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A suspicious accident reveals itself to be a murder! Our story is narrated by a lawyer who turns detective in order to uncover the real murderer, and leads us on a chase through Bolshevik headquarters, country clubs, and a dry creek bed, before the real clues come to light. Up-in-the-air excitement! (Summary by Brenda Price)...

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Nancy 'Nance' Olden, a young and very pretty woman, is an accomplished liar and thief. Raised in a horrific orphanage, called the Cruelty by its occupants, Nance and her criminal boyfriend, Tom Dorgan, are pulling a con when the book begins. The results of their act propel Nance into a series of events that she could never have imagined. This was Miriam Michelson's first novel and it was considered a 'blockbuster' in its day. Ranked fourth on the list of bestsellers of 1904 by Publishers Weekly, Michelson's book was a source of controversy due to the dubious ethics and morals of its heroine. (Summary by Lee Ann Howlett)...

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This is the second of five books of short stories about G. K. Chesterton’s fictional detective, first published in 1914. Father Brown is a short, nondescript Catholic Priest with shapeless clothes and a large umbrella who has an uncanny insight into human evil. His methods, unlike those of his near contemporary Sherlock Holmes, although based on observation of details often unnoticed by others, tended to be intuitive rather than deductive. Although clearly devout, he always emphasizes rationality: despite his religiousness and his belief in God and miracles, he manages to see the perfectly ordinary, natural explanation of the problem. He is a devout, educated and civilized clergyman, who is totally familiar with contemporary and secular thought and behavior. His character was thought to be based on Father John O'Connor (1870 - 1952), a parish priest in Bradford, Yorkshire. (Summary by Martin)...

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Mystery

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Jewelry thefts, society parties, clairvoyance, and romance marks this mystery, which is set in England and the US in the early 20th century. (Summary by Gesine)...

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Het verhaal speelt zich af in 1887 of 1888, en draait deels om de Oost-Indische Compagnie en de Muiterij van Sepoy. Sherlock Holmes en Dr. Watson worden benaderd door Miss Mary Morstan, die hun vraagt mee te helpen met de zoektocht naar haar vader. Hij was officier in India, maar is 10 jaar geleden verdwenen toen hij terug zou komen naar Engeland. Een anonieme brief brengt de drie op het spoor van Thaddeus Sholto. Van hem vernemen ze dat zijn vader goed bevriend was met Morstans vader en met hem in dezelfde legereenheid diende in India. Hij vertelt echter ook dat beide mannen dood zijn en dat er een schat in het spel is die hij en zijn broer hebben meegenomen uit India. Kort hierop sterft de broer van Thaddeus onder mysterieuze omstandigheden en verdwijnt de schat. (Wikipedia)...

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Mystery

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A quiet cathedral town in England, full of gossips and people who are not quite who they seem to be, is the setting for this murder mystery. (Summary by Gesine)...

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Mystery

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A Study in Scarlet is a detective mystery novel written by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, introducing his new character of Sherlock Holmes, who later became one of the most famous literary detective characters. He wrote the story in 1886, and it was published the next year. The book's title derives from a speech given by Holmes to his sidekick Doctor Watson on the nature of his work, in which he describes the story's murder investigation as his study in scarlet: There’s the scarlet thread of murder running through the colourless skein of life, and our duty is to unravel it, and isolate it, and expose every inch of it. Although Conan Doyle wrote 56 short stories featuring Holmes, A Study in Scarlet is one of only four full-length novels in the original canon. The novel was followed by The Sign of Four, published in 1890. A Study in Scarlet was the first work of fiction to incorporate the magnifying glass as an investigative tool....

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A murder whodunit... Location: Hampstead, England. Victim: Sir Horace Fewbanks, a distinguished High Court judge. Cause of death: gun shot wound. Investigator: Private Detective Crewe, a wealthy bachelor who has taken up crime detection as a hobby, because it provides intellectual challenges more satisfying even than playing twelve simultaneous boards against Russian chess champion Turgieff. His sidekick Joe is a fourteen year old Cockney boy, whom Crewe saved from a life of crime by hiring him as a messenger-boy and shadower. Other whodunit elements: clues galore, suspects in abundance, an inquest, a trial, and an elegant resolution. (Summary by Maikki)...

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Anna Katharine Green (November 11, 1846 – April 11, 1935) was an American poet and novelist. She was one of the first writers of detective fiction in America and distinguished herself by writing well plotted, legally accurate stories (no doubt assisted by her lawyer father)....

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A collection of six wonderfully quirky detective stories, featuring the 'mystic' former judge Basil Grant. Each story reveals a practitioner of an entirely new profession, and member of the Club of Queer Trades. (Summary by David Barnes)...

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It's 1865 in the city of San Francisco. Pretty, young Ellie Fenwick is walking to the market early one morning to surprise her father with some fresh mushrooms. As she passes a gambling house, she hears a gunshot and two young men emerge. One man falls dead on the pavement and the other is Johnny Montgomery, a handsome young man Ellie recognizes from seeing him previously at a dance. Johnny is holding a smoking pistol in his hand. This incident propels the proper young Ellie into a world of prisons and courtrooms as a murder trial unfolds and the fate of Johnny may rest with her testimony. But, what is the connection with the mysterious Spanish Woman, who lives in a grand house and supposedly has friends in 'high places'? Who else was in the gambling house at that time of the morning before it had opened? What about the whispered conversations between Ellie's father, Mr. Fenwick, and his friend, Mr. Bingley, a prominent attorney prosecuting the case? Things are not always what they may seem... (Introduction by Lee Ann Howlett)...

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Mr. Philip Kirkwood, a not so successful painter, receives a visitor from his home town in America, who wants him to do him an unspecified favor, but Kirkwood doesn''t trust him and sends him away. That night, he sees the stranger dine with his beautiful daughter. In order to protect the girl, the stranger confesses to Kirkwood, that he will be arrested upon leaving the restaurant. Kirkwood agrees to take care of the girl, but when he brings her home, he knows that she is in danger and that there is a mystery attached. He decides to protect the girl? (Summary by Carolin)...

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Uncle Silas is a Victorian Gothic mystery/thriller novel by the Anglo-Irish writer J. Sheridan Le Fanu. It is notable as one of the earliest examples of the locked room mystery subgenre. It is not a novel of the supernatural (despite a few creepily ambiguous touches), but does show a strong interest in the occult and in the ideas of Swedenborg....

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The Mystery of Edwin Drood is the final novel by Charles Dickens. The novel was left unfinished at the time of Dickens' death, and readers have often speculated what the ending might have been. The novel is named after Edwin Drood, but it mostly tells the story of his uncle, a Jekyll-and-Hyde-esque choirmaster named John Jasper, who is in love with his pupil, Rosa Bud. Miss Bud is Drood's fiancée, and has caught the eye of the high-spirited and hot-tempered Neville Landless, who comes from Ceylon (now Sri Lanka) with his twin sister, Helena, and immediately makes an enemy of Drood. It is hinted strongly that Jasper is the murderer, but it is not known whether Dickens had a surprise in mind. (Summary from Wikipedia)...

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Späte Rache (engl. A Study in Scarlet, deutsch auch unter dem Titel Eine Studie in Scharlachrot erschienen), von Arthur Conan Doyle im Alter von 27 Jahren verfasst, beschreibt zunächst, wie Sherlock Holmes und Dr. Watson sich kennenlernen und ist damit der Beginn der Reihe von Geschichten um den berühmten fiktiven Detektiv. Der Roman besteht aus zwei Teilen: Er beginnt mit Dr. Watsons Aufzeichnungen über sein Zusammentreffen mit Sherlock Holmes und der Schilderung eines merkwürdigen Mordfalls und dessen Aufklärung. Im zweiten Teil wird die Vorgeschichte des Mordes erzählt, die sich in einer Mormonengemeinde in Utah zutrug. Zum Schluss werden die beiden Teile noch einmal in Watsons Aufzeichnungen zusammengeführt. (Zusammenfassung von Wikipedia und Karlsson.)...

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Humphrey Challoner is a solitary old man who spent a lifetime collecting for his private museum, primarily mammals exhibiting osteological abnormalities but also 24 articulated human skeletons without any apparent defect. His friend, Dr. Wharton, is puzzled by the collection, but he humors Challoner's eccentricities and tends to him in his final illness. When Wharton inherits the collection on Challoner's death, the dark mystery that ties the collection together is finally revealed. (Summary by MaryAnn)...

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A fabulously rich gold mine in Mexico is known by the picturesque and mysterious name of The Four Fingers. It originally belonged to an Aztec tribe, and its location is known to one surviving descendant. Surprises, strange and startling, are concealed in every chapter of this completely engrossing detective story. And through it runs the thread of a curious love story. (summary adapted from Grosset & Dunlap Publishers, 1908)...

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Auf die Sängerin Giuseppa Fiametti wird ein Mordversuch verübt. Ganz B ... ist in Aufregung und man munkelt allerlei über die dunkle Vergangenheit der Sängerin. Medizinalrat Lange geht der Sache nach. Es gelingt ihm, das Vertrauen der Fiametti zu gewinnen, die ihm ihre traurige Lebensgeschichte anvertraut. Doch warum nannte die Sängerin kurz nach dem Anschlag den Namen des wohlangesehenen Kommerzienrat Bolnau, der sich durch sein seltsames Verhalten vor allem in den Augen des Polizeipräsidenten mehr als verdächtig macht? (Zusammenfassung von Hokuspokus)...

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I was, perhaps, the plainest girl in the room that night. I was also the happiest—up to one o'clock. Then my whole world crumbled, or, at least, suffered an eclipse. Why and how, I am about to relate. Thus begins this mystery told by Anna Katharine Green, one of the first writers of detective fiction in America and renowned for writing well plotted, legally accurate stories.(Summary by Annise)...

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The novel begins with a telephone call to Wimsey from his mother, the Dowager Duchess of Denver, saying that her vicar’s architect has just found a dead body in his bath, wearing nothing but a pair of pince-nez. Whose body is it? Whodunnit? It’s up to Lord Peter to find out. (Summary by Kara and Wikipedia)...

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Mystery