Showing results by author "Mary Roberts Rinehart" in All Categories

Letitia Carberry, Tish to her friends, is off again on three entirely different adventures. Tish, Aggie and Lizzie, three middle-aged spinsters, are on track to create havoc wherever they go, but Tish is definitely the ringleader and leads where the other two ladies would rather not go.

Letitia Carberry is not your ordinary spinster aunt. Letitia, Tish to her friends, entangles her friends Aggie and Lizzie into all sorts of adventures and scrapes from solving a murder, car races and camping, and horse trekking. Letitia Carberry is a force to be reckoned with.

The Circular Staircase is a mystery novel by American writer Mary Roberts Rinehart. The story follows dowager Rachel Innes as she thwarts a series of strange crimes at a summer house she has rented with her niece and nephew.

Rachel Innes is a rich lady who has been taking care of her niece and nephew since their father died. The three of them decide to rent a house in the country and although everything seems to be alright in the beginning, strange events soon begin to occur. Her niece disappears then reappears a few days later. There is a murder they are involved in. They hear strange noises. Things fall down the stairs in the middle of the night. Will Rachel solve the mysteries and how will their summer end? Find out in "The Circular Staircase". B. J.

An older woman of the elite class has lots of money and abundant courage and determination. Miss Cornelia Van Gorder wants some adventure in her life, so she rents a large mansion to see what she can stir up. She moves in with her niece and an unpredictable Irish maid and is confronted by an embezzlement problem at the owner’s bank. But that’s just the beginning of troubles, because a murderous masked criminal known as The Bat is using the mansion as a hideout.

Rachel Innes, a middle-aged spinster, has barely settled in at the country house she has rented for the summer when a series of bizarre and violent events threaten to perturb her normally unflappable nature. A strange figure appears briefly in the twilight outside a window. At night, a rattling, metallic sound reverberates through dark halls, and - most disconcerting of all - the body of a strange man is found lying in a pool of blood at the bottom of a circular staircase.

This is the story of Sara Lee Kennedy’s memory - and of something more. You’ll hear all about it.

Considered "The American Agatha Christie", Rinehart outsold Christie in their mutual lifetime through 1958 when she died. Her first book, The Circular Staircase, may have paved the way for The Mysterious Affair at Styles as the second does Agatha's Tommy and Tuppence series, which combined a thriller and mystery with a love match.

As far as Carol Spencer is concerned, the war has spoiled everything. She and Don had been engaged for years and were on the verge of marriage when he was shot down in the South Pacific, leaving Carol on the verge of spinsterhood at 24. She wants to take some kind of job in the war effort, but her invalid mother demands that Carol accompany her to the family's summer home in Maine. But when they arrive at the faded mansion, they find it completely locked up. The servants are gone, the lights are dark - and there is a body in the closet.

Allegheny, Pennsylvania, now a part of the city of Pittsburgh, floods frequently and Mrs. Pittman has her boat tied to the stair banister, just inside the front door. It's 1904 and Jennie Brice, a stage actress, is missing from Mrs. Pittman's respectable boarding house. A blood-stained rope, bloody towel, floating slipper, a soaking wet fur coat, and a missing onyx clock are all clues. Most helpful is the installation of a periscope from Mr. Holcombe's floor through to ceiling of the room below. Where is Jennie Brice?

With all the elements of a timeless mystery, Mary Roberts Rinehart first published The Window at the White Cat in 1910. John Knox is an attorney, not a detective, but Margery turns to him when her father, Allan Fleming, the State Treasurer, does not return home. There are reasons it should not be made known that he is missing. Where is he?

Aunt Rachel heard something last night. Gertrude heard it as well. Tonight, shots ring out, and a dead body appears at the foot of the circular staircase. Now it is up to Rachel to piece together what happened, as she weaves her way through the circular statements of paranoid staff, secret passages, and even suspicions of ghosts.

Crescent Place was once a peaceful country green surrounded by five tasteful suburban houses and populated by polite, responsible citizens. But as the city enveloped it, the residents built a gate to keep the world out. With each passing year, the subdivision grew stranger and stranger - until it began to look like a time capsule of the 1890s.

The Birches was one of the grand mansions of the 1920s, with a ballroom, tennis courts, and, of course, a swimming pool. But after the crash of '29, when Lois and Judith's father killed himself to escape his debts, the family turned the summer home into a fulltime retreat from the world. Decades later, Judith is the queen of New York society, a fast-living beauty whose nerves are beginning to fray, while Lois still lives in the dilapidated old mansion, writing mystery novels to pay the bills. She is about to encounter a mystery of her own.

In an elaborate house known as the Cloisters, Maud Wainwright rules supreme. The queen of society in the small town of Beverly, she has a table long enough to seat 100, and she keeps an iron grip on the guest list. Her right-hand woman is Pat Abbott, a local girl who is beautiful, innocent, and kind. Pat has no idea how cutthroat high society can be, but she's about to get a deadly first lesson.

Elizabeth Bell runs a quiet household, with no family and no more than the usual number of servants. She passes her time thinking about crime and working on her biography of a relative. When a young cousin comes to stay, life in the house becomes uncharacteristically lively. First, cousin Judy burns a hole in Miss Bell's desk. Next, they spy a burglar on the staircase - a shadowy figure who vanishes without a trace. And finally, Sarah, the nurse, takes the dogs for a walk and never returns.

The house called Sunset has been Marcia's summer home for her entire life. Both of her parents died there, and she and her brother spent their youth exploring its rambling hallways and seaside grounds. They love the old house, but Marcia's sister-in-law has never taken to it. Juliette loathes the sea, and soon comes to loathe her husband as well. After they divorce, Juliette pays a final visit to Sunset, demanding alimony. She is there for a few tense days before she disappears. It takes them a week to find her body.

A rip-roaring mystery and romance about a girl in the shade because her older sister can't get married, so is kept a child rather than being permitted to come out as a debutant and woman. Bab keeps them all jumping while trying to do right by everyone though often causing trouble instead. Bravely, she stands up to the bad guys and saves them all. Great fun with wit, wisdom, and irony along the way.

A cozy mystery and romance set in early 20th-century America similar to Sinclair Lewis’ landmark work Main Street, but with a softer touch and mysteries to carry the work forward.

An intrigue tale of Americans in Europe studying, perfecting their skills in music and medicine and more as career hopes collide with romance and mystery. A tale written before so many Americans such as Hemingway and Fitzgerald went to Paris for the same reasons.