Showing results by author "Mary Roberts Rinehart" in All Categories

As far as Carol Spencer is concerned, the war has spoiled everything. She and Don had been engaged for years and were on the verge of marriage when he was shot down in the South Pacific, leaving Carol on the verge of spinsterhood at 24. She wants to take some kind of job in the war effort, but her invalid mother demands that Carol accompany her to the family's summer home in Maine. But when they arrive at the faded mansion, they find it completely locked up. The servants are gone, the lights are dark - and there is a body in the closet.

Rachel Innes, a middle-aged spinster, has barely settled in at the country house she has rented for the summer when a series of bizarre and violent events threaten to perturb her normally unflappable nature. A strange figure appears briefly in the twilight outside a window. At night, a rattling, metallic sound reverberates through dark halls, and - most disconcerting of all - the body of a strange man is found lying in a pool of blood at the bottom of a circular staircase.

Dangerous Days opens in a still-neutral America, though within a year, the country will have joined the European alliance against the Central Powers in the First World War. Clayton Spencer, a successful industrialist and owner of a munitions plant, finds himself facing several problems: not only anarchism and German sabotage, but also the prospect of a deteriorating marriage and of a son who all too often shares his mother's frivolous and essentially self-concerned point of view.

In an elaborate house known as the Cloisters, Maud Wainwright rules supreme. The queen of society in the small town of Beverly, she has a table long enough to seat 100, and she keeps an iron grip on the guest list. Her right-hand woman is Pat Abbott, a local girl who is beautiful, innocent, and kind. Pat has no idea how cutthroat high society can be, but she's about to get a deadly first lesson.

Elizabeth Bell runs a quiet household, with no family and no more than the usual number of servants. She passes her time thinking about crime and working on her biography of a relative. When a young cousin comes to stay, life in the house becomes uncharacteristically lively. First, cousin Judy burns a hole in Miss Bell's desk. Next, they spy a burglar on the staircase - a shadowy figure who vanishes without a trace. And finally, Sarah, the nurse, takes the dogs for a walk and never returns.

The house called Sunset has been Marcia's summer home for her entire life. Both of her parents died there, and she and her brother spent their youth exploring its rambling hallways and seaside grounds. They love the old house, but Marcia's sister-in-law has never taken to it. Juliette loathes the sea, and soon comes to loathe her husband as well. After they divorce, Juliette pays a final visit to Sunset, demanding alimony. She is there for a few tense days before she disappears. It takes them a week to find her body.

“This is the story of how a middle-aged spinster lost her mind, deserted her domestic gods in the city, took a furnished house for the summer out of town, and found herself involved in one of those mysterious crimes that keep our newspapers and detective agencies happy and prosperous.” So begins The Circular Staircase, a book which has been hailed as the best novel by the most important American woman mystery writer of our time.

The Circular Staircase was first serialized in 1907 and was then published in book form in 1908. It was wildly popular and established Rinehart as an important and influential American mystery author. Indeed, she became known as the American Agatha Christie.

Dive into the gripping account of an American authors journey to the heart of war-torn Europe in January 1915. Serving as a war correspondent in Belgium for The Saturday Evening Post, she shares her raw, unfiltered perspective of war. It is not just about colossal armies clashing in frenzied battles. It is the bewildered young soldier on a stretcher, the mother carrying her shell-wounded child, the majestic horses awaiting death in burning buildings, the best of a generation hungry, battered, knee-deep in icy waters. It is the old woman, lighting a candle before the Mater Dolorosa, offering up...

An essay on writing by Mary Roberts Rinehart. Rinehart, a contemporary of Agatha Christie, was a prolific writer in her time. This essay gives fascinating insight into her process and a glimpse into her thoughts on writing, which is, in fact, work.

At a bustling neighborhood social club, a medium is invited as the evenings highlight. The medium recounts a gruesome tale about a violent death that leaves the attendees on edge. Later, the uncanny prediction unfolds as two members are summoned to a nearby house where a mysterious murder has taken place. Intrigued and unnerved, the club members set out on a quest to uncover the truth. Mary Roberts Rinehart artfully combines mystery and social comedy in this gripping novella. (Summary by Zach Hoyt)

The state has accused beautiful young Elinor Norton of murder, and she refuses to mount a defense. Guilt is written all over her elegant features, but her childhood best friend cannot believe it when Elinor confesses to the crime. Forced into a dull marriage against her will, Elinor is just beginning to adjust to life with Lloyd when she meets the man who will tear her world apart. Blair Leighton is her husband's best friend and was his companion in the war, and he has a charm that makes Elinor quiver from the inside out.

When English professor William A. Porter unexpectedly inherits a grand seaside mansion from his late Uncle Horace, his curiosity is piqued by the unexplained circumstances surrounding his uncles death. Along with his wife and niece, he decides to spend the summer in the propertys lodge, renting out the main house. As darkness falls, the quiet seaside neighborhood takes a sinister turn, with strange occurrences and eerie events becoming the norm. At the heart of these mysteries is an ominous red lamp, a subject of local folklore and believed to cast a malevolent spell. Can Professor Porter ...

Precocious seventeen-year-old Bab, with a sizeable sense of the romantic and an over-developed sense of the dramatic, shares how these traits get her into continuous scrapes via school themes, journals, and articles meant for publication. How can a made-up paramour appear at a ball? Will Bab find inspiration or romance from the neighboring vacation cottage? How can she save the career of her latest (and dearest) love? Managing an allowance is easy—isn’t buying a car to save on shoe repair fiscally responsible? Is the family’s butler a spy for Germany?

Letitia Carberry, Tish to her friends, is off again on three entirely different adventures. Tish, Aggie and Lizzie, three middle-aged spinsters, are on track to create havoc wherever they go, but Tish is definitely the ringleader and leads where the other two ladies would rather not go.

Letitia Carberry is not your ordinary spinster aunt. Letitia, Tish to her friends, entangles her friends Aggie and Lizzie into all sorts of adventures and scrapes from solving a murder, car races and camping, and horse trekking. Letitia Carberry is a force to be reckoned with.

The Circular Staircase is a mystery novel by American writer Mary Roberts Rinehart. The story follows dowager Rachel Innes as she thwarts a series of strange crimes at a summer house she has rented with her niece and nephew.

Rachel Innes is a rich lady who has been taking care of her niece and nephew since their father died. The three of them decide to rent a house in the country and although everything seems to be alright in the beginning, strange events soon begin to occur. Her niece disappears then reappears a few days later. There is a murder they are involved in. They hear strange noises. Things fall down the stairs in the middle of the night. Will Rachel solve the mysteries and how will their summer end? Find out in "The Circular Staircase". B. J.

An older woman of the elite class has lots of money and abundant courage and determination. Miss Cornelia Van Gorder wants some adventure in her life, so she rents a large mansion to see what she can stir up. She moves in with her niece and an unpredictable Irish maid and is confronted by an embezzlement problem at the owner’s bank. But that’s just the beginning of troubles, because a murderous masked criminal known as The Bat is using the mansion as a hideout.

This is the story of Sara Lee Kennedy’s memory - and of something more. You’ll hear all about it.