Christianna Brand

This annual anthology of rare stories of crime and suspense brings together tales from the Golden Age of Detective Fiction for the first time in book form, including a short novel by Christianna Brand. Mystery stories have been around for centuries—there are whodunits, whydunits and howdunits, including locked-room puzzles, detective stories without detectives, and crimes with a limited choice of...

Girls Together magazine agony-aunt 'Mrs Friendly-wise', aka Katinka Jones, finds herself at a loose end in Swansea, and decides to pay a surprise visit to one of the magazine's regular correspondents, 'Amista'. But reaching the address—a strange house perched atop a mountain which matches all of the descriptions in the letters—nobody has even heard of 'Amista'. As Katinka begins to...

At Elysian Hall, a great exhibition space in post-War London, a cast has been assembled for a Medieval pageant show. There are knights in coloured armour, real horses, and a fair damsel in the tower on high. Tragedy is in the air when several members of the troupe are sent death threats before the show, and the worst comes to...

It is 1942, and struggling up the hill to the new military hospital, Heron's Park, Kent, postman Higgins has no idea that the sender of one of the seven letters of application he is delivering will turn out to be a murderer in a year's time. When Higgins is brought in following injuries from a bombing raid in 1943, his...

"You have to reach for the greatest of the Great Names (Agatha Christie, John Dickson Carr, Ellery Queen) to find Christianna Brand's rivals in the subtleties of the trade." Anthony Boucher in the New York Times Night falls in the capital, and a "London particular" pea-souper fog envelops the city. In Maida Vale, Rose and her family doctor Tedwards struggle...

Tour de Force is "written with much ingenuity, gaiety of colour and bright, joyful malice," according to Julian Symons in the Times Literary Supplement, 1955. Inspector Cockrill has finally booked a holiday, destined for a Mediterranean tour with a motley crew of fellow vacationers. By the time they have reached the island of San Juan el Pirata off the Italian...

Christianna Brand is not merely a purveyor of thrills or a maker of puzzles. She is a novelist. - The Daily Telegraph While the Blitz bombards London, the boisterous grandchildren of Sir Richard March have descended upon Swanswater Manor in Kent for a family gathering and the finalising of the patriarch's will. Disgruntled by the behaviour and life choices of...

Once upon a time there was a huge family of children; and they were terribly, terribly naughty … So begin the tales of the no-nonsense Nurse Matilda who uses magic to tame the mischievous children in her charge – and who changes their lives forever. The inspiration for the much-loved film Nanny McPhee, starring Emma Thompson and Colin Firth, the...

'My dear Inspector, this is simply nonsense. Girls don't murder each other in respectable dress shops.'Life for the staff of the West End boutique Christophe et Cie is hard enough with all the pressures of delivering the ambitious Mr. Bevan's vision and then comes murder, a poisoning via the toxic crystals of hat-cleaner, pitching haute couture into heinous crime.Faced with...