The potential duality of human character and its capacity for dissembling was a source of fascination to the Elizabethan dramatists. Where many of them used the Machiavellian picture to draw one fair-faced scheming villain after another, Shakespeare absorbed more deeply the problem of the tensions between the public and private face of man.Originally published in 1983, this book examines the ways in which this psychological insight is developed and modified as a source of dramatic ...

Seven-year-old Lucy Gibson can barely contain her excitement when she learns that the funfair has come to town and Matt, her mother’s new boyfriend, has agreed to take her. Despite her slight uneasiness in Matt’s company and her upset over her parent’s split, she readily goes off with him one evening, as excited as only a young innocent child can be.The next morning, Chief Superintendent Lambert briefs DS Bert Hook and DS Ruth David on the disappearance of a young seven-year-old lo...

When there is a violent murder at a historic Home Counties golf club, Superintendent John Lambert himself discovers the crime. For the first time in a long career, he finds himself conducting a murder inquiry among people he knows well. The victim is the Chairman of the Golf Club and a prominent local businessman, and it is soon clear that the members of the Club Committee are the chief suspects. They are all prominent members of the local community, and Lambert is saddled with a Chief Con...

Lydon Hall is a house full of character, as the estate agent's literature claims. But its many interesting features should surely not include a corpse in the elegant drawing-room? Is this death the suicide it appears to be? The investigation centres upon a tight-knit village community. Both the glamorous French widow of the deceased and the man who lives rough on the moor after a mental breakdown seem to know more about this death than is at first apparent. Moreover, it gradually emerges t...

Amid the luxurious surroundings of the Wye Castle Hotel and Country Club, a man is found dead on the course. Superintendent Lambert and Sergeant Hook establish fairly quickly how he died, but discovering who killed him proves a more difficult challenge. The golf course and hotel are set in spectacular scenery beside one of England's most beautiful rivers, with Hereford's ancient Cathedral visible in the distance. In May this incomparable valley is at its best, but it is a bizarre context f...

In the Colorado mountain town of Glenwood Springs not far from Aspen artist/photographer Gwyn Sanders discovers a cryptic letter her sister Kelly left behind. The victim of a deadly hit and run Kelly reveals she was sexually involved with her sisters boyfriend and is scared for her life. Both Gwyn and her remaining sister Linda have since married their boyfriends so either of their husbands could be guilty of murder. The sisters received a large inheritance before meeting these men and kno...

An Unsuitable Job for a Woman introduces bestselling mystery author P.D. James’s courageous but vulnerable young detective, Cordelia Gray, in a “top-rated puzzle of peril that holds you all the way” (The New York Times).Handsome Cambridge dropout Mark Callender died hanging by the neck with a faint trace of lipstick on his mouth. When the official verdict is suicide, his wealthy father hires fledgling private investigator Cordelia Gray to find out...

“A stunner, exquisitely plotted and characterized, with Todd’s trademark meticulous backdrop of World War I-era England.”—Strand MagazineThe Great War is still raging when Francesca Hatton’s adored grandfather dies on the family estate in England’s isolated Exe Valley. Among his effects, Francesca is stunned to find an unsigned letter cursing the Hattons and their descendants. Then a stranger appears, accusing her grandfather of murder. Was the loving prot...

A classic Agatha Christie short story, available individually for the first time as an ebook.When Ebenezer Halliday’s daughter’s body is found stuffed underneath a train seat, the wealthy American industrialist hires Hercule Poirot to locate the murderer and over one hundred thousand dollars’ worth of stolen jewels.

Anna Jacobs has done it again, the book was riveting' - 5-star reader reviewCassandra Blake has raised her three motherless sisters. The girls are the pride of their book-loving, impractical father, and not in a hurry to marry. Then the American Civil War cuts off supplies of cotton to Lancashire, the mills fall silent and there is no work. They have an impossible choice: stay and risk starvation or pack up and begin again elsewhere.Cassandra has fallen in ...

From New York Times bestselling author Charles Todd comes a haunting tale that explores the impact of World War I on all who witnessed it-officers, soldiers, doctors, and battlefield nurses like Bess Crawford.Though the Great War is nearing its end, the fighting rages on. While waiting for transport back to her post, Bess Crawford meets Captain Alan Travis from the island of Barbados. Later, when hes brought into her forward aid station disoriented from a head wound, Bess...

Anwyn Moyle was born at the end of the First World War in a small mining village in Wales. At the age of sixteen, she was sent to London to earn her living, where she found a live-in job as a scullery maid. Her day began at 5 a.m., cleaning grates and lighting fires, then she would scrub floors and polish the house - all for two shillings a week, one of which she had to send home to her mother. Things improved when she secured the position of lady's maid in a housein Belgravia, on five shi...