"I hate him worse than I hate snails, and worms, and slugs, and spiders with hairs down their legs..."

Bride-to-be Mally was an unlikely fugitive from the police. It only happened because she became governess to millionaire Sir George Peterson's little girl, Barbara. Barbara hated Pinko, her father's slug-like secretary; and Mally had to agree. But Pinko liked Mally--he wanted her; and if Pinko wants anything he can't have he is apt to be unpleasant. So when, a few days later, the Mogul's priceless diamond was found in Mally's possession, the Slug was delighted. It was his...

"They are letting me say good-bye. I'm to be shot to-morrow. It will be over by the time you get this..."

Laura stood, pale and trembling, in the veiled dress she was to have worn as Jim Mackenzie's bride, and gave her word to marry Basil Stevens, a man she scarcely knew. In his unexpected visit Basil had made three things clear: Laura was the heiress of the great Hallingdon fortune; Jim faced a Soviet firing squad; and only this marriage would save Jim. Why? What was the plot that threatened to destroy him?

It was not until Laura phoned Jim late one night after he...

"I don't know...no one knows...nobody knows but me...and they're the finest emeralds in the world...the Van Berg emeralds...and nobody knows where they are but me..."

Jim could remember drinking with Elmer Van Berg and seeing his hand holding up the priceless string of emeralds--but Elmer Van Berg was killed that night. Did Jim do it? He couldn't remember a thing of the six weeks that followed. How could he have married the overbearing Nesta when Caroline, the lovely girl of his youth, was waiting for him? And how did the emeralds come to be in the secret hiding place in...

"Anybody could have told you what Ross was like."

"They did tell me," said Mavis tearfully. "That's why I did it."

Ross Craddock was just the type to be murdered. The new landlord of Craddock house, he begins by giving eviction notice to his aunt Lucy. He threatens the doorman with dismissal. He makes a violent and unwelcome pass to his cousin Mavis. He is vindictive and spiteful and ends up dead. The suspects include Lee who may have walked in her sleep and killed him out of unconscious fear. Or Peter who may have found Ross' advances to...

The parcel was addressed in sprawling capitals to "Antony Rossiter, Esq. By hand." There was no more address than that.

A sea-faring man brings an unassuming brown paper parcel to the offices of a distinguished law-firm. It soon plunges intelligence operative Antony Rossiter into the lethal underground of international espionage, military intelligence and murder.

An inexplicable prowler is disturbed in a modest London villa during a lull in the great raids; young Delia Merridew meets a young man in her moonlit garden; an unobserved parachutist drops to the earth of...

Why can no-one stay at the Dower House?

Amabel Grey, a charming and lovely widow, had not seen scientist Julian Forsham since she chose to marry another man. But it is their fate to meet again now at the eerie Dower House, a house whose previous tenants had tended to quit abruptly. Amabel Grey has accepted a large financial offer - or is it a challenge? - to anyone willing to stay in the Dower House for a full six months. A haunted house doesn't deter Amabel - not until some very nasty things start to go bump in the night...

Some old friends appear - Jane (of The...

The postwar English countryside is rocked by murder and a vanishing corpse in this classic mystery perfect for fans of Agatha Christie and Dorothy L. Sayers.

Det. Sgt. Frank Abbot of Scotland Yard thought he'd spend a quiet holiday at his family's estate near the quaint village of Deeping. Instead, he got intrigue and wild tales of a man dragging a horribly murdered girl into the Deeping Woods. Naturally he calls his friend, the private detective Miss Maud Silver, to take a look.

But things take a turn when no one can locate the body of the rumored victim, and...