'Never had I been given a tougher problem to solve, and never had I been so utterly at my wits' end for a solution.' A signalman is found dead by a railway tunnel. A man identifies his wife as a victim of murder on the underground. Two passengers mysteriously disappear between stations, leaving behind a dead body. Trains have been a favourite setting of many crime writers, providing the mobile equivalent of the 'locked-room' scenario. Their enclosed carriages with a limited number of suspects lend themselves to seemingly impossible crimes. In an era of cancellations and delays, alibis reliant upon a timely train service no longer ring true, yet the railway detective has enjoyed a resurgence of popularity in the twenty-first century. Both train buffs and crime fans will delight in this selection of fifteen railway-themed mysteries, featuring some of the most popular authors of their day alongside less familiar names. This is a collection to beguile even the most wearisome commuter.

Wilde's only novel, first published in 1890, is a brilliantly designed puzzle, intended to tease conventional minds with its exploration of the myriad interrelationships between art, life, and consequence. From its provocative Preface, challenging the reader to believe in 'art for art's sake', to its sensational conclusion, the story self-consciously experiments with the notion of sin as an element of design. Yet Wilde himself underestimated the consequences of his experiment, and its capacity to outrage the Victorian establishment. Its words returned to haunt him in his court appearances in 1895, and he later recalled the 'note of doom' which runs like 'a purple thread' through its carefully crafted prose.

With an Introduction and Notes by Professor Stephen Arkin, San Francisco State University. Katherine Mansfield is widely regarded as a writer who helped create the modern short story. Born in Wellington, New Zealand in 1888, she came to London in 1903 to attend Queen's College and returned permanently in 1908. her first book of stories, In a German Pension, appeared in 1911, and she went on to write and publish an extraordinary body of work. This edition of The Collected Stories brings together all of the stories that Mansfield had written up until her death in January of 1923. With an introduction and head-notes, this volume allows the reader to become familiar with the complete range of Mansfield's work from the early, satirical stories set in Bavaria, through the luminous recollections of her childhood in New Zealand, and through the mature, deeply felt stories of her last years. Admired by Virginia Woolf in her lifetime and by many writers since her death, Katherine Mansfield is one of the great literary artists of the twentieth century.

'Powerful and impressive ...there is a fine inevitability in the plot structure which gives it true tragic quality' - Dorothy L. SayersAdrian Gray was born in May 1862 and met his death through violence, at the hands of one of his own children, at Christmas, 1931. Thus begins a classic crime novel published in 1933, a riveting portrait of the psychology of a murderer. Each December, Adrian Gray invites his extended family to stay at his lonely house, Kings Poplars. None of Gray's six surviving children is fond of him; several have cause to wish him dead. The family gathers on Christmas Eve - and by the following morning, their wish has been granted. This fascinating and unusual novel tells the story of what happened that dark Christmas night; and what the murderer did next.

AN EX-GIRLFRIEND COMES TO TOWN Putting loss and grief behind them, Rudeus and his two wives are ready to settle into polygamous bliss--until an old flame arrives, stirring up old memories. Will the Greyrat family ever achieve the domesticity they hope for? Or are they doomed to be dogged by drama all their days?

For years Victor Frankenstein labors to create a new race of intelligent beings. He spends his nights scrounging human and animal body parts from graveyards, slaughterhouses, and hospital dissection rooms. By day he experiments in his secret laboratory, perfecting the creature whom, he believes, will worship him as a god. When he succeeds, Frankenstein is horrified by the ugly brutishness of the patchwork being he has brought to life. Rather than exult in his accomplishment, he runs from it, retreating to the comfort of long-neglected friends and family. Frankenstein has, indeed, created a monster . . . not by animating dead flesh but by abandoning his creation. Now, the monster is out for revenge.

Sometimes being the villain is way more fun than being the hero.

Mamori Wataya is used to being a nobody. She lingers in the shadows of her high school, dismissed by everyone around her—that is, until she meets Soshi Fuji, the school’s notorious troublemaker. Fueled by her deep admiration for villains, Mamori quickly becomes captivated by Fuji’s devil-may-care attitude, and together they embark on a rebellion against the status quo.

After discovering that Fuji lives in the shadow of his popular and perfect younger brother, nicknamed “the Prince” by all the girls at school, Mamori offers to help Fuji derail his brother’s campaign for student council president. But as Fuji’s audacious pranks pull them closer together, Mamori discovers there’s more to like about Fuji than his just villainy.