Mystery – Classics The Alienist by Caleb Carr (Mystery Carr) Step into another time – and unforgettable terror. The year is 1896. The city is New York. Alienist Laszlo Kreizler joins forces with journalist John Schuyler Moore to track a baffling new kind of criminal – a serial killer. The Daughter of Time by Josephine Tey (Mystery Tey) Inspector Alan Grant of Scotland Yard becomes fascinated with a contemporary portrait of Richard III that bears no resemblance to the Wicked Uncle of history. Could such a sensitive, noble face belong to a venomous hunchback who may have killed his brother’s children to make his crown secure? Or could Richard have been the victim, turned into a monster by the usurpers of England’s throne? Grant determines to find out once and for all. Gaudy Night by Dorothy L. Sayers (Mystery Sayers) When Harriet Vane attends her Oxford reunion, known as the “Gaudy,” the prim academic setting is haunted by a rash of bizarre pranks. Some of the notes threaten murder; all are perfectly ghastly; yet in spite of their scurrilous nature, all are perfectly worded. And Harriet finds herself ensnared in a nightmare of romance and terror, with only the tiniest shreds of clues to challenge her powers of detection – and those of her paramour, Lord Peter Wimsey. The Maltese Falcon by Dashiell Hammett (Mystery Hammett) A treasure worth killing for. Sam Spade, a slightly shopworn private eye with his own solitary code of ethics. A perfumed grafter named Joel Cairo, a fat man name Gutman, and Brigid O’Shaughnessy, a beautiful and treacherous woman whose loyalties shift at the drop of a dime. These are the ingredients of Dashiell Hammett’s coolly glittering gem of detective fiction, a novel that has haunted three generations of readers. Murder on the Orient Express by Agatha Christie (Mystery Christie) While en route from Syria to Paris, in the middle of a freezing winter’s night, the Orient Express is stopped dead in its tracks by a snowdrift. Passengers awake to find the train still stranded and to discover that a wealthy American has been brutally stabbed to death in his private compartment. Incredibly, that compartment is locked from the inside. With no escape into the wintery landscape the killer must still be on board. Fortunately, the brilliant Belgian inspector Hercule Poirot is also on board, having booked the last available berth. TheTalented Mr. Ripley by Patricia Highsmith (Mystery Highsmith) Like a hero in a latter-day Henry James novel, Tom Ripley is sent to Italy with a commission to coax a prodigal young American back to his wealthy father. But Ripley finds himself very fond of Dickie Greenleaf. He wants to be like him – exactly like him. Suave, agreeable, and utterly amoral, Ripley stops at nothing – certainly not only one murder – to accomplish his goal. .