Ethel Lina White

"Ambling along the lanes of a sleepy village in the Downs, passing cozy Tudor cottages rustling with wisteria, a novelist imagines the sordid truth hidden behind the quaint, rustic facade. Her musings are confirmed when a spate of anonymous poison pen letters shocks the community, turning neighbor against neighbor and embroiling everyone from the rector and the "queen of the village" Decima Asprey to the high-born Scudamores. With venom in the air,...

First published in the US in 1941, ''She Faded into Air'' is a classic British locked-room style puzzle mystery revolving around the "vanishing woman" theme that White was widely celebrated for perfecting during the Golden Age of detective fiction. The story takes place in London inside Pomerania House-an 18th-century Mayfair mansion converted into flats and offices. Evelyn Cross, a fashionable young woman, enters a fortune teller's flat through...

The main character, Sir Benjamin Watson, created a private zoo in the countryside on the territory of his country house. 'Ganges' is an exotic jungle filled with snakes, elephants, tigers and lions. One summer day, Ann Sherborne arrives at Ganges for meeting friends from the university. There are strange events: a series of accidents involving the zoo animals. Who is involved in this?

Ethel Lina White was a prolific author, and became one of the best-known crime writers in Britain and the US during the thirties and forties. Though best-remembered for her novels Some Must Watch and The Wheel Spins, her short fiction was also hugely popular, and 'Cheese' ranks amongst her best tales. Many of the crime and detective stories of the Victorians, particularly those dating back to the 1900s and before, are now extremely scarce and increasingly...

"The Lady Vanishes" erschien 1936 zunächst unter dem Titel "The Wheel Spins". Eine schöne Analogie, denn die Geschichte spielt nicht nur überwiegend in einem fahrenden Zug – auch die Protagonistin scheint ein bisschen durchgedreht zu sein: Iris, eine frivole junge Engländerin im Italienurlaub, erleidet am Rückreisetag am Bahnhof des glühend heißen Ferienorts einen Schwächeanfall. In letzter Minute landet sie in einem ebenfalls völlig überhitzen...

"Iris Carr is travelling across Europe by train when she unwittingly becomes embroiled in a sinister Balkan plot. Feeling disoriented after a fall, Iris is befriended by Miss Froy, an elderly English woman sharing her carriage. But when she wakes up from a few hours' sleep, Miss Froy has vanished without a trace. As fellow passengers claim the lady never existed, Iris faces danger and intrigue as she fights to discover the fate of Miss Froy-- and...