Download or read book Murder in the Crooked House written by Soji Shimada and published by Pushkin Press. This book was released on 2019-01-31 with total page 343 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The sequel to the acclaimed Tokyo Zodiac Murders – a fiendish locked room mystery from the Japanese master of the genre The Crooked House sits on a snowbound cliff at the remote northern tip of Japan. A curious place to build a house, but even more curious is the house itself – a maze of sloping floors and strange staircases, full of bloodcurdling masks and uncanny dolls. When a guest is found murdered in seemingly impossible circumstances, the police are called. But they are unable to solve the puzzle, and more bizarre deaths follow. Enter Kiyoshi Mitarai, the renowned sleuth. Surely if anyone can crack these cryptic murders it is him. But you have all the clues too - can you solve the mystery of the murders in The Crooked House first? Born in 1948 in Hiroshima prefecture, Soji Shimada has been dubbed the 'God of Mystery' by international audiences. A novelist, essayist and short-story writer, he made his literary debut in 1981 with The Tokyo Zodiac Murders, which was shortlisted for the Edogawa Rampo Prize. Blending classical detective fiction with grisly violence and elements of the occult, he has gone on to publish several highly acclaimed series of mystery fiction. He is the author of 100+ works in total. In 2009 Shimada received the prestigious Japan Mystery Literature Award in recognition of his life's work.
Download or read book Crooked House written by Agatha Christie and published by Harper Collins. This book was released on 2010-02-10 with total page 235 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “Writing Crooked House was pure pleasure and I feel justified in my belief that it is one of my best.” --Agatha Christie Described by the queen of mystery herself as one of her favorites of her published work, Crooked House is a classic Agatha Christie thriller revolving around a devastating family mystery. The Leonides are one big happy family living in a sprawling, ramshackle mansion. That is until the head of the household, Aristide, is murdered with a fatal barbiturate injection. Suspicion naturally falls on the old man’s young widow, fifty years his junior. But the murderer has reckoned without the tenacity of Charles Hayward, fiancé of the late millionaire’s granddaughter.
Download or read book The Crooked House written by Christobel Kent and published by Sarah Crichton Books. This book was released on 2016-01-12 with total page 369 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "A taut psychological thriller, loaded with mood, and a puzzle tricky enough to keep you guessing to the final page" —The Washington Post In the chilling tradition of Daphne du Maurier and with the acuity of Kate Atkinson comes an atmospheric psychological thriller about an isolated British village and the sinister abandoned house that holds the key to its most shameful secrets. Alison is as close to anonymous as you can get: she has no ties and no home, and her only anchors are her boyfriend and her small backroom job in publishing. Which is exactly how she wants it. Because once, Alison was a teenager named Esme who lived in a remote, dilapidated house by a bleak estuary with her parents and three siblings. One night something terrible happened in the family’s crooked house, leaving Alison the only survivor. In order to escape from the horror she witnessed, she moved away from the village, changed her name, and cut herself off from her past. But now her boyfriend has invited her to a wedding being held in her old hometown, which means returning there for the first time since that night. She decides that she’s never going to overcome the trauma of what happened to her without confronting it, so she accepts his invitation. But soon Alison realizes that the events of that night left their awful mark not just on her but on the entire village, and she begins to suspect that everyone there might somehow be implicated in her family’s murder. Christobel Kent’s The Crooked House is a haunting thriller about one woman’s search for the truth about her past through a closed community full of dark secrets.
Download or read book The Nursery Rhyme Murders written by Agatha Christie and published by . This book was released on 1970 with total page 522 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A nursery rhyme figures tantalizingly in each of these novels, but there is nothing childlike about the dark secrets and darker deeds of some of the characters, nothing innocent about the murderers. Whether the detective featured is the delightful, sharp-eyed Miss Marple, the redoubtable Hercule Poirot, or Chief Inspector Taverner of Scotland Yard each one is challenged by an adversary worthy of a master of crime. Here is Agatha Christie at her best - baffling, daringly logical, and immensely entertaining.
Download or read book Inspector Imanishi Investigates written by Seicho Matsumoto and published by Soho Press. This book was released on 2003-07-01 with total page 361 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In the wee hours of a 1960s Tokyo morning, a dead body is found under the rails of a train, and the victim's face is so badly damaged that police have a hard time figuring out the victim’s identity. Only two clues surface: an old man, overheard talking in a distinctive accent to a young man, and the word “kameda.” Inspector Imanishi leaves his beloved bonsai and his haiku and goes off to investigate—and runs up against a blank wall. Months pass in fruitless questioning, in following up leads, until the case is closed, unsolved. But Imanishi is dissatisfied, and a series of coincidences lead him back to the case. Why did a young woman scatter pieces of white paper out of the window of a train? Why did a bar girl leave for home right after Imanishi spoke to her? Why did an actor, on the verge of telling Imanishi something important, drop dead of a heart attack? What can a group of nouveau young artists possibly have to do with the murder of a quiet and “saintly” provincial old ex-policemen? Inspector Imanishi investigates.
Download or read book Murder Most Modern written by Sari Kawana and published by U of Minnesota Press. This book was released on with total page 285 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The quintessential international genre, detective fiction often works under the guise of popular entertainment to expose its extensive readership to complex moral questions and timely ethical dilemmas. The first book-length study of Japan’s detective fiction, Murder Most Modern considers the important role of detective fiction in defining the country’s emergence as a modern nation-state. Kawana explores the interactions between the popular genre and broader discourses of modernity, nation, and ethics that circulated at this pivotal moment in Japanese history. The author contrasts Japanese works by Edogawa Ranpo, Unno Juza, Oguri Mushitaro, and others with English-language works by Edgar Allan Poe, Dashiell Hammett, and Agatha Christie to show how Japanese writers of detective fiction used the genre to disseminate their ideas on some of the most startling aspects of modern life: the growth of urbanization, the protection and violation of privacy, the criminalization of abnormal sexuality, the dehumanization of scientific research, and the horrors of total war. Kawana’s comparative approach reveals how Japanese authors of the genre emphasized the vital social issues that captured the attention of thrill-seeking readers-while eluding the eyes of government censors. Sari Kawana is assistant professor of Japanese at the University of Massachusetts, Boston.
Download or read book The Hollow written by Agatha Christie and published by Harper Collins. This book was released on 2011-08-30 with total page 322 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A far-from-warm welcome greets Hercule Poirot as he arrives for lunch at Lucy Angkatell’s country house. A man lies dying by the swimming pool, his blood dripping into the water. His wife stands over him, holding a revolver. As Poirot investigates, he begins to realize that beneath the respectable surface lies a tangle of family secrets and everyone becomes a suspect.
Download or read book The Ravenous Dead written by Darcy Coates and published by Black Owl Books. This book was released on 2022-03-15 with total page 255 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Keira, hired as Blighty Graveyard's new groundskeeper, lives surrounded by the dead. They watch her through the fog. They wordlessly cry out. They've been desperately waiting for help moving on―and only Keira can hear them. But not every restless spirit wants to be saved. Sometimes the dead hate the living too much to find peace. As Keira struggles to uncover the tangled histories of some of the graveyard's oldest denizens, danger seeps from the darkest edges of the forest. A vicious serial killer was interred among the trees decades before, his spirit twisted by his violent nature. He's furious. Ravenous. And when Keira unwittingly answers his call, she may just seal her fate as his final intended victim.
Download or read book A Murder for the Books written by Victoria Gilbert and published by Crooked Lane Books. This book was released on 2017-12-12 with total page 348 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Blue Ridge Mountains, fun historical tidbits, a hint of the supernatural, and a taste of romance—this bookish cozy mystery series debut about a crime-solving librarian is “one of the best” (New York Journal of Books). Librarian Amy Webber must archive overdue crimes and deadly rumors before a killer strikes again in small-town Virginia . . . Fleeing a disastrous love affair, university librarian Amy Webber moves in with her aunt in a quiet, historic mountain town in Virginia. She quickly busies herself with managing a charming public library that requires all her attention with its severe lack of funds and overabundance of eccentric patrons. The last thing she needs is a new, available neighbor whose charm lures her into trouble. Dancer-turned-teacher and choreographer Richard Muir inherited the farmhouse next door from his great-uncle, Paul Dassin. But town folklore claims the house’s original owner was poisoned by his wife, who was an outsider. It quickly became water under the bridge, until she vanished after her sensational 1925 murder trial. Determined to clear the name of the woman his great-uncle loved, Richard implores Amy to help him investigate the case. Amy is skeptical until their research raises questions about the culpability of the town’s leading families . . . including her own. When inexplicable murders plunge the quiet town into chaos, Amy and Richard must crack open the books to reveal a cruel conspiracy and lay a turbulent past to rest in A Murder for the Books, the first installment of Victoria Gilbert’s Blue Ridge Library mysteries.
Download or read book The Crooked Man written by Philip Davison and published by Random House. This book was released on 2011-03-31 with total page 176 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A darkly funny, moving and original novel about a man coming to terms with the corruption around him and the conscience within. Harry Fielding is a shabby, solitary, but basically cheerful sort, living in a seamy flat in London and subsisting on a diet of gin and pre-packed airline meals in unmarked silver containers. He also works for MI5. Surveillance, protection, the occasional rough-and-tumble - just enough to keep body and soul together. However, when Harry witnesses Lisa, his next-door neighbour, killing and burying her sister's violent husband, he begins to lose his appetite...
Download or read book The Seven Dials Mystery written by Agatha Christie and published by Random House. This book was released on 2025-01-07 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A clever murder mystery featuring recurring character Superintendent Battle that pokes light-hearted fun at the international spy thriller genre--soon to be a major Netflix series Gerry Wade is famous for over-sleeping, but when a group of his fellow young guests at a country house weekend decide to play a prank on him by setting eight alarm clocks to go off in his room early one morning, they are rewarded with a nasty surprise. This time, poor Gerry is quite literally dead to the world. As the police descend upon Chimneys, the historic estate of Lord Caterham, the youthful friends—led by the bold and clever Lady Eileen “Bundle” Brent—take investigative matters into their own hands. As more victims turn up dead and clues seem to point to a wider plot, Bundle and her pals risk their lives to find the murderer before he kills again.
Download or read book The Tokyo Zodiac Murders written by Soji Shimada and published by Pushkin Vertigo. This book was released on 2015-09-15 with total page 321 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: One of The Guardian’s “Top 10 Locked Room Mysteries” An amateur detective races to solve a decades-old murder mystery in this “bloody and bizarre” Japanese crime novel with a twist hailed as “one of the most original” (Daily Mail). Astrologer, fortune teller, and self-styled detective Kiyoshi Mitarai must solve a macabre murder mystery that has baffled Japan for 40 years—in just one week. With the help of his freelance illustrator friend, Kiyoshi sets out to answer the questions that have haunted the country ever since: Who murdered the artist Umezawa, raped and killed his daughter, and then chopped up the bodies of six others to create Azoth, ‘the perfect woman’? With maps, charts, and other illustrations, this story of magic and illusion—pieced together like a great stage tragedy—challenges the reader to unravel the mystery before the final curtain falls. This quintessential Japanese “logic mystery”—eerie, gory, and intriguing—combines the puzzle-solving of Golden Age Western detective fiction with elements of shocking horror and dark humor.
Download or read book The Tattoo Murder Case written by Akimitsu Takagi and published by Soho Press. This book was released on 2003-07-01 with total page 353 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Kinue Nomura survived World War II only to be murdered in Tokyo, her severed limbs discovered in a room locked from the inside. Gone is the part of her that bore one of the most beautiful full-body tattoos ever rendered. Kenzo Matsushita, a young doctor who was first to discover the crime scene, feels compelled to assist his detective brother, who is in charge of the case. But Kenzo has a secret: he was Kinue’s lover, and soon his involvement in the investigation becomes as twisted and complex as the writhing snakes that once adorned Kinue’s torso. The Tattoo Murder Case was originally published in 1948; this is the first English translation.
Download or read book Five Complete Novels of Murder and Detection written by Agatha Christie and published by Wings. This book was released on 1991 with total page 744 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Five complete, unabridged books in one volume.
Download or read book Murder in the Crooked House written by Soji Shimada and published by Pushkin Vertigo. This book was released on 2019-06-25 with total page 353 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A delightfully comic Japanese murder mystery “reminiscent of Agatha Christie” from a master of the genre—now available for the first time in English (Wall Street Journal)! “One of those locked-room head-bangers that invite . . . the reader to decipher the clues and solve a murder along with an all-seeing detective.” —New York Times Book Review The Crooked House sits on a snowbound cliff overlooking icy seas at the remote northern tip of Japan. A curious place for the millionaire Kozaburo Hamamoto to build a house, but even more curious is the house itself—a disorienting maze of sloping floors and strangely situated staircases, full of bloodcurdling masks and uncanny, lifesize dolls. When a man is found dead in one of the mansion's rooms, murdered in seemingly impossible circumstances, the police are called. But they are unable to solve the puzzle, and powerless to protect the party of house guests as more bizarre deaths follow. Enter Kiyoshi Mitarai, the renowned sleuth, famous for unmasking the culprit behind the notorious Umezawa family massacre. Surely if anyone can crack these cryptic murders he will. But you have all the clues too—can you solve the mystery of the murders in The Crooked House first?
Download or read book Murder at the Lakeside Library written by Holly Danvers and published by National Geographic Books. This book was released on 2021-07-13 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this series debut perfect for fans of Jenn McKinlay and Miranda James, Rain Wilmot must discover the killer, before the book closes on her life. Rain Wilmot has just returned to her family's waterfront log cabin in Lofty Pines, Wisconsin after the untimely death of her husband. The cabin is peaceful compared to Rain's corporate job and comes with an informal library that Rain's mother, Willow, used to run. But as Rain prepares for the re-opening of the library, all hopes for a peaceful life are shattered when she discovers the body of Thornton Hughes, a real estate buyer, on the premises. The community of Lofty Pines starts pointing fingers at Willow, since she has been unusually absent from the library this summer. A fishy rumor surfaces when Rain learns that Willow had been spending a lot of time with Thornton. The town even thought they were having an affair. While theories swirl about Thornton's death, Rain takes it upon herself to solve the case to exonerate her mother. As more clues surface, Rain will have to piece together the mystery. But if she isn't careful, she may be the next to end up dead in the water in Murder at the Lakeside Library, the first in Holly Danvers' new Lakeside Library mysteries.
Download or read book Passenger to Frankfurt written by Agatha Christie and published by . This book was released on 1970 with total page 288 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Sir Stafford Nye's flight home from Malaya takes an unprecedented twist when a young woman confides in him that someone is trying to kill her. In a moment of weakness, he agrees to lend her his passport. Unwittingly, the diplomat has put his own life on the line.
