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

Mary Roberts Rinehart's name is synonomous with well-crafted mystery, and this novel, which combines both mystery and adventure, shows Rinehart's tremendously vivid powers as a storyteller.

The Circular Staircase has been hailed as the best novel by the most important American woman mystery writer. Rachel Innes is relieved when Gertrude and Halsey arrive to keep their dear old aunt company and allow her the courtesy of a decent night's sleep. Unfortunately, the explosive sound of a revolver shot the next night shatters Rachel's hopes. And the body at the foot of the circular staircase insures many sleepless nights to follow.

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.

"The Amazing Interlude" is a romance by Mary Roberts Rinehart. Excerpt: The stage on which we play our little dramas of life and love has for most of us but one setting. It is furnished out with approximately the same things. Characters come, move about and make their final exits through long-familiar doors. And the back drop remains approximately the same from beginning to end. So Sara Lee Kennedy had a back drop that had every appearance of permanency.

Ralph Leslie, a brand-new MD, realizes that a life of adventure holds more appeal than hospital rounds and daily clinics. Is it good luck, bad luck, or just fate that lands him as deck steward on the schooner Ella? Because once in open water, the booze flows too freely, old animosities resurface, and new ones form. And then someone starts behaving badly, so badly, in fact, that people are turning up dead. It becomes Leslie’s job to get the Ella, its crew and passengers, and the evidence back to port before the murderer strikes again.

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

Precocious 17-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. 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? Set against the backdrop of the first World War, these humorous tales highlight how little has changed in the past century with regard to a young girl's finding her place in the world.

This third Rinehart murder combines a mystery with a boy-girl romance, an old lady stepping out, political payoffs, and more by a woman The New York Times and LA Times both call “The American Agatha Christie” and who outsold Christie in their mutual lives.

A charming mystery, romance, and more set in an old traditional house in New York City in the late 19th century with servants and all, much like Agatha Christie mysteries set on the 1920s in England. Rinehart was called "The American Agatha Christie" by The New York Times and LA Times, and Rinehart outsold her in their mutual lifetime until Rinehart died in 1958.

This mystery is part of the famous "Had-I-But-Known School" of mysteries founded by Mary Roberts Rinehart with the 1908 publication of her first work, The Circular Staircase. The story deals with civic corruption, a popular theme of early American mysteries. Stories like this anticipate the hard-boiled school to come. So does Rinehart's realistic style, which does not gloss over life's problems.

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.

Mary Roberts Rinehart was an American writer, most well-known for her mystery novels. She was often called the American Agatha Christie, though her first novel, The Circular Staircase, was published years before Christie's. The Circular Staircase is as complex a mystery as anyone could wish for, full of twists and turns, mysterious intruders, a murder and kidnapping, bank failure, all revolving around the sinister staircase itself.

The darkening storm of the first World War threatens to tear apart the lives of a group of friends. At the eye of the storm is Clayton Spencer, an ambitious businessman, who must risk everything to be with the woman he loves.

Winter 1914. Sara Lee Kennedy reads the newspaper account of the war in Europe and is appalled. Others in her sheltered Pennsylvania home are interested only in her coming marriage to solid, self-centered, Harvey. Struggling with compassion, Sara Lee feels compelled to help the suffering Belgian Army whose country is overrun by Germans. She defies her parents and travels alone to the front lines to help anyway she can. It is there she meets Henri, a Belgian officer.

Natalie Spencer was giving a dinner. She was not an easy hostess. Like most women of futile lives, she lacked a sense of proportion, and the small and unimportant details of the service absorbed her. Such conversation as she threw at random, to right and left, was trivial and distracted. Yet, the dinner was an unimportant one. It had been given with an eye more to the menu than to the guest list, which was characteristic of Natalie's mental processes.

Considered "The American Agatha Christie", Rinehart outsold Christie in their mutual lifetime through 1958 when she died. Her first book, The Circular Staircase, may have paved the way for The Mysterious Affair at Styles as the second does Agatha's Tommy and Tuppence series, which combined a thriller and mystery with a love match.

This ghostly, sometimes ghastly, collection includes "The Buckled Bag" by Mary Roberts Rinehart, "The Tapestried Room" or "The Lady in the Saque" by Sir Walter Scott, "The New Catacomb" by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, and "The Lost Ghost" by Mary Wilkins Freeman.

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.

A rip-roaring mystery and romance about a girl in the shade because her older sister can't get married, so is kept a child rather than being permitted to come out as a debutant and woman. Bab keeps them all jumping while trying to do right by everyone though often causing trouble instead. Bravely, she stands up to the bad guys and saves them all. Great fun with wit, wisdom, and irony along the way.

From the "American Agatha Christie" comes a spectacular mystery equal to The Mystery of Roger Ackroyd and Witness for the Prosecution.