Carolyn Wells (1862-1942) was an American author and poet. She wrote more than 170 books. During the first ten years of her career, she concentrated on poetry, humor, and children's books. After 1910, she devoted herself to the mystery genre.

Carolyn Wells (1862-1942) was an American author and poet. She wrote more than 170 books. During the first ten years of her career, she concentrated on poetry, humor, and children's books. After 1910, she devoted herself to the mystery genre.

From mystery maven Carolyn Wells, the author of The Clue, comes another classic cozy locked-room whodunit. The set-up is vintage Wells: Guests gather at Maxwell Chimneys, the stately home of Alexander Maxwell, for a weekend of picnics and charades. During a dance party, Alexander's nephew Philip Maxwell is murdered. The murder weapon is quickly located in the hand of an unconscious woman lying next to the corpse, who has been shot in the shoulder. A local detective is hired and is aided in his investigation by one of the guests. Everyone is a suspect and the clues shift to implicate one guest and then another. Ultimately, the amateur sleuths call in the famous detective Fleming Stone to solve the pieces of the puzzle. The Maxwell Mystery marks the debut of Detective Fleming Stone.

Millionaire Sanford Embury is found dead in bed, alone, with the door of his second-story bedroom bolted shut from the inside. He was known to be a controlling husband, refusing to give his pretty young wife an allowance of cash or her own checking account. Was his wife a party to the murder, or perhaps did she commit the murder in a fit of rage? Who else had a motive? And how does a clue of raspberry jam point to the killer? Curl up with the classic cozy locked-room mystery from the author of The Clue.

On the eve of her wedding, stunning heiress Madeleine Van Norman is found stabbed to death in the library of her palatial country mansion, killed by a single thrust from her Venetian letter opener. Suspicion falls by turns to the groom who loved another, the cousin who stands to inherit her fortune, the woman the groom loves, the murdered woman's secretary, and the former lover of the murdered woman's uncle who will inherit the mansion. A suicide note is found next to her body, but the evidence points to murder. The house had been securely locked with no sign of a break in. The local authorities are mystified. With pressure mounting, they call on the services of the famed detective Fleming Stone to resolve the case. In the end, his solution rests on a single tiny clue.

Guests gather at White Birches, the upper New York mansion of millionaire scion Justin Arnold. The weekend's festivities are cut short when the host inexplicably goes missing, presumed to be hiding or unwell somewhere within the grounds of the heavily protected, fortress-like estate. With the amateur sleuths unable to solve the mystery, they call in Detective Fleming Stone. What starts as a missing person thriller becomes a murder mystery in this clever locked-room puzzler from Carolyn Wells, author of The Clue.

Eccentric millionaire David Van Wyck has decided to pledge all his money away, leaving his wife Anne nothing but her jewelry to survive on. When David sees Anne flirting with an old high school friend during a weekend party at his mansion, Buttonwood Terrace, he decides to include Anne's gems in his giveaway. David Wyck is found murdered the next morning in a locked-room and while suspicion initially points to Anne, it becomes apparent that several of Wyck's guests had a motive for the crime. The narrator of the story, the guest Ann is in love with, prays that the culprit is 'Anybody but Anne.'