Drowned rat

Sample

Josephine Bell

> Sally Combs had just finished a temporary job as a secretary to her uncle in Bermuda. As a farewell present he arranged for her to go on a cruise round the Caribbean. It seemed an ideal holiday, but the night before the ship arrived in Bermuda, Felicity Fennister, one of the passengers, suddenly disappeared. At first no one seemed at all anxious to discover the whereabouts of the missing woman - not even when Sally finds what looks like a suicide note. As sinister events build up into a pattern of violence, Sally is forced to realise that almost anyone on board could hold the key to the puzzle.

Sample

Anne Holt

It is only the beginning of May but in Oslo a brutal heat wave has coincided with an alarming increase in violent crime. In the latest instance, police investigator Hanne Wilhelmsen is sent to a macabre crime scene on the outskirts of town. An abandoned shed is covered in blood. On one wall an eight-digit number is written in blood. There is no body--nor any sign of a victim. Is it a kid's prank or foul play? Is it even human blood? As more bloody numbers are found in isolated locations throughout Oslo, Hanne's colleague Håkon Sand makes a startling discovery: the digits correspond to the filing numbers of foreign immigrants. All are female, all are missing. Is there a serial killer on the loose in Oslo? Meanwhile, as the trail heats up, the victim of a horrific unsolved rape case and her father have each decided to take justice into their own hands. Hanne and Håkon soon discover that they aren't the only ones on the hunt for the killer.

Sample

Mary Roberts Rinehart

The Halls, Lancasters, Talbots, Wellingtons, and Daltons--five close-knit and well-to-do families living on exclusive Crescent Place--retreat into terrified paranoia when first old Mrs. Lancaster is found hacked to death with an axe and then other victims are discovered

Sample

Michael Gilbert

The woman was young, French, and on trial for murdering a man said to be her ex-lover and the father of her dead child: an English major who had been one of the great heroes of the French Underground Resistance during the war. Mr. Macrea, hired to be her attorney on the first day of the trial, must find a way to prove her innocence in only one week. And he must dig deeply into the past to prove it.