Emma's opening sentence, which describes the titular heroine's many advantages, is loaded with foreboding. Discomfort and vexation lie on the horizon, triggered by her penchant for matchmaking. Emma's latest scheme involves finding a suitable husband for ingenue Harriet Smith, and to that end she persuades the latter to reject good-natured farmer Robert Martin, despite a mutual attraction. Harriet must set her sights higher, she exhorts, fixing on...

"Hercule Poirot rushes to France in response to an urgent and cryptic plea from a client. But the Belgian detective arrives just too late: the man who had summoned him is found dead on a golf course, stabbed in the back with a letter opener and wearing an ill-fitting coat with a mysterious love letter in its pocket. Strange circumstances multiply, culminating in the discovery of a second body stabbed with the same murder weapon. While the local authorities...

"When the fabled Blue Train, the luxury overnight passenger express to the Riviera, arrives at Nice, a guard attempts to awaken Ruth Kettering from her slumbers. But the wealthy American socialite will never wake again, for a brutal blow has killed her, disfiguring her almost beyond recognition. What is more, her famously valuable rubies are missing. The prime suspect is Ruth's estranged husband, Derek. Yet Hercule Poirot is not convinced, and so...

"The villagers of Chipping Cleghorn are agog with curiousity when the Gazette advertises 'A murder is announced and will take place on Friday, October 29th, at Little Paddoks at 6.30 p.m.' A childish practical joke? Or a spiteful hoax? Unable to resiste the mysterious invitation, the locals arrive at Little Paddocks at the appointed time when, without warning, the lights go out and a gun is fired. When they come back on, a gruesome scene is revealed....

Rustic old Riddlesdale Lodge was a Wimsey family retreat filled with country pleasures and the thrill of the hunt, until the game turned up human and quite dead. He lay among the chrysanthemums, wore slippers and a dinner jacket and was Lord Peter's brother-in-law-to-be. His accused murderer was Wimsey's own brother, and if murder set all in the family wasn't enough to boggle the unflappable Lord Wimsey, perhaps a few twists of fate would be--a mysterious...

A “superbly ingenious” classic of space survival from the author of 2001: A Space Odyssey—one of science fiction’s most influential grandmasters (Daily Express).
 
Expanding the Moon’s population hinges on building a thriving tourist industry. But when a prototype tourist craft called the Selene encounters a moonquake, the ship plummets under a vast body of liquid-fine moondust...

"Soon after Gwenda moved into her new home, odd things started to happen. Despite her best efforts to modernize the house, she only succeeded in dredging up its past. Worse, she felt an irrational sense of terror every time she climbed the stairs. In fear, Gwenda turned to Miss Marple to exorcise her ghosts. Between them, they were to solve a 'perfect' crime committed many years before"--Page 4 of cover.

In an ageing Chevrolet Chevette, he drove nearly 14,000 miles through 38 states to compile this hilarious and perceptive state-of-the-nation report on small-town America.
From the Deep South to the Wild West, from Elvis' birthplace through to Custer's Last Stand, Bryson
visits places he re-named Dullard, Coma, and Doldrum (so the residents don't sue or come after him with baseball bats). But his hopes of finding the American dream end in

...

'They hate the person that they think you are - passionately and completely.' No sooner have the Doctor, Jamie and Victoria landed on a sun-kissed Australian beach than they are being shot at by murderous fanatics! A dramatic helicopter rescue places them in the hands of Astrid Ferrier and Giles Kent, two people intent on bringing about the downfall of the world's most dangerous man - who happens to look exactly like the Doctor. This is Earth in the...

Commander Adam Dalgliesh and his team are called in to investigate a murder at a private nursing home for rich patients being treated by the famous plastic surgeon George Chandler-Powell.