil Pasha, sets out to find the killer, but his dispassionate belief in science and modernity is shaken by betrayal and widening danger. In a lush, mystical voice, a young Muslim woman
...A late spring in 1142 has the monks of Shrewsbury Abbey dismayed, for there may be no roses by June 22. For three years, wealthy young widow Judith Perle has rented her house to the monks for the price of a single white rose each year, in honor of her late husband. When nature finally complies, a pious monk is sent to pay the rent—and found murdered beside the hacked rosebush.
Without a rose, the monks' rental contract becomes void,
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