Mary Roberts Rinehart

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. For twenty years I had been perfectly comfortable; for twenty years I had had the window-boxes filled in the spring, the carpets lifted, the awnings put up and the furniture covered with brown linen; for as many summers I had said good-bye to my friends, and, after watching their perspiring hegira, had settled down to a delicious quiet in town, where the mail comes three times a day, and the water supply does not depend on a tank on the roof. And then -- the madness seized me. When I look back over the months I spent at Sunnyside, I wonder that I survived at all. As it is, I show the wear and tear of my harrowing experiences. I have turned very gray -- Liddy reminded me of it, only yesterday, by saying that a little bluing in the rinse-water would make my hair silvery, instead of a yellowish white. I hate to be reminded of unpleasant things and I snapped her off. "No," I said sharply, "I'm not going to use bluing at my time of life, or starch, either."

The Circular Staircase

When Herbert Wynne supposedly commits suicide, Miss Pinkerton poses as a private nurse to his aunt Juliet and discovers that his "bedridden" aunt takes midnight jaunts, a stranger skulks about the stairs, and the other nurse on duty is scared of her own shadow, and Miss Pinkerton must unmask a killer before he strikes again. Reprint.

Miss Pinkerton

When Carol Spencer discovers the charred corpse of an unknown woman in her family's Maine retreat, Carol must do some fast sleuthing of her own before a dangerous killer burns her, too. Reissue.

The Yellow Room

A drunk passed out in his assigned sleeping berth saves Lawrence Blakely's life when, mistaken for Blakely, he is murdered, tipping off the detective that someone wants him dead. Reissue.

The Man in Lower Ten

When her sister succumbs to apparent paranoia and locks herself in her room, crime novelist Lois, facing an imminent deadline, discovers clues that point to a real-life mystery that that turns deadly when her sister disappears. Reissue.

The Swimming Pool

Now and then amazing things are done on this great stage of ours: lights go down; the back drop, which had given the illusion of solidity, reveals itself transparent. A sort of fairyland transformation takes place. Beyond the once solid wall strange figures move on -- a new mise en sc?ne, with the old blotted out in darkness. The lady, whom we left knitting by the fire, becomes a fairy -- Sara Lee became a fairy, of a sort -- and meets the prince. Adventure, too; and love, of course. And then the lights go out, and it is the same old back drop again, and the lady is back by the fire -- but with a memory. This is the story of Sara Lee Kennedy's memory -- and of something more. . . .

The Amazing Interlude

Love Stories

When wealthy Eliza Fairbanks becomes convinced that someone has put bats in her bedroom and arsenic on her strawberries, shrewd Miss Pinkerton is assigned to watch her--but someone more dangerous may be watching as well

The Haunted Lady

Love was the furthest thing from Patricia Abbott's mind when she met Tony Wainwright. Though he was heir to the Wainwright fortune and the magnificent family mansion known as the Cloisters, the rumors of his private revels hinted at a dark and sinister decadence. And there was something else -- a woman Tony never spoke about, hidden away in the shadows... a woman who was his wife. But it was already too late. As Tony drew her into a dangerous liaison, Patricia became enmeshed in an inescapable web of lies, secrets, and cold-blooded murder...

The Great Mistake

The Album

When the beautiful yet conniving Juliette returns to wreak havoc upon her ex-husband and his family, the tables turn and she is brutally murdered, leaving Sheriff Russell Shand with a wealth of suspects as he races against time to catch a killer. Reissue.

The Wall

It was sinister, mysterious, dark. Its immediate effect on my imagination was apprehension - almost terror. Murder or suicide, here among the shadows a soul, an indestructible thing, had been recently violently wrenched from its body. The body lay in the room overhead. But what of the spirit?

Sight Unseen

Avery Hopwood

Mary Roberts Rinehart (1876-1958) was a prolific author often called the American Agatha Christie. "Dorothy B. Hughes, crime critic and novelist, says she 'has been and continues to be' the most important American woman mystery writer. " She was born in Allegheny City, Pennsylvania, which has been a part of the city of Pittsburgh since 1907. She attended public schools and graduated at the age of sixteen, then enrolling at the Pittsburgh Training School for Nurses at Homeopathic Hospital, where she graduated in 1896. During the stock market crash of 1903 Rinehart and her husband lost their savings, and this spurred her efforts at writing as a way to earn income. In 1907 she wrote The Circular Staircase, the novel that launched her to national fame. She wrote hundreds of short stories, poems, travelogues and special articles. Many of her books and plays were adapted for movies. While many of her books were best-sellers, critics were most appreciative of her murder mysteries. Her other works include The After House (1914), Kings, Queens and Pawns (1915), K (1915), Tish (1916) and Love Stories (1920).

The Bat

The Double Alibi

Stories of true romance, from youth to middle age and beyond . An elderly couple sits on a park bench, murmuring compliments to each other, and passing gentle judgment on the crowds that pass them by. They are alone -- no children, no friends, nothing but their memories to keep them company. Are they happy? Or is true love no longer enough to sustain them? While this couple sits on the bench, remembering faded passions, young people are falling in love for the first time. Middle-aged husbands and wives are taking second honeymoons, trying to recapture something that now seems like it may never have been real to begin with. Lovers are everywhere -- happy and sad, jealous and fervent -- and no one knows them better than Mary Roberts Rinehart. In this haunting collection, she shows us love won and lost, its ends and its beginnings, always different, and always a little bit the same.

The Romantics

A Double Barreled Detective Story

Stories of People You Know

Familiar Faces

The Buckled Bag

This Strange Adventure

A memoir of desert travel -- by camel and horseback -- from a beloved author. An internationally renowned writer of mystery fiction, Mary Roberts Rinehart knows her way around an exotic setting. When faced with the Pyramids, the Nile, and the sprawling Egyptian desert in her own life, she does not fall in with the crowd of tourists waiting in line at the tombs of the Pharaohs. Instead, she hikes up her skirt, plants her pumps in the sand, and hops on a camel. She has but one question: Where am I supposed to sit? On a hundred-mile expedition into the Egyptian desert, Rinehart does her best to master the herky-jerk of this desert beast. But traveling with an entourage of well-mannered people, she finds that desert living is not completely stripped of the comforts of home. Upon returning to the United States, Rinehart makes an excursion out west, which, she finds, is where the true adventure begins.

Mary Roberts Rinehart

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