The Great Gatsby is a 1925 novel written by American author F. Scott Fitzgerald that follows a cast of characters living in the fictional town of West Egg on prosperous Long Island in the summer of 1922. The story primarily concerns the young and mysterious millionaire Jay Gatsby and his quixotic passion and obsession for the beautiful former debutante Daisy Buchanan. Considered to be Fitzgerald's magnum opus, The Great Gatsby explores themes of decadence,...

While en route from Syria to Paris, in the middle of a freezing winter's night, the Orient Express is stopped dead in its tracks by a snowdrift. Passengers awake to find the train still stranded and to discover that a wealthy American has been brutally stabbed to death in his private compartment. Incredibly, that compartment is locked from the inside. With no escape into the wintery landscape the killer must still be on board. Fortunately, the brilliant...

When a Romanian housekeeper, a prime suspect in the brutal murder of her employer, dies while fleeing arrest, the police close the books on the crime, until new information prompts Commissario Guido Brunetti to investigate.

"Let us see, Mr. Clever Poirot, just how clever you can be." There's a serial killer on the loose, working his way through the alphabet and the whole country is in a state of panic. A is for Mrs. Ascher in Andover, B is for Betty Barnard in Bexhill, C is for Sir Carmichael Clarke in Churston. With each murder, the killer is getting more confident--but leaving a trail of deliberate clues to taunt the proud Hercule Poirot might just prove to be the...

Presents a selection of fourteen of Hercule Poirot's most baffling cases, including the country house murders and an adventure in an Egyptian tomb.

Tommy and Tuppence Beresford are Partners in Crime, or rather partners in crime solving, and must demonstrate their deductive skills in a wide range of confounding cases after agreeing to take over Blunt's International Detective Agency.

A child's nursery rhyme holds three clues to finding a cunning killer when a well-to-do household becomes infested with murder.

On a quiet morning in St. Mary Mead, a maid wakes Colonel Bantry and his wife to inform them that a young woman is dead in their library. The victim is dressed in a tawdry dress, with dyed hair and heavy make-up. Mrs. Bantry knows that as long as the murder remains unsolved her husband will be the target of suspicion and gossip, so she asks Miss Marple for help. The victim is 18-year-old Ruby Keene, a dancer at the Majestic Hotel, whose body is identified...

H.G. Wells' "scientific romance," published first in serial form and then as a book in 1898, attained perhaps its greatest fame in another form, the infamous realistic 1939 radio broadcast "Invasion from Mars" by Orson Welles. It was also made into an early 1950s science fiction adventure movie. Stover (emeritus, Illinois Institute of Technology) describes Wells' story as "a prophecy of startling originality foreseeing the coming of totalitarianism...

Born and raised in the appalling deprivation of a Victorian-era London workhouse, the orphan Oliver escapes the drudgery of apprenticeship only to fall into the hands of the notorious Fagin and his gang of child thieves. But Oliver is an innocent at heart and the attempts by Fagin and the impudently witty Artful Dodger to teach the boy the trick of the pick-pocket's trade lead only to his almost immediate capture. Oliver's rescue by the kindly Mr....