Death on the Air and Other Stories

Wealthy Sir Hubert Handesley's original and lively weekend house parties are deservedly famous. To amuse his guests, he has devised a new form of the fashionable Murder Game, in which a guest is secretly selected to commit a 'murder' in the dark, and everyone assembles to solve the crime. But when the lights go up this time, there is a real corpse....

Following a mysterious explosion, the offices of Excelsior Joinery Company are no more; the three directors are killed and the peace of a quiet town in Surrey lies in ruins. When the supposed cause of an ignited gas leak is dismissed and the presence of dynamite revealed, Superintendent Littlejohn of Scotland Yard is summoned to the scene. But beneath the sleepy veneer of Evingden lies a hotbed of deep-seated grievances. Confounding Littlejohn's investigation is an impressive cast of suspicious persons, each concealing their own ax to grind.

Mild-mannered, inoffensive architect Alfred Thipps finds himself in big trouble when, in preparing to take his morning bath, he finds the tub already occupied by a dead body, wearing nothing but a pair of gold pince-nez glasses. Stolid, unimaginative Police Inspector Sugg is convinced the body is that of Sir Reuben Levy, a famous Jewish financier who disappeared the night before - waving aside objections that, as the body in the tub was uncircumcised, it couldn't be Sir Reuben - and promptly arrests Thipps and his maid for murder.

Summer. Holiday season. A time for rest and relaxation. But murder can strike anywhere, as this selection of an ‘unlucky 13’ mysteries by Agatha Christie proves. Join Hercule Poirot, Christopher Parker Pyne, Harley Quin and James Bond on this special holiday-themed collection, and take a dip into these short stories, perfect for killing time on the beach, by the pool - or at home, when planning to get away from it all.

When George Abbershaw is invited to Black Dudley Manor for the weekend, he has only one thing on his mind - proposing to Meggie Oliphant. Unfortunately for George, things don't quite go according to plan. A harmless game turns decidedly deadly and suspicions of murder take precedence over matrimony. Trapped in a remote country house with a murderer, George can see no way out. But Albert Campion can.

June Whitfield stars as Miss Marple in seven full-cast BBC Radio 4 dramatisations. The stories included are: 'The Moving Finger', 'They Do It with Mirrors', 'Nemesis', 'Sleeping Murder', 'Tape-Measure Murder', 'The Case of the Perfect Maid' and 'Sanctuary'. 

A Christmas party is punctuated by a gunshot under a policeman’s watchful eye. A jewel heist is planned amidst the glitz and glamour of Oxford Street’s Christmas shopping. And lost in a snowstorm, a man finds a motive for murder.... This collection of mysteries explores the darker side of the festive season, from unexplained disturbances in the fresh snow to the darkness that lurks beneath the sparkling decorations.

Mrs Bradley, sharp-eyed detective and celebrated psychiatrist, has decided to spend Christmas with her nephew at his beautiful house in the Cotswolds. It isn’t long before a mystery unfolds. There are strange events occurring in the nearby wood, and local villagers are receiving anonymous threatening letters. Then the snow begins to fall - and a body is discovered. Mrs Bradley is on the case, but she’ll have to hatch an ingenious plan to reveal the truth and find the culprit....

Whose Body? first introduced Lord Peter to the world and begins with a corpse in the bath of a London flat. Clouds of Witness finds Wimsey investigating murder close to home, and in Unnatural Death he investigates the suspicious demise of an elderly woman. First broadcast on BBC radio in the 1970s and presented here in their entirety, these full-cast adaptations are admired by fans of the genre worldwide.

This anthology of rare stories of crime and suspense brings together a selection of rare tales by masters of the Golden Age of Detective Fiction for the first time in book form, including a newly discovered Agatha Christie crime story that has not been seen since 1922. At a time when crime and thriller writing has once again overtaken the sales of general and literary fiction, Bodies from the Library unearths lost stories from the Golden Age, that period between the World Wars when detective fiction captured the public’s imagination and saw the emergence of some of the world’s cleverest and most popular storytellers.