Hamish Gavin has accepted a teaching position at a unique institution, Joynings, where almost all of the students--and most of the faculty--have dark deeds and secrets in their past that led them there. Equal parts safe house, college, and...
Dame Beatrice receives a letter from her grandnephew, Denis Bradley, and relates its contents thusly to Laura over breakfast: "Denis has joined a friend named Tom Richardson for a fortnight's holiday. He was late getting to the hotel and the...
Comrie and Hera are planning to marry but, before taking the risk of setting up as legal life-partners, they decide on an unusual test of compatibility: they embark on a long, sometimes arduous pilgrimage along part of Scotland's West Highland...
Dame Beatrice is summoned to Galliard Hall by a heretofore unknown relative, one Romilly Lestrange, who asks his guest for her psychiatric opinion of his troubled wife. It turns out that the patient in question--a young woman called Trilby but...
When former banana-grower Edris Tidson hears of a possible sighting of a water-naid he insists that his wife, her aunt Prissie and Prissie's young ward Connie, travel with him to Winchester in search of the nymph. As tensions rise between Connie...
The staff of Hillmaston School are gathered to choose the next production to be performed by the Musical, Operatic and Dramatic Society. After some argument they agree on The Mikado and, to everyone’s surprise, the meek and self-effacing...
Two undergraduates decide to spend the long vacation searching for treasure which local legend indicates was buried in a castle well during the Civil War.
When the youths get to the site they are dismayed to find that other parties have...
Death of a Delft Blue revolves around three interrelated families, the Colwyn-Welch family who are English-Dutch, the van Zestiens, who are Dutch-Danish and the family called Rose. Binnen Colwyn-Welch obtains her quite considerable income from...
On a rainy, miserable night, down-on-his-luck author George Mandsell ducks into a public telephone box, intending to call his publisher and ask for an advance. As soon as he is inside, the phone begins to ring. Answering it, he discovers that the...
Depending on how one looks at it, Mr. Theddeus E. Lawrence manages to incur either terrible misfortune or celebrated windfalls. Relatives and family members have a habit of dying, but Lawrence is often compensated for his loss. His father (who...