Chief Inspector Brett Nightingale and Sergeant Beddoes find the body of Princess Olga Karukhin, who fled from Russia at the time of the Revolution. Taking place in the three days leading up to Christmas, Nightingale's enquiry takes him to a gramophone shop and a jewellers, culminating in the wrapping of the mystery on Christmas Eve.
A stocking-filler-sized compilation of Christmas lore, revealing the intriguing origins of the traditional festivities. Forty short pieces on individual traditions are each accompanied by charming vintage illustrations from the British Library's collection of Christmas books, cards and ephemera.
The Cocktail Book, first published in 1900, is the earliest book devoted purely to the art of the cocktail. This collection, in a beautiful new edition, allows a modern audience to rediscover the joy of classic cocktails, with early recipes for the Whisky Sour, Mint Julep, Manhattan, and many more.
Detective stories from the golden age and beyond have used European settings - cosmopolitan cities, rural idylls and crumbling chateaux - to explore timeless themes of revenge, deception and haunting.
The Reverend Dodd, vicar of the quiet Cornish village of Boscawen, spends his evenings reading detective stories by the fireside - but the peace is shattered one stormy night when Julius Tregarthan, a secretive and ill-tempered magistrate, is found with a bullet through his head!
Offering a bounty of lost or forgotten strange and Gothic tales set in Cornwall, Cornish Horrors explores the rich folklore and traditions of the region in a journey through mines, local mythology, shipwrecks, seascapes, and the coming of the railway and tourism.
First published in 1932 at the height of crime fiction's Golden Age, this macabre and atmospheric dives into the murky underground of Parisian society presents an intelligent puzzle delivered at a stunning pace. This new edition also includes 'The Murder in Number Four', a rare Inspector Bencolin short story.
With expert notes on how each tale contributed to insect horror literature, Janette Leaf and Daisy Butcher are your field guides for a tour through classic insect encounters from the minds of Edgar Allan Poe, E. F. Benson, Clare Winger Harris and many more.
Renowned for its authentic characters and settings based partly on the author's own experiences of life in the Lune valley, E.C.R. Lorac's classic rural mystery returns to print for the first time since 1953.
In London's Bloomsbury, Inspector Julian Rivers of Scotland Yard looks down at a dismal scene. Here is the victim, burnt to a crisp. Here are the clues - clues which point to a good climber and expert skier, and which lead Rivers to the piercing sunshine and sparkling snow of the Austrian Alps to crack the case.
With a foreword by Oti Mabuse. Choreographer Robert Hylton navigates an extraordinary array of photographs, periodicals and ephemera from the British Library collections, which reveal the true origins of the popular dance styles that have, at one point or another, swept the population off their feet.