Carolyn Wells

Excerpt: "Quixotic is his enterprise and hopeless his adventure is, who seeks for jocularities that haven't yet been said, The world has joked incessantly for over fifty centuries, And every joke that's possible has long ago been made. I started as a humourist with lots of mental fizziness, But humour is a drug which it's the fashion to abuse, For my stock-in-trade, my fixtures and the good-will of the business No reasonable offer I am likely to refuse....

In this sequel to "Patty Fairfield", she sets up housekeeping for her father and sometimes succeeds, sometimes makes a mess of things. A small amount of "household management by example (good and bad)" didacticism goes down smoothly. I enjoyed a couple clever, funny scenes involving the servants, but this is otherwise significantly weaker than the first. (goodreads)

After his son, Peter, is lost and presumed dead in the wilds of the Labrador coast, Benjamin Crane turns to spiritualism for solace and comfort. So profound is his belief in the medium, that he writes a successful book about his experiences. But when one of his son's companions on the ill-fated expedition is poisoned, at least some of those surrounding him begin to question the honesty of the medium, Madame Parlato. To find the murderer, the famous...

A detective investigating the murder of a millionaire teams up with master sleuth Fleming Stone in this clever mystery from a pioneer of American crime fiction Eager to prove himself as talented a crime-solver as his hero, the famous investigator Fleming Stone, young detective Herbert Burroughs takes on a puzzling case: the murder of wealthy businessman Joseph Crawford, who was killed in the study of his New Jersey home. With no shortage of suspects,...