Governess-turned-sleuth Miss Silver unravels a tangled web of marriage, mystery, and murder in the English countryside No one has seen Allegra Trent since she got married. Her husband, Geoffrey, swept her off her feet and out of London to a faraway town called Bleake, consumed with the dream of owning a ramshackle medieval estate known as "Ladies' Bane." Why he's so determined to live there no one knows, but Allegra postpones visits from family again...

When she found the body of her beloved Uncle Jonathan, Georgina instinctively stooped to pick up the revolver, thus becoming the prime suspect. Georgina stood to inherit a large fortune when her uncle died. But her uncle had a second secret will and the beneficiary is the wide-eyed ingenue Mirrie Fields. But there was also the puzzle of the missing fingerprint. It was the showpiece of Uncle Jonathan's collection. He had acquired it from a self-confessed...

It's nearing the end of World War II, and Michael Harcsh has been working for the government on a secret project for years. Finally, he is ready to hand over his precious formula. But the next morning, he is found dead, shot in the church where he used to go and play the organ. It looks like suicide, but Sir George Rendel believes otherwise. But when the police nail the wrong man, there's nothing for it but to bring in Miss Silver...much to the chagrin...

An actress who fears her life is threatened comes to Miss Silver for help Mrs. Smith is not the first woman who has come to Maud Silver, the genteel private detective, claiming that someone is trying to kill her. She tells a story of attempted poisoning, a shove down a flight of stairs, and a house full of relatives who might want to push her out of the way.Miss Silver is intrigued, not least because this is not Mrs. Smith. Despite her attempt at...

Carmona is lucky not to marry Alan Field. Charming though he may be, the young man is a rascal, and though her heart breaks when he disappears on the eve of their wedding, she is surely much better off. By the time she learns that Alan has decamped for South America, she has already given her heart to a more deserving suitor. Several years later, Alan reappears—desperate for money and as charming as ever. An author is writing a biography of Alan’s...

Marion Grey is growing used to the idea that her husband will never leave prison. After the horrors of a very public trial she’s almost able to find relief in her resignation. But when new evidence suggests her husband may be innocent after all, she hires a professional—Miss Maud Silver—to clear his name. It begins with a chance encounter on a busy train, when a friend of Marion’s meets a half-mad woman who claims to know something of the...

Edward Random returns to Deeping a forgotten man. Although raised in the village’s manor house, he is no longer wealthy—the result of a quarrel with an uncle, which left him out of the old man’s will. For years Edward’s name has not been spoken in the town, save for wild rumors that he had gone to prison for dueling, decamped to the Orient, or had simply died of mysterious circumstances. In fact, he is in good health, ready to start life where...

Former schoolteacher Miss Maud Silver is on her way back to London when, with a violent shudder of the train, a young woman is thrust into her compartment. She’s beautiful, well dressed, newly married, and wealthy—a lethal combination. In a state of shock, Lisle Jerningham explains that she fled her home in a hurry after overhearing a sinister conversation. Her new husband’s first wife died in an apparent accident, and the resultant infusion...

There was a certain heavy air of intrigue and mystery emanating from the old inn high on the cliff top. The Catherine-Wheel had once been a home for pirates and smugglers, but now is looked like it was harbouring a murderer. It had begun with an advertisement in the paper requesting descendants of the late innkeeper, Jeremiah Taverner, to stay for a weekend at the inn. They had arrived, a mixed assortment, to the family reunion eager to discover the...