Another classic collection of mysteries from the Golden Age of British crime writing, by the author of The Scarlet Pimpernel It has been twenty years since Polly Burton last saw the Teahouse Detective, but one foggy afternoon she stumbles into a Fleet Street café and chances upon the cantankerous sleuth again. The years have not softened his manner, nor dulled his appetite for unravelling the most tortuous of conspiracies, shedding light on mysteries that have confounded the finest minds of the police. How did Prince Orsoff disappear from his railway carriage in-between stations? How could the Ingres masterpiece be seen in two places at once? And what is the truth behind the story of the blood-stained tunic that exonerated its owner? From the comfort of his seat by the fire, the Teahouse Detective sets his brilliant mind to work once more.
Now available in one collection, four classic crime thrillers from the award-winning “French master of noir” (Observer) Unravelling like a paranoid nightmare, Bird in a Cage melds existentialist drama with thrilling noir to tell the story of a man trapped in a prison of his own making. Crush is a chilling 1950s suspense story of youthful naivety, dark obsession—and the slippery slope to murder. The Executioner Weeps is the winner of the 1957 Grand Prix de Littérature Policière. And The Gravedigger's Bread is a claustrophobic thriller about love gone wrong. All from the French master of noir. In Bird in a Cage, trouble is the last thing Albert needs. Traveling back to his childhood home on Christmas Eve to mourn his mother’s death, he finds the loneliness and nostalgia of his Parisian quartier unbearable. Until, that evening, he encounters a beautiful, seemingly innocent woman at a brasserie, and his spirits are lifted. Still, something about the woman disturbs him. Where is the father of her child? And what are those two red stains on her sleeve? When she invites him back to her apartment, Albert thinks he’s in luck. But a monstrous scene awaits them, and he finds himself lured into the darkness against his better judgment. Crush: Bored with her mundane factory job, her nagging mother, and her alcoholic father-in-law, 17-year-old Louise Lacroix is captivated by a glamorous American couple who moves to her industrial hometown in Northern France. The Roolands' home is an island of color, good humor, and easy living in drab 1950s Léopoldville—a place straight out of Louise’s dreams. Louise is thrilled when she successfully convinces the couple to hire her as their maid. But once she is under their roof, their model life starts to fall apart. Painful secrets from their past emerge, cracks in their relationship appear, and a dark obsession begins to grow. In The Executioner Weeps, it was fate that led her to step out in front of the car. A quiet mountain road. A crushed violin. And a beautiful woman lying motionless in the ditch. Carrying her back to his lodging on a beach near Barcelona, Daniel discovers that the woman is still alive but that she remembers nothing—not even her own name. And soon he has fallen for her mysterious allure. She is a blank canvas, a perfect muse, and his alone. But when Daniel travels to France in search of her past, he slips into a tangled vortex of lies, depravity, and murder. The Gravedigger's Bread: Blaise should never have hung around in that charmless little provincial town. The job offer that attracted him in the first place had failed to materialize. He should have got on the first train back to Paris, but Fate decided otherwise. After a chance encounter with a beautiful blonde in the town post-office, Blaise is hooked. He realizes he'll do anything to stay by her side, and soon finds himself working for her husband, a funeral director. But the tension in this strange love triangle begins to mount, and eventually results in a highly unorthodox burial.
The Old Man in the Corner is an unnamed armchair detective who appears in a series of short stories written by Baroness Orczy. He examines and solves crimes while sitting in the corner of a genteel London tea-room in conversation with a female journalist. He was one of the first of this character-type created in the wake of the huge popularity of the Sherlock Holmes stories. The character's moniker is used as the title of the collection of the earliest stories featuring the character.
The American Diary of a Japanese Girl Yoné Noguchi - Tokio, Sept. 23rd My new page of life is dawning. A trip beyond the seas-Meriken Kenbutsu-it's not an ordinary event. It is verily the first event in our family history that I could trace back for six centuries. My today's dream of America-dream of a butterfly sipping on golden dews-was rudely broken by the artless chirrup of a hundred sparrows in my garden. "Chui, chui! Chui, chui, chui!" Bad sparrows! My dream was silly but splendid. Dream is no dream without silliness which is akin to poetry. If my dream ever comes true!
DigiCat Publishing presents to you this special edition of "Lady Molly of Scotland Yard" by Baroness Emmuska Orczy. DigiCat Publishing considers every written word to be a legacy of humankind. Every DigiCat book has been carefully reproduced for republishing in a new modern format. The books are available in print, as well as ebooks. DigiCat hopes you will treat this work with the acknowledgment and passion it deserves as a classic of world literature.
Unravelled Knots, created by Baroness Orczy, author of the famous Scarlet Pimpernel series, contains thirteen short stories about Bill Owen, aka The Old Man in the Corner, Orzy's armchair detective who solves crimes for his own entertainment. It has been twenty years since Polly Burton last saw the Teahouse Detective, but one foggy afternoon she stumbles into a Fleet Street café and chances upon the cantankerous sleuth again. The years have not softened his manner, nor dulled his appetite for unravelling the most tortuous of conspiracies, shedding light on mysteries that have confounded the finest minds of the police. How did Prince Orsoff disappear from his railway carriage in-between stations? How could the Ingres masterpiece be seen in two places at once? And what is the truth behind the story of the blood-stained tunic that exonerated its owner? From the comfort of his seat by the fire, the Teahouse Detective sets his brilliant mind to work once more. This classic is an exciting adventure of mystery that will thrill and delight readers.
A dizzying tale of lust, mystery, and murder—from a beloved Japanese crime fiction author and LGBT icon The Lady Killer leads a double life in Tokyo's shadowy underworld. By day, he is a devoted husband and hard worker; by night, he cruises cabaret bars and nightclubs in search of lonely single women to seduce. But now the hunter is being hunted, and in his wake lies a trail of gruesome murders. Who is the culprit? The answer lies tangled in a web of clues—and to find it, he must accept that nothing is what it seems. The Lady Killer pulls from author Masako Togawa’s vibrant personal life as a cabaret performer for Tokyo’s gay nightclub scene during the ‘50s and ‘60s. Throughout her writing career, Togawa continued to champion the LGBT community as a queer woman—sealing her reputation as one of Japan’s most prominent crime fiction authors and LGBT heroines.
