A unique anthology for crime aficionados – seven of the world’s most notorious genuine murder mysteries retold by the most accomplished classic crime writers of their generation.
A manipulative murderer who stalked the streets of Paris; a young wife who poisoned her eccentric husband; a bank cashier’s mysterious suicide; a brutal double murder in New Zealand… Seven of the world’s greatest crime writers turn their hand to some of the world’s most spine-tingling mysteries – all of them astonishingly TRUE.
This remarkable collection from the archives of the Detection Club follows The Floating Admiral, Ask a Policeman and Six Against the Yard back into print after more than 75 years, and shows some of the most accomplished authors of their generation retelling real-life murder mysteries with all the relish of the tastiest crime fiction.

The Anatomy of Murder

Literature & Fiction

Simpson, Helen

ILES, Francis

Rhode, John

SAYERS,DOROTHY L.

Club, The Detection

Wills Croft, Freeman

Genre Fiction

Collins Crime Club

Ask A Policeman

This classic crime novel by six different authors is introduced by Martin Edwards, archivist of the Detection Club, and includes a never-before-published Preface by Agatha Christie, ‘Detective Writers in England’, in which she discusses her approach to writing and her fellow writers in the Detection Club.
Lord Comstock is a barbarous newspaper tycoon with enemies in high places. His murder in the study of his country house poses a dilemma for the Home Secretary. In the hours before his death, Lord Comstock’s visitors included the government Chief Whip, an Archbishop, and the Assistant Commissioner for Scotland Yard. Suspicion falls upon them all and threatens the impartiality of any police investigation. Abandoning protocol, the Home Secretary invites four famous detectives to solve the case: Mrs Adela Bradley, Sir John Saumarez, Lord Peter Wimsey, and Mr Roger Sheringham. All are different, all are plausible, all are on their own – and none of them can ask a policeman…
The contributors to ASK A POLICEMAN are: John Rhode, Helen Simpson, Gladys Mitchell, Anthony Berkeley, Dorothy L. Sayers, Milward Kennedy, with Agatha Christie and Martin Edwards.

Ask a Policeman

MITCHELL, Gladys

Berkeley, Anthony

CHRISTIE,AGATHA

Detection Club, The

Literary

Wills Crofts, Freeman

Taking tea is quintessentially English, and who is a greater authority on the subject than the sumptuous London Ritz Hotel? Delightfully illustrated, this charming Edwardian-style book provides us with all the expertise on the ceremony as well as the recipes.

The Ritz London Book of Afternoon Tea: The Art and Pleasures of Taking Tea

Cookbooks, Food & Wine

Beverages & Wine

Ebury Press

A sensational new short story collection about women’s lives, from Britain’s master of the genre: “A masterful contemporary exponent of the genre, Simpson now deserves to be compared with Flannery O’Connor and Alice Munro.” –The Observer

Constitutional

Vintage Books

"A masterful contemporary exponent of the genre. Simpson now deserves to be compared with Flannery O'Connor and Alice Munro." — ObserverPoignant, perceptive and dazzling, in this, her long awaited new collection, Helen Simpson offers acute portraits of lives in transition: of changes for the better, lives stalled and in freefall; of love, loss, and sudden revelations. Warm and funny, the stories are also threaded with a sense of anxiety and fear: of growing old, of commitment, and, most worryingly, of the growing threat to the environment.In the title story, Alan, on a transatlantic flight, is delighted by an unusual upgrade to a first class seat, but is to find his journey disturbed by portents of doom; a family discussion over the fate of a trapped squirrel unexpectedly veers to nearly reveal a shocking truth; and a boy contemplates a parallel life after asking his mother for help with his creative writing homework.Elsewhere Patrick, newly deaf and belligerent, is forced to re-examine his life with the help of a supernatural hearing aid; a profound, heartfelt and distracted prayer is offered for a friend's health and safety; and in "The Festival of the Immortals", two old friends look back on their lives with joy and regret, as they wait to heckle Charlotte Brontë. Moving deftly between the domestic and the fantastical, from tragedy to comedy, this is a remarkable collection from a master of the genre; each story brilliantly realised, beautifully captured and utterly engrossing.

In-Flight Entertainment

Short Stories & Anthologies

Since the publication of Four Bare Legs in a Bed, her first collection, Helen Simpson has been hailed as one of the best short story writers at work today. These are wickedly funny, heartfelt, and sensuous stories that deal with the full stretch, from birth to death and everything in between.A Bunch of Fives is a selection of five stories drawn from each of Simpson's five collections; Four Bare Legs in a Bed (1990), Dear George (1995), Hey Yeah Right Get a Life (2000), Constitutional (2005), and In-Flight Entertainment (2010).

A Bunch of Fives: Selected Stories

Vintage Classics

A sensational new short story collection from Britain’s master of the genre. Perfectly crafted and deliciously entertaining, she explores the spaces we inhabit — both physically and mentally — and delves into the relationships between change, memory and experience.

Constitutional: Stories

JONATHAN CAPE.

A dark, dazzling, surprisingly funny new collection of stories (“Masterly” —Adam Mars Jones, The Observer; “A virtuoso performance” —Jane Shilling, The Sunday Telegraph) about single women and wives in various phases of midlife—anxious mothers, besotted mothers, beset mothers—in a (futile) search for security and consolation. Helen Simpson’s stories are short but by no means small. One story takes the Iraq war as its subject; another describes a smoker’s reprieve from death by lung cancer; in another, a simple tale of home maintenance—a woman in a conversation with the carpenter replacing her door after a break-in—becomes a deftly sketched study of grief. In still another, Simpson manages the seemingly impossible—producing laughter at terminal illness and untimely death (this might be the first story in which the amputation of a limb provides a happy ending). And finally, the story entitled “Constitutional”—a pun on one of the word’s meanings: a walk taken for the benefit of one’s health—deals with memory, family, Alzheimer’s, oak trees, pregnancy for the over-forties, stolen photographs, and crossword puzzles. Helen Simpson’s stories move and disturb us as they light up the human gift for making the best of it—whatever it is.

In the Driver's Seat: Stories

Contemporary

KNOPF

In the Driver's Seat (Vintage Contemporaries)

Dramas & Plays

Vintage

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Books by Simpson, Helen