The tranquility of a luxury cruise along the Nile was shattered by the discovery that Linnet Ridgeway had been shot through the head. She was young, stylish, and beautiful. A girl who had everything...until she lost her life. Hercule Poirot recalled an earlier outburst by a fellow passenger: "I'd like to put my dear little pistol against her head and just press the trigger." Yet under the searing heat of the Egyptian sun, nothing is ever quite what...

Bound for the Riviera, detective Hercule Poirot has boarded Le Train Bleu, an elegant, leisurely means of travel, free of intrigue. Then he meets Ruth Kettering. The American heiress - bailing out of a doomed marriage - is en route to reconcile with her former lover. But by morning, her private affairs are made public when she is found murdered in her luxury compartment. The rumour of a strange man loitering in the victim's shadow is all Poirot has...

Is it a gesture of good will or a sinister trap that lures Rupert St. Vincent and his family to magnificent estate? How desperate is Joyce Lambert, a destitute young widow whose only recourse is to marry a man she despises? What unexpected circumstance stirs old loyalties in Theodora Darrell, and unfaithful wife about to run away with her lover? In this collection of short stories, the answers are as unexpected as they are satisfying. The Queen of...

Flighty but good-hearted Victoria Jones craves love, intrigue, and adventure. She strikes gold in Edward, a handsome and mysterious traveler whom she's vowed to follow to the ends of the earth. Yet no whirlwind affair can prepare Victoria for what unfolds once she lands in Baghdad. Not a day in Edward's shadow, and she hears whispered warnings of danger and witnesses the murder of a secret agent in her hotel room. And when she discovers that a romantic...

"Sheila Webb expected to find a respectable blind lady waiting for her at 19 Wilbraham Crescent - not the body of a middle-aged man sprawled across the living room floor. But when old Miss Pebmarsh denies sending for her in the first place, or of owning all the clocks that surround the body, it's clear that they are going to need a very good dectective. "This crime is so complicated that it must be quite simple," declares Hercule Poirot. But there's...

"When Hercule Poirot and his associate Arthur Hastings arrive in the French village of Merlinville-sur-Mer to meet their client Paul Renauld, they learn from the police that he has been found that morning stabbed in the back with a letter opener and left in a newly-dug grave adjacent to a local golf course. Among the plausible suspects are Renauld's wife Eloise, his son Jack, Renauld's immediate neighbor Madame Daubreuil, the mysterious 'Cinderella'...

"It is clear to Amy Leatheran that something sinister is going on at the Hassanieh dig in Iraq; something associated with the presence of 'Lovely Louise,' wife of celebrated archaeologist Dr. Leidner. In a few days' time Hercule Poirot is due to drop in at the excavation site. But with Louise suffering from terrifying hallucinations, and tension within the group becoming almost unbearable, Poirot might just be too late...." -- Page [4] cover.

Volume I of The Complete Sherlock Holmes starts with Holmes's first appearance. A Study in Scarlet, a chilling murder novel complete with bloodstained walls and cryptic clues, followed by the baffling The Sign of Four, which introduces Holmes's cocain problem and Watson's future wife. The story collections The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes and The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes feature such renowned tales as "A Scandal in Bohemia", "The Red-Headed League",...