Search Results for: beauty

Beautiful Nell Varney was a newcomer to Contera – and to murder.

Suddenly she found herself in a strange courtroom faced with seven pairs of hate-ridden, accusing eyes. Seven witnesses had identified her as the murderer who had caused the death of two women by performing illegal abortions.

Why would anyone in this strange town believe Nell was innocent? Could anyone help her? One man, a dedicated lawyer named Jesse Falkenstein, was determined to try . . .

‘My favourite American crime-writer’ New York Herald Tribune

‘A touch of Margaret Millar . . . worth watching’ Sunday Telegraph

San Francisco artist Roxanne Gautier’s startling paintings of male prostitutes has sent shock waves throughout the art world – and in her personal life. When Taylor Adams, her favourite model, commits suicide – or so it appears – her husband is frightened she may be connected with the death and asks ex-policeman Kevin Bryce to investigate.
Taylor’s fellow prostitutes, including the beautiful and dangerous Angel, and the revealing pages of Roxanne’s diary take Bryce into a psychosexual nightmare world of corruption, blackmail and moral decay.

‘This is a mystery readers’ mystery novel, and a beauty’ Anthony Boucher

Walt McLean, the proprietor of Walt’s Malt Shop, had been found dead by his niece. The attack did not appear to be motivated by robbery, but who would want to murder such a harmless and popular man? And what could the message in green really mean?

A detective story delectably tied up with one of the greatest of detective classics-Agatha Christie’s The ABC Murders

The eighth book in the New York Times bestselling Longmire series, featuring Sheriff Walt Longmire.

Sheriff Walt Longmire’s daughter, Cady, is getting married. Walt and old friend Henry Standing Bear are the de facto wedding planners and fear Cady’s wrath when the wedding locale arrangements go up in smoke two weeks before the big event.

The pair set out to find a new site for the nuptials on the Cheyenne Reservation, but their scouting expedition ends in horror as they witness a young Crow woman plummeting from Painted Warrior’s majestic cliffs. It’s not Walt’s turf, but the newly appointed tribal police chief and Iraqi war veteran, the beautiful Lolo Long, shanghais him into helping with the investigation . . .

The fifth book in the New York Times bestselling Longmire series, featuring Sheriff Walt Longmire

Wade Barsad locked his wife Mary’s horses in their barn and then burned it down. In return she shot him in the head six times – or so the story goes. Sheriff Walt Longmire doesn’t believe Mary’s confession, and he’s determined to dig deeper.

Posing as an insurance claims investigator, Walt goes undercover and soon discovers that the population of an entire town might have wanted Wade dead, including a beautiful Guatemalan bartender and a rancher with a taste for liquor but not so much for honesty . . .

‘A winning mystery with characters coming off the page’ Portland Oregonian

Nadia has been here before, at this seeping-away of hope. The other times curl behind her like the petals of a rose, all the memories, all her babies – false alarms, real pregnancies lasting only until her body rejected them.

Meanwhile her boyfriend Simon is underground caving. Nadia knows he risks his life, a decadent death among the limestone, his bones withering in the rock. Her work is to create, to mould leather-hard clay into something beautiful. But she has not the heart for it today.

‘Limestone and Clay shows a maturation and deepening of her considerable talents … Lesley Glaister has produced a portrait of human relationships both disconcerting and haunting in its unflinching clarity’ Sunday Telegraph

A remote, crumbling house; four sisters; and the secrets that imprison them…

‘Before Gillian Flynn, there was Lesley Glaister’ Harper’s Bazaar

‘Frightening yet eerily beautiful … Lesley Glaister is adept, original and mature’ Hilary Mantel

In a remote, crumbling house in the Fens live four sisters – Agatha, Milly, and Ellen and Esther – identical twins so closely linked as to be almost one person. They have lived there all their lives, trapped still by the fear of their dead father, who governs his daughters’ lives from beyond the grave. And then there is George, another inhabitant, imprisoned in the cellar.

Little by little, macabre events come to light: events that transform an idyllic country childhood into a world of eccentric isolation.

‘Eerie and satisfying – a horror story told with tenderness’ Sunday Times

A castle, a deserted village, and murder in the Scottish Highlands

When child psychologist and US Naval Intelligence officer Lieutenant Peter Dunbar takes on a secret mission in the Scottish Highlands at the end of World War II, he finds himself drawn into the lives of a troubled boy and his beautiful young cousin.

But why does Johnny Stockton refuse to explain why he keeps running away from his comfortable home? And how might the answer be entangled with the mystery of an escaped German prisoner and a dying man’s message?

Did the twelfth member of the jury know something the rest did not…?
Classic crime from one of the greats of the Detection Club

Circumstantial evidence was as good as proof in the trial of Viola Ross. Everything pointed to the conclusion that this beautiful woman had smothered her wisp of a husband. But the twelfth juror, Richard Arnold, would not agree. Perhaps he knew something which the others didn’t – perhaps he only guessed.

When a retrial is ordered, Arnold sets out to conduct his own investigation. But soon he is faced with three attempts on his life.

Beautiful, amoral and ruthless – but was she a killer?
Classic crime from one of the greats of the Detection Club

Ruth Garside was framed for three killings. But was she really guilty?

As a girl, Ruth was accused of a dreadful crime; as a wife she was suspected of her husband’s death; as a widow she was accused of her employer’s murder. ­­

‘I can prove her innocence,’ cried Thomas Fogg KC. ‘I can prove my own innocence,’ said Ruth. ‘She’s my client so she can’t be guilty, and by heck, I’ll prove it if it means the skies falling,’ declared Arthur Crook. Well – does he? And­ is he justified?

A rich, curmudgeonly old husband, a beautiful young wife, a mysterious voice from the past – and murder…
Classic crime from one of the greats of the Detection Club

When murder hits the sleepy town of Hinton St Luke tongues start wagging. It’s what you might call a cosy domestic murder: a beautiful young wife; her much-older husband dying at just the right moment; a jealous nurse; a mysterious voice from the past and a set of anonymous letters.

But which one will lead directly to the killer’s front door?

A man is accused of murdering his wife – and all the evidence points to his guilt.
Classic crime from one of the greats of the Detection Club

‘No author is more skilled at making a good story seem brilliant’ Sunday Express

It was a dark night, clammy with fog; an evil night when anything could happen. That was the night it all began – when the net of cruel circumstance began to close in around Jack Barton

The body of his beautiful, murdered wife had rotted away in a trunk in the dark cellar where he had hidden it. It was useless to say hiding the body was all he had done. It was pointless to insist he was innocent of her death.

Who would believe him?

An actress, a politician – and a murder by poison where no one is above suspicion.
Classic crime fiction from one of the greats of the era.

Marjorie Hyde, a gifted but unsuccessful actress, is happily married. Like many members of her profession she is temperamental, and though not that beautiful has that Titian colouring that is supposed to make men mad. Her husband, Christopher, is insanely jealous, and after learning that she is frequently in the company of Philip Clare, a barrister and Parliamentary candidate, Christopher threatens to instigate divorce proceedings that would ruin his rival’s career.

The same night, he drinks his usual glass of after-dinner port and dies from hyosin poisoning. And in the unravelling of the mystery surrounding his death, nobody is free from suspicion.

Blond Eve Dawson came to Hollywood to be a star and didn’t make the grade. But as a party girl she was much in demand – until someone shot her during a wild party given for a lot of prominent politicians.

Everyone clammed up and pressure was brought to bear – even on popular D.A. Doug Selby. But Selby and Sheriff Brandon wouldn’t hush.

The next time beautiful Eve turned up she was a corpse with a carving knife deep in her chest. And even that suave old fox A.B. Carr couldn’t stop the D.A. from finding out who killed her and why.

Money in the bank had always been a persuasive factor in Bertha Cool’s life – and Lamont Hawley represented a lot of it. He also represented an insurance company that smelled a rat about a traffic-accident claim. The trouble was the claimant had drifted away – a beautiful blonde who had been co-operative and level-headed. In fact, too level-headed … she sounded almost professional.

Donald Lam didn’t like it. Why should a large insurance company need an outside investigator? But Bertha’s eyes see $$$ so Donald gets cracking, and within no time he is the prime suspect. For what on earth is a body doing in the trunk of Donald’s car?

Mira Woodford was a beautiful girl who believed that the best things in life were expensive. She bartered her youthful charms for the rewards of being an old man’s bride, and her investment paid off in millions when she suddenly became his widow.

When Bertha Cool sent Donald Lam to find out if Mira’s kisses had turned to poison for the rich little poor girl’s late husband, one look at Mira made Donald eager to see for himself how deadly her embrace really was. But though Mira was lovely and willing, her past was ugly and threatening – and when passion and blackmail went hand in hand, murder could not be far behind.

Ellen Robb came into Perry Mason’s office with a gun in her purse. She had been framed, she said, by her gambler employer because she had refused to help fleece a customer.

The customer had dropped nearly $10,000 in the gambling establishment and then done his best to pick up Ellen. His wife, none too pleased with either shenanigan, ended up dead as a herring.

Della said Ellen was too beautiful to be trusted; Perry thought he could find out by switching guns on her – thus starting a series of explosions that nearly blast him out of court …

Frances Celane has good reason to pout. Thanks to a provision in her late father’s will administered by her uncle, she’s caught in the middle of a family feud between matrimony and money. If she chooses marriage, she loses a million. But beautiful young Frances has a strong will of her own she’s not afraid to use. One way or another, she means to hear wedding bells and cash registers making beautiful music together. Her first move: hire Perry Mason to orchestrate things.

Unfortunately, stubbornness runs in Frances Celane’s family, as Mason discovers when he confronts her Uncle Edward. After Perry’s powers of persuasion fail to penetrate Norton’s hard head, someone decides the only way of cashing in is by bashing in the uncooperative uncle’s skull. But when the blood spills, so do the secrets. Then it’s Mason’s turn to brood, as he tries to figure out if a girl as pretty as his client could have a hand in something so ugly …

Held captive in a dark room in New York State, a young woman is at the mercy of a killer. As guide-dog trainer Joanna finds herself fighting her attraction to blind sculptor Jack Donovan she also begins to feel dangerously unwelcome. Meanwhile, another object of beauty is being stalked …

‘Hilary Norman specialises in creepy thrillers and this one is just as gripping as her previous work’ Woman’s Own

There’s something chillingly familiar about what’s happening to Nick Miller. He was so sure he’d left the past – and Holly Bourne – behind. Holly, pure delight to everyone else, but Nick’s girlfriend-from-hell. Except that all that was over years ago. Holly’s happily married now and thousands of miles away, and Nick’s wife, Nina, is expecting their first child. This can’t have anything to do with Holly.

Yet the shocks have only just begun for Nick and Nina, in a terrifying novel of obsessive love, and a young couple’s fight to escape its deadly stranglehold …

‘A beautifully crafted tale that builds to a dramatic climax’ Bookseller

One of the very last authors of detective fiction from the genre’s “Golden Age” INDEPENDENT

Suicide or murder? Despite all indications to the contrary, Alec Methven had not eaten his last meal in solitude, and somebody was very anxious to conceal that fact.

As if one death on the beautiful island of Madeira was not enough, there was another. Peter Corey, who had found Methven’s body, had a cast-iron alibi: he was on a plane to the island at the time of the death, en route to visit his old friend. But what of the second killing that so inexplicably occurred?

Defrauding an insurance company is not an unusual crime, but the way Stephen Venner planned to do it was not only unusual but macabre. But then Stephen Venner was a totally selfish and amoral man, and with the push of blackmail behind him, and the strength of his wife to support him, there was little he would stop at.

Ross MacLaren didn’t know that, and allowed himself to be lured to Portugal where he, Stephen and the beautiful but repressed Emma play out the last tense act of at least one of their three lives.

When Martin Mallory falls in love with a beautiful student, he has no idea the trouble it will cause. Suddenly Li Cho disappears from the secretive Wycherly Foundation for Religious Studies. The principal, Ludovic Lambert, says she has been transferred, but won’t say where.

In desperation, Mallory arranges for an ex-con friend to break into Lambert’s safe where he has heard the transfer list is kept. But the piece of paper they find is far more sinister than a simple list of student transfers.

Young Roderick Kinsmere was a country bumpkin when he strolled into the Great Court of Charles II’s Whitehall Palace. Three days later he had lost his fortune, gained a wife, fought for – and been outwitted by – his king, and no one would ever call Rowdy Kinsmere a bumpkin again.

It was 1670 and London was a teeming, filthy, dangerous and splendiferous place. The king was in trouble and Roderick was surrounded by plots and counterplots. And somehow everything centred on the beautiful sapphire ring he had inherited from his father …

‘Mr Carr has contrived a fine, adventurous entertainment of politics and piracy, espionage and murder’ The Times