Download or read book Death on the Cherwell written by Mavis Doriel Hay and published by eBookIt.com. This book was released on 2021-01-28 with total page 200 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: When undergraduates from Oxford's all-girl Persephone College meet on a cold and dreary January afternoon by the River Cherwell, they are surprised by a canoe floating, apparently empty down the river. But as it passes close by beneath them they quickly realise that it is not empty and that there is someone lying in it. They pull it ashore only to discover that it is the body of their erstwhile bursar, Miss Myra Denning. It seems at first as though she had drowned for she was soaking wet but it is soon realised that she would have been unable to get back into the canoe had that been the case...
Download or read book Murder Underground written by Mavis Hay and published by Sourcebooks, Inc.. This book was released on 2016-11-01 with total page 272 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Mystery crime fiction written in the Golden Age of Murder "In terms of plot, the novel is almost pure puzzle, making it a prime example of a Golden Age mystery, but Hay injects humor and keen characterization into the mix as well." —Booklist STARRED review When Miss Pongleton is found murdered on the stairs of Belsize Park station, her fellow-boarders in the Frampton Hotel are not overwhelmed with grief at the death of a tiresome old woman. But they all have their theories about the identity of the murderer, and help to unravel the mystery of who killed the wealthy 'Pongle'. Several of her fellow residents—even Tuppy the terrier—have a part to play in the events that lead to a dramatic arrest. This classic mystery novel is set in and around the Northern Line of the London Underground. It is now republished for the first time since the 1930s, with an introduction by award-winning crime writer Stephen Booth.
Download or read book The Bookseller s Tale written by Ann Swinfen and published by Canelo. This book was released on 2021-11-22 with total page 294 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The death of a scholar, the birth of a detective... Oxford, Spring 1353. When young bookseller Nicholas Elyot discovers the body of William Farringdon floating in the River Cherwell, all the signs point to suicide. Soon, however, Nicholas discovers evidence of murder. Who could have wanted to kill this promising student? As Nicholas and his close friend Jordain try to unravel what lies behind William’s death, they learn that he was innocently caught up in a criminal plot. When their investigations begin to involve town, university, and abbey, Nicholas takes a risky gamble – and puts his family in terrible danger in order to uncover the truth. A thrilling historical mystery full of twists and intrigue, perfect for fans of Ellis Peters, Paul Doherty and E. M. Powell.
Download or read book How to Kill Your Family written by Bella Mackie and published by Abrams. This book was released on 2022-08-02 with total page 355 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Bella Mackie’s How to Kill Your Family is a darkly humorous debut novel that follows a cunning antihero as she gets her revenge. When I think about what I actually did, I feel somewhat sad that nobody will ever know about the complex operation that I undertook. Getting away with it is highly preferable, of course, but perhaps when I’m long gone, someone will open an old safe and find this confession. The public would reel. After all, almost nobody else in the world can possibly understand how someone, by the tender age of twenty-eight, can have calmly killed six members of her family. And then happily got on with the rest of her life, never to regret a thing. When Grace Bernard discovers her absentee millionaire father has rejected her dying mother’s pleas for help, she vows revenge and coldly sets out to get her retribution—by killing them all, one by one. Compulsively readable, Bella Mackie’s debut novel is driven by a captivating first-person narrator who talks of self-care and social media while calmly walking the reader through her increasingly baroque acts of murder. But then, Grace is imprisoned for a murder she didn’t commit. Outrageously funny, compulsive, and subversive, How to Kill Your Family is a wickedly dark romp about class, family, love . . . and murder. “Funny, sharp, dark, and twisted.” —Jojo Moyes
Download or read book A narrow escape written by Faith Martin and published by . This book was released on 2008 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: DI Hillary Greene is not a happy woman. Not only has her corrupt husband died, leaving her in the mire with an internal investigation team, but she's living on a relative's canal boat in the tiny village of Thrupp. Things perk up, however, when her boss assigns her the case of a body found in a canal lock.
Download or read book Party Girls Die in Pearls written by Plum Sykes and published by HarperCollins. This book was released on 2017-05-09 with total page 352 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “A rollicking murder mystery. . . . a wildly entertaining romp. . . . Laugh? I died.”—Vogue The New York Times bestselling author of Bergdorf Blondes takes us back to the decadent 1980s in this comic murder mystery set in the tony world of Oxford University. It’s 1985, and at Oxford University, Pimm’s, punting, and ball gowns are de rigeur. Ursula Flowerbutton, a studious country girl, arrives for her first term anticipating nothing more sinister than days spent poring over history books in gilded libraries—and, if she’s lucky, an invitation to a ball. But when she discovers a glamorous classmate on a chaise longue with her throat cut, Ursula is catapulted into a murder investigation. Determined to bag her first scoop for the famous student newspaper Cherwell, Ursula enlists the help of trend-setting American exchange student Nancy Feingold to unravel the case. While navigating a whirl of black-tie parties and secret dining societies, the girls discover a surfeit of suspects. From broken-hearted boyfriends to snobby Sloane Rangers, lovelorn librarians to dishy dons, none can be presumed innocent—and Ursula’s investigations mean that she may be next on the murderer’s list. Clueless meets Agatha Christie in this wickedly funny tale of high society and low morals, the first book in Plum Sykes’ irresistible new series.
Download or read book If We Were Villains written by M. L. Rio and published by Flatiron Books. This book was released on 2017-04-11 with total page 368 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “Much like Donna Tartt’s The Secret History, M. L. Rio’s sparkling debut is a richly layered story of love, friendship, and obsession...will keep you riveted through its final, electrifying moments.” —Cynthia D’Aprix Sweeney, New York Times bestselling author of The Nest "Nerdily (and winningly) in love with Shakespeare...Readable, smart.” —New York Times Book Review On the day Oliver Marks is released from jail, the man who put him there is waiting at the door. Detective Colborne wants to know the truth, and after ten years, Oliver is finally ready to tell it. A decade ago: Oliver is one of seven young Shakespearean actors at Dellecher Classical Conservatory, a place of keen ambition and fierce competition. In this secluded world of firelight and leather-bound books, Oliver and his friends play the same roles onstage and off: hero, villain, tyrant, temptress, ingénue, extras. But in their fourth and final year, good-natured rivalries turn ugly, and on opening night real violence invades the students’ world of make-believe. In the morning, the fourth-years find themselves facing their very own tragedy, and their greatest acting challenge yet: convincing the police, each other, and themselves that they are innocent. If We Were Villains was named one of Bustle's Best Thriller Novels of the Year, and Mystery Scene says, "A well-written and gripping ode to the stage...A fascinating, unorthodox take on rivalry, friendship, and truth."
Download or read book The It Girl written by Ruth Ware and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2024-05-21 with total page 560 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “The pages turn themselves” (People) in this white-knuckled mystery following a woman on the search for answers a decade after her friend’s murder from #1 New York Times bestselling author Ruth Ware. April Clarke-Cliveden was the first person Hannah Jones met at Oxford. Vivacious, bright, occasionally vicious, and the ultimate It girl, she quickly pulled Hannah into her dazzling orbit. Together, they developed a group of devoted and inseparable friends—Will, Hugh, Ryan, and Emily—during their first term. By the end of the year, April was dead. Now, a decade later, Hannah and Will are expecting their first child, and the man convicted of killing April, former Oxford porter John Neville, has died in prison. Relieved to have finally put the past behind her, Hannah’s world is rocked when a young journalist comes knocking and presents new evidence that Neville may have been innocent. As Hannah reconnects with old friends and delves deeper into the mystery of April’s death, she realizes that the friends she thought she knew all have something to hide…including a murder. “The Agatha Christie of our generation” (David Baldacci, #1 New York Times bestselling author) presents a “deliciously dark and utterly addictive” (Lucy Foley, New York Times bestselling author) mystery that will keep you on the edge of your seat.
Download or read book Gender and Representation in British Golden Age Crime Fiction written by Megan Hoffman and published by Springer. This book was released on 2016-05-17 with total page 206 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book provides an original and compelling analysis of the ways in which British women’s golden age crime narratives negotiate the conflicting social and cultural forces that influenced depictions of gender in popular culture in the 1920s until the late 1940s. The book explores a wide variety of texts produced both by writers who have been the focus of a relatively large amount of critical attention, such as Agatha Christie, Dorothy L. Sayers and Margery Allingham, but also those who have received comparatively little, such as Christianna Brand, Ngaio Marsh, Gladys Mitchell, Josephine Tey and Patricia Wentworth. Through its original readings, this book explores the ambivalent nature of modes of femininity depicted in golden age crime fiction, and shows that seemingly conservative resolutions are often attempts to provide a ‘modern-yet-safe’ solution to the conflicts raised in the texts.
Download or read book The Idea of Education in Golden Age Detective Fiction written by Roger Dalrymple and published by Taylor & Francis. This book was released on 2024-07-05 with total page 171 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book presents an exploration of how Golden Age detective fiction encounters educational ideas, particularly those forged by the transformative educational policymaking of the interwar period. Charting the educational policy and provision of the era, and referring to works by Agatha Christie, Dorothy L. Sayers, Edmund Crispin and others, this book explores the educational capacity and agency of literary detectives, the learning spaces of the genre and the kinds of knowledge that are made available to inquirers both inside and outside the text. It is argued that the genre explores a range of contemporaneous propositions on the balance between academic curriculum and practicum, length of school life and the value of lifelong learning. This book’s closing chapter considers the continuing pedagogic value for contemporary classrooms of engaging with the genre as a rich discursive and imaginative space for exploring educational ideas. Framing Golden Age detective fiction as a genre profoundly concerned with learning, this book will be highly relevant reading for academics, postgraduate students and scholars involved in the fields of English language arts, twentieth-century literature and the theories of learning more broadly. Those interested in detective fiction and interdisciplinary literary studies will also find the volume of interest.
Download or read book Shakespearean Allusion in Crime Fiction written by Lisa Hopkins and published by Springer. This book was released on 2016-04-21 with total page 204 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book explores why crime fiction so often alludes to Shakespeare. It ranges widely over a variety of authors including classic golden age crime writers such as the four ‘queens of crime’ (Allingham, Christie, Marsh, Sayers), Nicholas Blake and Edmund Crispin, as well as more recent authors such as Reginald Hill, Kate Atkinson and Val McDermid. It also looks at the fondness for Shakespearean allusion in a number of television crime series, most notably Midsomer Murders, Inspector Morse and Lewis, and considers the special sub-genre of detective stories in which a lost Shakespeare play is found. It shows how Shakespeare facilitates discussions about what constitutes justice, what authorises the detective to track down the villain, who owns the countryside, national and social identities, and the question of how we measure cultural value.
Download or read book The Cornish Coast Murder written by John Bude and published by Sourcebooks, Inc.. This book was released on 2016-10-04 with total page 258 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Mystery crime fiction written in the Golden Age of Murder "The combination of bracing Cornish cliffs and seascapes with cozy interiors and a cerebral mystery makes this one of the most deservedly resurrected titles in the British Library Crime Classics series." —Booklist STARRED review 'Never, even in his most optimistic moments, had he visualised a scene of this nature—himself in one armchair, a police officer in another, and between them a mystery.' The Reverend Dodd, vicar of the quiet Cornish village of Boscawen, spends his evenings reading detective stories by the fireside—but heaven forbid that the shadow of any real crime should ever fall across his seaside parish. The vicar's peace is shattered one stormy night when Julius Tregarthan, a secretive and ill-tempered magistrate, is found at his house in Boscawen with a bullet through his head. The local police inspector is baffled by the complete absence of clues. Luckily for Inspector Bigswell, the Reverend Dodd is on hand, and ready to put his keen understanding of the criminal mind to the test. This classic mystery novel of the golden age of British crime fiction is set against the vividly described backdrop of a fishing village on Cornwall's Atlantic coast. It is now republished for the first time since the 1930s with an introduction by award-winning crime writer Martin Edwards.
Download or read book Serial Killers and the Media written by Ian Cummins and published by Springer. This book was released on 2019-01-17 with total page 214 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book examines the media and cultural responses to the awful crimes of Brady and Hindley, whose murders provided a template for future media reporting on serial killers. It explores a wide variety of topics relating to the Moors Murders case including: the historical and geographical context of the murders, the reporting of the case and the unique features which have become standard for other murder cases e.g. nicknames for the serial killers, and it discusses the nature of evil and psychopaths and how they are represented in film, drama, novels and art. It also questions the ethics of the “serial killing industry” and how the modern cultural fixation on celebrity has extended to serial killers, and it explores the impact on the journalists and police officers from being involved in such cases including some interviews with them. The treatment of Brady and Hindley by the media also raises profound questions about the nature of punishment including the links between mental illness and crime and whether there is ever the prospect of redemption. This book draws on cultural studies, criminology, sociology and socio-legal studies to offers a multi-dimensional analysis of the impact of this case and then uses this as a basis for the analysis of more recent cases such as the crimes of Peter Sutcliffe and Harold Shipman.
Download or read book Bang Bang You re Dead written by Tim J. Kelly and published by Pioneer Drama Service, Inc.. This book was released on 1993 with total page 24 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book The Oxford Murder written by Michael Tanner and published by AuthorHouse. This book was released on 2015-09-19 with total page 192 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Oxford Murder that gripped the country in 1931 would grace any episode of Inspector Morse. Yet it was horrifically real. Annie Kempson was a defenceless widow bludgeoned and stabbed to death in her own home for the sake of a few pounds—a despicable crime for which the killer could expect no mercy. Following a nationwide man-hunt, career criminal Henry Seymour was arrested by Scotland Yard’s ‘Lucky John’ Horwell. And thanks to renowned pathologist Sir Bernard Spilsbury a guilty verdict was returned. This truly was an Oxford murder from beginning to end. The crime was committed in Oxford. The trial was held in Oxford. The execution was carried out in Oxford. But did the Oxford murder result in a miscarriage of justice?
Download or read book Murder in the Village written by Faith Martin and published by . This book was released on 2017 with total page 229 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Meet DI Hillary Greene, a police woman fighting to save her career. A would-be politician is found battered to death in the kitchen. His wife's alibi is full of holes and there's another woman in the background. And what about his seemingly mild-mannered political rival? DI Hillary Greene tries to get to the bottom of this perplexing murder. She certainly doesn't think the prime suspect is as guilty as everyone thinks. Just as she'd about to make a breakthrough, everything is turned upside down by a fatal development in another case she is working on... Can Hillary find the murderer and will she survive a brush with one of Oxford's most dangerous criminals?
Download or read book She Left Me the Gun written by Emma Brockes and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2013-05-16 with total page 320 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "One of those memoirs that remind you why you liked memoirs in the first place... It has the density of a very good novel... As you do with the best writers, you feel lucky to be in Ms. Brockes’s company." --Dwight Garner, The New York Times A chilling work of psychological suspense and forensic memoir, She Left Me the Gun is a tale of true transformation: the story of a young woman who reinvented herself so completely that her previous life seemed simply to vanish, and of a daughter who transcends her mother’s fears and reclaims an abandoned past. “One day I will tell you the story of my life,” promises Emma Brockes’s mother, “and you will be amazed.” Brockes grew up hearing only pieces of her mother’s past—stories of a rustic childhood in South Africa, glimpses of a bohemian youth in London—and yet knew that crucial facts were still in the dark. A mystery to her friends and family, Paula was clearly a strong, self-invented woman; glamorous, no-nonsense, and frequently out of place in their quaint English village. In awe of Paula’s larger-than-life personality, Brockes never asked why her mother emigrated to England or why she never returned to South Africa; never questioned the source of her mother’s strange fears or tremendous strengths. Looking to unearth the truth after Paula’s death, Brockes begins a dangerous journey into the land—and the life—her mother fled from years before. Brockes soon learns that Paula’s father was a drunk megalomaniac who terrorized Paula and her seven half-siblings for years. After finally mustering the courage to take her father to court, Paula is horrified to see the malevolent man vindicated of all charges. As Brockes discovers, this crushing defeat left Paula with a choice: take her own life, or promise herself never to be intimidated or unhappy again. Ultimately she chooses life and happiness by booking one-way passage to London—but not before shooting her father five times, and failing to kill him. Smuggling the fateful gun through English customs would be Paula’s first triumph in her new life. She Left Me the Gun carries Brockes to South Africa to meet her seven aunts and uncles, weighing their stories against her mother’s silences. Brockes learns of the violent pathologies and racial propaganda in which her grandfather was inculcated, sees the mine shafts and train yards where he worked as an itinerant mechanic, and finds in buried government archives the court records proving his murder conviction years before he first married. Brockes also learns of the turncoat stepmother who may have perjured herself to save her husband, dooming Paula and her siblings to the machinations of their hated father. Most of all, She Left Me the Gun reveals how Paula reinvented herself to lead a full, happy life. As she follows her mother’s footsteps back to South Africa, Brockes begins to find the wellsprings of her mother’s strength, the tremendous endurance which allowed Paula to hide secrets from even her closest friends and family. But as the search through cherished letters and buried documents deepens, Brockes realizes with horror that her mother’s great success as a parent was concealing her terrible past—and that unearthing these secrets threatens to undo her mother’s work. A beguiling and unforgettable journey across generations and continents, She Left Me the Gun chronicles Brockes’s efforts to walk the knife-edge between understanding her mother’s unspeakable traumas and embracing the happiness she chose for her daughter.
