In Newport, Rhode Island, when a high society woman is murdered dressed in a maid's uniform, police immediately suspect servants or workers and arrest a laborer. But Detective Devlin finds this too convenient and goes looking for suspects among the victim's fellow socialites.

Like other fictional characters, female sleuths may live in the past or the future. They may represent current times with some level of reality or shape their settings to suit an agenda. There are audiences for both realism and escapism in the mystery novel. It is interesting, however, to compare the fictional world of the mystery sleuth with the world in which readers live. Of course, mystery readers do not share one simplistic world. They live in urban, suburban, and rural areas, as do the female heroines in the books they read. They may choose a book because it has a familiar background or because it takes them to places they long to visit. Readers may be rich or poor; young or old; conservative or liberal. So are the heroines. What incredible choices there are today in mystery series! This three-volume encyclopedia of women characters in the mystery novel is like a gigantic menu. Like a menu, the descriptions of the items that are provided are subjective. Volume 3 of Mystery Women as currently updated adds an additional 42 sleuths to the 500 plus who were covered in the initial Volume 3. These are more recently discovered sleuths who were introduced during the period from January 1, 1990 to December 31, 1999. This more than doubles the number of sleuths introduced in the 1980s (298 of whom were covered in Volume 2) and easily exceeded the 347 series (and some outstanding individuals) described in Volume 1, which covered a 130-year period from 1860-1979. It also includes updates on those individuals covered in the first edition; changes in status, short reviews of books published since the first edition through December 31, 2008.

Blending literature and travel, this book offers a look at 15 U.S. destinations featured in the works of famous writers. Designed as a guide to help avid bibliophiles experience, in person, the places they've only read about, award-winning journalist Terri Peterson Smith takes readers on lively tours that include a Mark Twain inspired steamboat cruise on the Mississippi, a Devil in the White City view of Chicago in the Gilded Age, a voyage through the footsteps of the immigrants and iconoclasts of San Francisco, and a look at low country Charleston's rich literary tradition. With advice on planning stress-free group travel and lit trip tips for novices, this resource also features beyond the book experiences, such as Broadway shows, Segway tours, and kayaking, making it a one-of-a-kind reference for anyone who wants to extend the experience of a great read.

"Deeper understanding of history is enhanced by encasing it in art and interest. Crime fiction is one of the widest and most rapidly growing forms of literature. Historical crime fiction serves effectively the double purpose of entertaining while it teaches. The "truth" of the narrative account, the editors of this volume believe, is dependent on the understanding of human nature reflected in the author who writes the narrative. "Historical crime fiction," the editors of this volume write, "has an obligation and a golden opportunity. It must bring the past up to the present through the device of timeless crime and it must take the reader into the world about which is being written so that the characters are alive and the events interesting and challenging." Professional writers of fiction need to be more effective than mere authors of dates and assumed motivations. Therefore they can fill in human motivations and drives where no records exist and can aid the professional historians in what historian David Thelen calls the "challenge of history " which is "to recover the past and [interpret it for] the present." The essays in this volume accept the challenge and make major accomplishments for meeting it.

Two apparently accidental deaths at the Marconi telegraph station. The drowning of a local girl. Two cases that involve Charles, Lord Sheridan, and his wife, Kate, in foreign espionage, malicious intrigue, and inexplicable messages sent out of the blue.

The Old West comes to vivid life as a man hunts his family’s killer in this classic tale of vengeance. When John Chapel was young, his parents were brutalized and murdered by Bevo Rooks and his gang of cutthroats. With a cold, undying tenacity, he tracked the men, picking them off one by one. But the wily Rooks got away, and Chapel was taken in by the Chickasaw Nation, and lived as one of them. Twelve years later, Chapel is a deputy marshal, renowned for his ability to run down his quarry. But he hasn’t forgotten the promise he made to finish what he started. When Chapel joins the hunt for Rooks, he knows his quest for vengeance is coming to a close—and that his prey will finally die by his bullet....

Novelist Fiona McGregor'snew book, Buried Not Dead, is a collection of essays on art, literature and performance, sexuality, activism and the life of the city. It features performance artists, writers, dancers, tattooists and DJs, some of them famous, like Marina Abramović and Mike Parr, while others, like Latai Taumoepeau, Lanny K and Kathleen Mary Fallon, are important figures but less well known. In her portraits of these performers and artists and the scenes they inhabit, McGregor creates an intimate and expansive archive of a kind rarely recorded in our histories. Fiona McGregor has a deep and enduring involvement in the worlds she represents. She came of age as an artist during an outpouring of performative queer creativity, in a community that celebrated subversion, dissent and uninhibited partygoing, and in her writing she observes the shift from that moment to new forms of cultural repression. McGregor is a participant in her essays as well as a witness — she sees through an artist's eyes and records what she perceives with a novelist's insight. In excavating the lives of others, she reveals her own, and shows the possibilities that exist beneath the surface of our culture. 'Compromise-averse, dangerous, this book is also a precious archive of radical art-making witnessed firsthand.' — Maria Tumarkin 'MacGregor has a fine eye for the moment, in a text or performance, when the marvellous happens. Cutting across the boring divides between high art and low dives, Buried Not Dead is alive to what's alive.' — McKenzie Wark 'In a world that bludgeons you into numbness Buried Not Dead will startle you back to life. McGregor's book is a shriek of rage and a cry of pleasure, and sometimes it is hard to tell one from the other.' — Krissy Kneen

This publication will fill a gap in the bibliographic reference shelf by identifying historical novels for both adult and young adult readers. ^IAmerican Historical Fiction^R contains over 3,000 titles set in states and historical regions of the United States. Entries are organized by time period. The newest titles, as well as old favorites, are covered. The volume is indexed by author, title, genre, subject, and geographic setting.

Dee Livesey, unhappily married mother with two young daughters, is suspected of having pushed her mother-in-law to her death. She’s remanded in custody.

Lists over 3,400 mystery titles written by women in correct series order, as well as more than 600 series detectives created by women and more. Titles are indexed by mystery type and series setting.