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While travelling by train, Miss Marple witnesses the strangling of a young woman in another train on a parallel track. The police find nothing to support her story, so she conducts her own investigation, with the aid of her close friend Jim Stringer. They conclude the body must have been thrown from the train near Ackenthorpe Hall. There's only one thing for it - Miss Marple goes undercover as a housekeeper at the Hall. Based on Agatha Christie's 4.50 From Paddington. Also stars James Robertson Justice, Joan Hickson and Rutherford's husband Stringer Davis. https://cosmiccauldronbooks.com.au/p/4-50-from-paddington-agatha-christie/ https://cosmiccauldronbooks.com.au/p/margaret-rutherford-dreadnought-good-manners-andrew-merriman/
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Book XX of Brother Cadfael. November 1145 - the bitter rift between King Stephen and Empress Maud at last has achance for reconciliation. With both sides pndering the wisdom of further conflict, they agree that a council should take place. It is hoped that the meeting will at least resolve the question prisoners of war, a number of whom were taken following the shocking defection to the King’s cousin Philip, younger son of the Earl of Gloucester. Brother Cadfael seeks leave to attend the meeting - he has learned that among the prisoners is one Olivier de Bretagne, a young man who calls upon loyalties even higher than Cadfael’s monastic vows. As Cadfael observes, ‘Before I was a brother, I was a father…’ and his determination to come to his son’s aid prompts a perplexing investigation of a uniquely personal nature.
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When Kinsey Millhone answers her office door late one night, she lets in more darkness than she realizes. Janice Kepler is a grieving mother who can't let the death of her beautiful daughter Lorna alone. The police agree that Lorna was murdered, but a suspect was never apprehended and the trail is now ten months cold. Kinsey pieces together Lorna's young life: a dull day job at the local water treatment plant, spiced by sidelines in prostitution and porno. She tangles with Lorna's friends: a local late-night DJ; a sweet, funny teenage hooker; Lorna's sloppy landlord and his exotic wife. But to find out which one, if any, turned killer, Kinsey will have to inhabit a netherworld from which she may never return.
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Landlords are never the most popular people, and there is little grief when the greedy, ruthless Mahendralal Bakhle is blown up in his boat on beautiful Periyar Lake. Suspicion falls on the boat-boy who died with him but Dominic Felse, a member of a party of young tourists who were accidentally involved with the tragedy, is not convinced of the boy's guilt. And when they move on, it seems the terror is still pursuing them. Violence and death erupt in the home of a very different landowner, where Dominic and his friends are guests, and follow them relentlessly south to the very tip of India where Dominic and the Swam Premanathanand, a man of peace, unravel a deadly Indian rope trick of hatred and murder.
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Just after midnight, a snowdrift stops the famous Orient Express in its tracks as it travels through the mountainous Balkans. The luxurious train is surprisingly full for the time of the year but, by the morning, it has one less passenger. An American tycoon lies dead in his compartment, stabbed a dozen times, his door locked from the inside. One of the passengers is none other than detective Hercule Poirot. On vacation. Isolated and with a killer on board, Poirot must identify the murderer - in case he or she decides to strike again.
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Kay Scarpetta VIII. Dublin, Ireland and Richmond, Virginia - separated by thousands of miles but linked by murder. Dr. Scarpetta, on a leisure stint in Ireland, has the perfect opportunity to find out if the murders on opposite sides of the Atlantic are linked. Five dismembered, beheaded bodies were found in Ireland years ago - now four have been discovered in the US. But the tenth corpse in Virginia is different. There are vital discrepancies and evidence that the elderly victim was already seriously ill. A copy-cat killing - ghoulish, but not unusual. But when the next body is found, Scarpetta discovers that the killer is armed with the most lethal weapon on earth - smallpox.
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Michael Hrubek, a young schizophrenic, has escaped from a hospital for the criminally insane - and he's making his way to Lis Atcheson, the teacher who testified at his murder trial. Four people are racing to intercept him: his psychiatrist; the hospital director; a professional tracker; and Lis's husband who must get to Hrubek before the madman reaches his wife. But Michael's mind, with his delusions of betrayal and murder, is crystal clear about one thing. He knows Lis better than she knows herself. And he carries with him a monstrous secret that will tear apart many lives in the course of one horrifying night.