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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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Mystery

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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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Mystery

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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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The sudden death of wealthy and prominent financier, Pennington Lawton from an apparent heart attack, followed by the shocking revelation of his impending bankruptcy, leaves his sole heir and only daughter, Anita, distraught and nearly penniless. Nonetheless, she is determined to unravel the mystery surrounding her father’s death and the loss of his great fortune. To this end she engages the famous detective, Henry Blaine who is determined to unravel the tangled web of deception and restore both her father’s reputation and Anita’s inheritance. Isabel Ostrander, who also wrote under the pseudonyms Christopher B. Booth, Robert Orr Chipperfield, David Fox, and Douglas Grant, was a prolific author of early American crime fiction. In The Crevice she collaborated with coauthor, William J. Burns, who served for three years as director of the Bureau of Investigation (a predecessor of the FBI)and was also famous for his exploits as a private detective. His cases served as material for the “true” crime stories he later wrote and published in detective magazines in the early 20th century. (summary by J. M. Smallheer)...

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Mr Robert Grell, millionaire and socialite, is found murdered in his study on a stormy evening. It's up to Heldon Foyle, the detective, to unravel the mystery. (Summary by Christine Blachford - to be expanded)...

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Inhabitants of the small town of Hamilton joke that they are afraid of being the dummy when playing Bridge, for fear of being murdered. Meanwhile, Special Investigator Bonnie Dundee demands a re-enactment of the 'death hand' to try and find out why, and how, the victim was killed during a high society Bridge party. (Summary by Gesine)...

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Well-known mystery writer John Lexman is charged with murder and sent to Broadmoor Prison. His friend T.X., head of a special branch of Scotland Yard, tries to prove his innocence. (Summary by Gesine)...

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A perfect diamond worth millions is mailed, in a plain package, to a diamond dealer. Then he finds that identical diamonds were delivered to other diamond dealers. Where did the gems come from? Who sent them? And why? (Introduction by Dawn)...

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A young American archeologist, a masked ball in Cairo, an illusive young woman and the unexplained disappearance of a Frenchman fifteen years earlier all play into this mystery by Mary Hastings Bradley. (summary written by the reader)...

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Bank manager John Hornbury is missing, as are securities and jewels from the bank’s vault. Gabriel Chestermarke and his nephew Joseph have unaccountably refused to call in the police to investigate the theft from their bank. When Betty Fosdyke shows up to visit her Uncle John, she finds it past belief that he would simply disappear – let alone that he would commit larceny. Unable to simply sit by and wait while a detective from Scotland Yard investigates, Betty elicits the help of the chief clerk at Chestermarke’s bank and launches into the middle of the mystery.(Summary by MaryAnn)...

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The dead body of a man is found on the steps to some chambers of Middle Temple Lane, near London's law courts. A journalist and a young lawyer start investigating. - This classic English murder mystery was written in 1920 by J.S. Fletcher, himself a lawyer turned journalist and author. (Summary by Gesine)...

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The small town of Shelby is shaken by a brutal murder. A man by the name of Etheridge was found beaten to death. A local inn-keeper, is convicted and executed for the crime. Many years later, a woman in purple shows up at the house of Ostrander, the respected judge who had sentenced the inn-keeper to be executed. This mysterious woman turns out to be the wife of the convicted man, but she does not believe he was guilty. She visits the Judge, to challenge him on his verdict. He listens to her plea, but reaffirms his belief in her husbands guilt. Having nowhere to go, Deborah is given the position of maid, which she secretly uses to obtain proof of her husband's innocence and the identity of the real killer. However, the initial evidence that Deborah collects points in troubling new directions. (Summary by Elaine Webb)...

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Mystery

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Gaston Leroux, perhaps best known as the author of The Phantom of the Opera in its novel form, was also the author of a popular series of mystery novels featuring a young journalist cum detective named Joseph Rouletabille. It is most likely that Leroux styled his hero after himself. Rouletabille was in the tradition of other great detectives who solved their cases by pure deductive reasoning. Much as Sherlock Holmes, who eliminated the impossible and concluded that whatever remained, however improbable must be the truth, Rouletabille included the known facts about the case and eliminated everything that was not a known fact, no matter how much it appeared to relate to the case. In The Secret of the Night, the names of the characters are often challengingly Russian and the plot involves, appropriately, both the Czar and the Nihilists. Introduction by Don W. Jenkins)...

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Mystery

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A habitual late night stroll down Markendale Square plunges Viner into the middle of things most mysterious and most perplexing. A murder, an imposter, secret papers, all combine to mystify even the police themselves. Is Hyde as innocent of the crime as he claims? What is the clue of the veiled woman and the diamond ring? Things are not what they seem to be and how can Viner prove the man's innocence? (Summary by Kehinde)...

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Mary Roberts Rinehart (1876-1958) was a prolific American writer of popular mysteries. The Circular Staircase was originally published in 1908 and includes all the elements of the classic whodunit – mysterious events, ghostly apparitions, things that go bump in the night and murder. (Summary by J. M. Smallheer)...

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The many adventures of Professor Craig Kennedy were chronicled by Arthur B. Reeve (October 15, 1880 - August 9, 1936). Reeve was an American mystery writer who created 82 Craig Kennedy mystery stories. The stories have a very Sherlock Holmes type feel, In fact Kennedy has been referred to as the American Shelock Holmes. Along with his reporter friend, Walter Jameson, Kennedy solves many crimes and unveils mysteries using science. This book contains twelve of Professor Kennedy's adventures. The interesting thing about these stories is Kennedy uses newly discovered science from his time period, which we take for granted today. The first story, The Silent Bullet, has everyone wondering how a bullet could kill someone with no noise. Today, silencers on guns are commonplace in movies and on TV. Or as in The Deadly Tube featuring the story of a doctor causing his patients much harm with evil x-rays, or the developmnt of the gyroscope for aeroplanes in The Terror in the Air. Each story features a facinating look at life in the early 20th century, and even includes some action along the way....

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Giles Dudley is called upon by his cousin Henry Wilton to assist him in San Francisco, but the reason for the summons is not at all clear. Dudley answers the summons, only to find himself immediately wrapped in the middle of mystery and intrigue, the roots and ends of which he is utterly unaware. He has been given to care for a mysterious young boy whom he hasn't even seen. His cousin has mysteriously disappeared. Dudley's role in the mystery has him convinced that as he goes about trying to assist his cousin with whatever it was he wanted to accomplish, he does so completely blindfolded . (Summary by Roger Melin)...

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Meet Hamilton Cleek - man of mystery, and master of disguise and derring-do. Cleek's exploits are, to say the least, highly improbable, but the book is enormous fun. The goodies are good and the baddies are very bad indeed, but beware - things are not always what they seem. Suspend your disbelief and enjoy a rattling good yarn! Cleek is the central figure in dozens of short stories that began to appear in 1910 and were subsequently collected in a series of books. (Summary by Ruth Golding and Wikipedia)...

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Mystery