Stories of Murder & Foul Play
Vintage mysteries for readers who always suspect the butler and are usually right.
- Written by Elia W. Peattie
Published January, 1888
In eastern Connecticut, Micah Rood tends his decaying homestead with a gentle hand, preferring the company of orchard swallows to his fellow men. His pride is a single tree bearing rare golden apples, the envy of every farmer in the district. But when a traveling peddler threatens to seize this paradise, a moment of blind rage stains the garden’s peace forever. Now, as the spring blossoms unfurl with a shocking, blood-red hue, Micah finds that the earth itself may be the most damning witness to his crime.
- Written by Octave Thanet
Published March, 1889
When a wealthy admirer secretly leases the decaying Château St. Ferréol to save his beloved Countess from poverty, he expects only a solitary night in the Savoy mountains. But the ancient servants warn him of the Headsman’s Chamber, where a restless ancestor spends the darkness dragging heavy furniture across the floor. Determined to prove his mettle, our hero confronts the noisy spirit. What he uncovers behind the massive oak buffet reveals a centuries-old secret and perhaps the only key to winning the proud Countess’s hand.
- Written by Alexander L. Kinkead
Published February, 1888
A girl of ten, dress torn, feet bare and freezing, asks a shoemaker no one will patronize to make her shoes on credit. He warms her cold feet in his hands before he measures them. That small kindness builds Bargoff’s trade in Kattin, but it also binds his fate to hers. Eight years later, when stolen goods appear in his closet and the village cries villain, his silence protects a secret only Sunny can reveal.
- Written by Gail Hamilton
Published August, 1889
The commander claimed it was a desperate necessity to hang three sailors for mutiny, yet he kept the boy in ironed feet while inventing tales of piracy. Philip Spencer, facing the gallows at eighteen, asked only that his father not be injured by his death. As the Somers returns to port, a suppressed confession and a mother’s unread letter expose the commander’s frantic cover-up. We must look past the official report to see the heartbreaking dignity of a boy condemned by a man terrified of his own shadow.
- Written by Gene H. Underwood
Published October, 1886
When young attorney Obediah Clarkson is appointed to defend the notorious “Black Jack,” he expects a hardened ruffian. Instead, he finds a blue-eyed youth with gentle manners. The trial goes exactly as the prosecution hopes, but Black Jack’s quiet assurance that he won’t stay caged for long proves startlingly accurate. Years later, when Clarkson’s own home is stripped of its silver and heirlooms, he discovers that a professional courtesy and a distinctive first name can offer protection that no police guard could ever provide.
- Written by Charles M. Gavley
Published May, 1889
On a Sunday afternoon in 1886, a mining analyst named Baird found shattered Bohemian glassware on a cobwebbed shelf in a cabin near the abandoned Pennekawba mine. Scratched into the glass: “Z. Z. An. LXXI.” Months later, deep underground beside a rock pile that entombed dead miners, he pulled a moldy notebook from a buried jacket. The diary inside belonged to a German scientist who believed he could resurrect the dead. His final entry may surprise you.
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