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

Rinehart's The Man in Lower Ten, the first American detective novel to make the best seller list, follows the investigation of the murder of a man in a sleeping car on a train. In this fast-paced thriller, the investigating detective builds up a network of clues that absolutely incriminate three entirely different people---only one of whom can be guilty.

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.

Twenty-year-old Halsey and 24-year-old Gertrude, nephew and niece of Rachel Inness, a well-to-do middle-aged spinster, talk Rachel into renting a large country house for the summer. Mysterious happenings occur the first night they are there, something or someone falls down the stairs in the middle of the night. A man is dead at the foot of the circular staircase. Now the question arises as to who he is and why was he in the house.

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.

Rachel Innes rents a summer house that is full of hidden rooms and sinister happenings. Chilling horror, romance, and rollicking humor permeate this suspenseful mystery novel.

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.

A beautiful girl seeks the help of an attorney when her father vanishes. Soon, her aunt also disappears from a locked house in the dead of the night. The search leads to the infamous White Cat, a nightclub frequented by crooked politicians and now, murder.

There are so many kinds of love: romantic, filial, spiritual. The following stories by Mary Roberts Rinehart present all sorts of love. Many of the stories take place in hospitals, and two involve trans-Atlantic steam travel. Many have a light heart at their core, while some may induce the wonderment of social issues of their time and of ours. All end with an element of hope and happiness.

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.

Mary Roberts Rinehart -- "America's Agatha Christie," as she used to be called -- set this story in a New York suburban town, shortly after the end of the first world war. Dick Livingstone is a young, successful doctor, who in the course of events becomes engaged to Elizabeth Wheeler. But there is a mystery about his past, and he thinks himself honor-bound to unravel it before giving himself to her in marriage. In particular, a shock of undetermined origin has wiped out his memory prior to roughly the last decade. Rinehart, who presumably had been reading, or reading about, the then popular ...

Mary Roberts Rinehart, known for her best-selling mystery novels such as The Circular Staircase published in 1907, earned a reputation as “the American Agatha Christie” through the success of her novels. Yet Rinehart was also a WWI correspondent. After convincing her editor at The Saturday Evening Post to send her to the Belgian front, and armed with letters of introduction, her status as a well-known writer and member of the American Red Cross, as well as plenty of fearless initiative, she became the first American to report from the front.

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.

Letitia Carberry, Tish to her friends, is off again on three entirely different adventures. Tish, Aggie and Lizzie, three middle-aged spinsters, are on track to create havoc wherever they go, but Tish is definitely the ringleader and leads where the other two ladies would rather not go.

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.

Precocious seventeen-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. How can a made-up paramour appear at a ball? Will Bab find inspiration or romance from the neighboring vacation cottage? How can she save the career of her latest (and dearest) love? 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?