Margaret Millar

A psychological thriller by a mistress of suspense at the top of her form and 1956 winner of the Edgar Allan Poe Award. What starts with a crank call from an old school chum sets the lonely, aloof, financially comfortable Miss Helen Clarvoe on a path as predictable only as madness. Lured from her rooms in a second-rate residential Hollywood hotel, she finds herself stranded in the more perilous terrain of extortion, pornography, vengeance, and ultimately murder.

Beast in View

A Stranger in My Grave

Vanish in an Instant

Igor B. Maslowski

Helen Clarvoe, trentenaire richissime, vit recluse dans sa suite d’hôtel : ses contacts avec le monde extérieur se limitent au notaire familial, M. Blackshear, et aux rares lettres qu’elle échange avec sa mère. Alors quand elle reçoit l’étrange appel d’Evelyn Merrick, une amie de jeunesse dont elle ne se souvient pas et qui prétend l’avoir vue dans sa boule de cristal, le front blessé et la bouche en sang, Helen prend peur et supplie Blackshear de lui venir en aide.
Mais quelque chose ne colle pas : Helen est loin d’être la seule victime de ces appels terrifiants, et pourtant, si certains disent Evelyn folle à lier, d’autres la trouvent angélique… Qui est la véritable Evelyn ? Que cherche-t-elle ? Et surtout, comment faire cesser ces appels aux conséquences parfois funestes ?

La plume incisive de Margaret Millar nous entraîne dans les arcanes de la psychologie humaine et nous plonge dans un roman glaçant où les apparences sont toujours trompeuses.

Traduction révisée de Igor B. Maslowski

Mortellement vôtre

Lucille Morrow was blessed -- a beautiful woman with a devoted husband. One day a mysterious messenger delivered a package, and suddenly Lucille Morrow was gone. Dominated by fear, she committed herself into an asylum. Searching for the cause, Inspector Sands follows a long trail which takes him to an abyss of horror, murder and retribution the likes of which he's never seen.

The Iron Gates

Listening Walls

A serio-comic thriller about a busload of skiers snowbound in a Canadian mansion.

Fire Will Freeze

In this complex and psychologically acute critique of the post-war family a husband’s paranoia concerning his young wife’s fidelity escalates just as she struggles to survive while surrounded by his oppressive insecurity. Martha and Charles Pearson have been married for four years when Charles becomes convinced she is trying to poison him. Charles is desperately in love with his young, beautiful, and coolly removed wife, but he knows in his heart that she married him for his money. Martha, meanwhile, is miserable in the cage of her husband's psychotic paranoia. She struggles through her bland, textureless days, doing her best to care for him and to keep up appearances. When an embittered ex-boyfriend returns from four years away at war, a confrontation with him is all Martha needs to turn her life upside down. Experiment in Springtime is the poignantly observed story of an unfortunately entered marriage, a novel that scrapes away the veneer of domestic bliss to reveal the heartbreaks, neuroses, and dissatisfactions of the mythical post-WWII nuclear family.

Experiment in Springtime

Patricia Highsmith

Charlotte Armstrong

Dolores Hitchens

Though women crime and suspense writers dominate today's bestseller lists, the extraordinary work of the mid-century pioneers is largely unknown. Their work, influential in its day and still vibrant and extraordinarily riveting today, is long overdue for rediscovery. This volume, the first of a two-volume collector's set, gathers four classic works that together reveal the vital and unacknowledged lineage that leads to today's leading crime writers. From the 1950s here are Charlotte Weinman, Patricia Highsmith, Margaret Millar & Dolores Hitchens.

Four Suspense Novels of the 1950s: Mischief / the Blunderer / Beast in View / Fool's Gold

Women Crime Writers

Californie, 1968. Cela fait un an que le mari de Devon Osborne, Robert, a disparu. Son corps n’a jamais été retrouvé, même si les preuves découvertes sur l’exploitation agricole qu’il dirigeait laissent peu de place au doute. En ce 24 octobre a lieu le procès qui doit établir officiellement sa mort présumée, mais les procès ont cela de particulier qu’ils dérangent les secrets les mieux gardés. Et l’enquête, au lieu de se clore, semble reprendre comme au premier jour…

Outre son génie pour rendre la finesse de la psychologie humaine, ce sont les paradoxes de la Californie des années 1960 que Margaret Millar expose dans
monstres. Le Territoire des monstres. Racisme, deuil, quête de vérité et de justice… Et si même les mobiles les plus anodins pouvaient faire de nous des monstres ?
Traduction révisée de l’anglais (Canada) de Jean-Patrick Manchette

Le Territoire des monstres

Beyond This Point Are Monsters

The untimely death of the daughter of wealthy Californian landowners slowly destroys the community that loved her in life. Eight-year-old Princess Annamay Hyatt rules her avocado kingdom benevolently. With the faithful companionship of her attendants--the two enormous family dogs--precocious Annamay spends her days in the playhouse her wealthy parents have built her in the garden, entertaining her friends—dolls, neighbors, hitchhikers who wander through the avocado groves in search of fallen fruit. Then one summer day, Annamay disappears. When her bones are discovered a few months later, the news of her murder tears her family apart. Her parents' struggling marriage reaches a breaking point; her bereft grandfather contemplates why he is alive; her beloved housekeeper wonders how she could have made the little girl heed her warnings about strangers; the minister who buried her has lost his faith. Everyone in Annamay's circle is blaming themselves and one another for her death--but who was really responsible?

Banshee

The quintessential Hollywood mystery novel—clever, humorous, and thoroughly Hitchcockian—a faded actress’s death sows chaos among a quirky set of characters in the nervous hills of California. Rose’s best days are behind her. No longer does she star on the silver screen, and her drinking and money troubles have eroded her wealth and societal status. Rose has no friends in the world except for a nosy landlord and her psychologist; her life is all but over. But authorities are still suspicious when she turns up dead in the garden of a wealthy doll manufacturer. Despite the coroner’s finding of a natural death, a series of inquiries made, first by her ex-husband, then her psychologist, and eventually stir up enough doubts for the police to get involved. But involved in what?

Rose's Last Summer

The Invisible Worm

Best Mysteries of All Time

Young housewife Daisy Harker's world is upended when a blank spot in her memory and a reoccurring nightmare link her to an unsolved murder and a decades-old conspiracy.

"Miranda Shaw was a rich and recent widow in her early fifties. The head lifeguard at the Penguin Beach Club, Grady Keaton, was exactly half her age. When Grady and Miranda dropped out of sight at the same time, rumors began to circulate among the other members and employees of the club. And when Admiral Young's two somewhat addled daughters, Cordelia and Juliet, spotted some of Miranda's jewels at an estate auction, the rumors darkened and the hunt was on. Tom Aragon, the engaging lawyer who solved the bizarre mystery in Ask for Me Tomorrow, has to undertake an even stranger case in Margaret Millar's new tragicomedy ..." --

The Murder of Miranda

The Birds and the Beasts Were There

A treasure trove of Millar rarities join her final novels to form a collector’s dream anthology. Perhaps no other installment in Collected Millar displays the staggering variety of form and ranging interests of Margaret Millar as the present volume. On one end readers will find her final two mystery novels, which display the hallmarks of the writer in her heyday; the sharp social commentary and poignant black humor both well-couched in a brilliantly devised plot. The other end of the collection sees her collected shorter works, which includes the return of two fan favorites, Dr. Paul Prye and Inspector Sands. Last but certainly not least is her darkly humorous autobiographical children’s novel. Banshee (1983) The moral hypocrisy of society’s upper crust is laid bare when the untimely death of the young daughter of wealthy Californian landowners slowly destroys the community that loved her in life. Spider Webs (1986) The motives and prejudices of twelve jurors are on full display in the case of a Caribbean yacht captain who has been accused of murdering a wealthy white client for her jewelry. Collected Short Fiction with an Introduction by Tom Nolan (2004) Millar may have been better known as a novelist but the short stories in this collection prove that she was also a master of the short form. Two novellas and three short stories possess all the hallmarks of her stunning novel-length mysteries, including a return to two favorite characters: The psychologist Dr. Paul Prye and Detective Inspector Sands. It’s All in the Family (1948) Out of print for decades, and extremely hard to find until now, Margaret Millar’s bestselling and only book-length foray into children’s literature stars a precocious (maybe pernicious) young girl named Priscilla, whose flair for the dramatic is matched only by her preternatural intellect. This semi-autobiographical story remains a delightful depiction of a pre-war childhood, even if the protagonist skews more Wednesday Addams than Dorothy Gale of Kansas.

Margaret Millar

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