'The horror on the train, great though it may turn out to be, will not compare with the horror that exists here, in this house.' On Christmas Eve, heavy snowfall brings a train to a halt near the village of Hemmersby. Several passengers take shelter in a deserted country house, where the fire has been lit and the table laid for tea - but no one is at home. Trapped together for Christmas, the passengers are seeking to unravel the secrets of the empty house when a murderer strikes in their midst.

No observer, ignorant of the situation, would have guessed that death lurked nearby, and that only a little distance from the glitter of silver and glass and the hum of voices two victims lay silent on a studio floor.'On a fine autumn weekend Lord Aveling hosts a hunting party at his country house, Bragley Court. Among the guests are an actress, a journalist, an artist and a mystery novelist. The unlucky thirteenth is John Foss, injured at the local train station and brought to the house to recuperate - but John is nursing a secret of his own.Soon events take a sinister turn when a painting is mutilated, a dog stabbed, and a man strangled. Death strikes more than one of the house guests, and the police are called. Detective Inspector Kendall's skills are tested to the utmost as he tries to uncover the hidden past of everyone at Bragley Court.This country-house mystery is a forgotten classic of 1930s crime fiction by one of the most undeservedly neglected of golden age detective novelists.

'Jefferson Farjeon is quite unsurpassed for creepy skill in mysterious adventures.'Dorothy L. SayersRichard Temperley arrives at Euston station early on a fogbound London morning. He takes refuge in a nearby hotel, along with a disagreeable fellow passenger, who had snored his way through the train journey. But within minutes the other man has snored for the last time - he has been shot dead while sleeping in an armchair. Temperley has a brief encounter with a beautiful young woman, but she flees the scene. When the police arrive, Detective Inspector James discovers a token at the crime scene: 'a small piece of enamelled metal. Its colour was crimson, and it was in the shape of the letter Z.'Temperley sets off in pursuit of the mysterious woman from the hotel, and finds himself embroiled in a cross-country chase - by train and taxi - on the tail of a sinister serial killer. This classic novel by the author of the best-selling Mystery in White is a gripping thriller by a neglected master of the genre.

Ted Lyte, amateur thief, has chosen an isolated house by the coast for his first robbery. But Haven House is no ordinary country home. While hunting for silverware to steal, Ted stumbles upon a locked room containing seven dead bodies. Detective Inspector Kendall takes on the case with the help of passing yachtsman Thomas Hazeldean. The search for the house's absent owners brings Hazeldean across the Channel to Boulogne, where he finds more than one motive to stay and investigate. Seven Dead is an atmospheric crime novel first published in 1939.

This book focuses on analysing how legal systems set the terms for interactions between human beings and plants. The story that the book recounts is one of experimental lawmaking in Ecuador, a country where over the past decade, governmental officials and civil society advocates have attempted to reconfigure how human individuals and institutions relate to nature, by following an "eco-centric" approach to lawmaking. In doing so, Ecuadorian legislators, administrators, and judges have taken seriously the ontologies of non-human entities, including plants, through a process that has required the continuous navigation of tensions with certain "logics" that pervade conventional legal regimes. The book endeavours to disrupt these conventional assumptions and approaches to lawmaking by taking seriously alternative strategies to reconstitute interactions between people and plants. In doing so, the book argues in favour of an "ecological turn" in laws that govern vegetal life. The analysis is based on a close examination of the experiences that lawmakers in Ecuador have had when experimenting with innovative approaches to re-form relationships between human and non-human beings. Concretely, these experiments have yielded constitutional, legislative, and regulatory changes that inform the inquiry of how intellectual property and plant genetic resources laws - both in Ecuador and worldwide - could become more "ecological" in nature. The argument that the book develops is based on extensive ethnographic fieldwork and empirical research in Ecuador, complemented by archival and doctrinal legal analysis. The contents of the book will be of interest to an academic audience of legal scholars and postgraduate students in law, in addition to scholars and students in the fields of anthropology, sociology, socio-legal studies, and science and technology studies.

This book focuses on analysing how legal systems set the terms for interactions between human beings and plants. The story that the book recounts is one of experimental lawmaking in Ecuador, a country where over the past decade, governmental officials and civil society advocates have attempted to reconfigure how human individuals and institutions relate to nature, by following an "eco-centric" approach to lawmaking. In doing so, Ecuadorian legislators, administrators, and judges have taken seriously the ontologies of non-human entities, including plants, through a process that has required the continuous navigation of tensions with certain "logics" that pervade conventional legal regimes. The book endeavours to disrupt these conventional assumptions and approaches to lawmaking by taking seriously alternative strategies to reconstitute interactions between people and plants. In doing so, the book argues in favour of an "ecological turn" in laws that govern vegetal life. The analysis is based on a close examination of the experiences that lawmakers in Ecuador have had when experimenting with innovative approaches to re-form relationships between human and non-human beings. Concretely, these experiments have yielded constitutional, legislative, and regulatory changes that inform the inquiry of how intellectual property and plant genetic resources laws - both in Ecuador and worldwide - could become more "ecological" in nature. The argument that the book develops is based on extensive ethnographic fieldwork and empirical research in Ecuador, complemented by archival and doctrinal legal analysis. The contents of the book will be of interest to an academic audience of legal scholars and postgraduate students in law, in addition to scholars and students in the fields of anthropology, sociology, socio-legal studies, and science and technology studies.

A definitive scholarly edition of the correspondence and papers of Thomas Jefferson Jefferson continues his pattern of returning home to Monticello for the summer months. He makes a brief visit to Poplar Forest in Bedford County to plan the development of that property. James Hubbard, a young enslaved worker at Monticello, escapes but is captured in Fairfax County. Another slave who has fled, James Hemings, rejects efforts to persuade him to return and disappears. Receiving news of the end of the conflict with Tripoli, Jefferson states that although it is “a small war in fact, it is big in principle.” He devotes much of his attention to relations with Spain. He considers alliance with Great Britain to force a resolution with Spain, then chooses instead to negotiate with France for the purchase of Florida and settlement of matters in dispute with Spain. He drafts bills to organize the militia by age and create a naval militia. Specimens sent by Lewis and Clark arrive. Jefferson calculates that the United States has recently acquired cessions of well over 9 million acres of land from Native Americans. He meets with visiting Creek leaders. Answering a query, Jefferson states that Patrick Henry was “the greatest orator that ever lived” but “avaritious & rotten hearted.”

A new definitive volume of the retirement papers of Thomas Jefferson This volume's 627 documents feature a vast assortment of topics. Jefferson writes of his dread of "a doting old age." He inserts an anonymous note in the Richmond Enquirer denying that he has endorsed a candidate for the next presidential election, and he publishes two letters in that newspaper under his own name to refute a Federalist claim that he once benefited by overcharging the United States Treasury. Jefferson does not reply to unsolicited letters seeking his opinion on constitutional matters, judicial review, and a call for universal white male suffrage in Virginia. Fearing that it would set a dangerous precedent, he declines appointment as patron of a new society "for the civilisation of the Indians." Jefferson is also asked to comment on proposed improvements to stoves, lighthouses, telescopes, and navigable balloons. Citing his advanced age and stiffened wrist, he avoids detailed replies and allows his complaint to John Adams about the volume of incoming correspondence to be leaked to the press in hopes that strangers will stop deluging them both with letters. Jefferson approves of the growth of Unitarianism and predicts that "there is not a young man now living in the US. who will not die an Unitarian."

A definitive new volume of the retirement papers of Thomas Jefferson This volume’s 601 documents show Jefferson dealing with various challenges. He is injured in a fall at Monticello, and his arm is still in a sling months later when he narrowly escapes drowning during a solitary horseback ride. Jefferson obtains temporary financial relief by transferring a $20,000 debt from the Bank of the United States to the College of William and Mary. Aided by a review of expenditures by the University of Virginia that uncovers no serious discrepancies, Jefferson and the Board of Visitors obtain a further $60,000 loan that permits construction to begin on the Rotunda. Jefferson drafts but apparently does not send John Adams a revealing letter on religion. He exchanges long letters discussing the Supreme Court with Justice William Johnson, and he writes to friends about France’s 1823 invasion of Spain. Jefferson also helps prepare a list of recommended books for the Albemarle Library Society. In November 1822, Jefferson’s grandson Francis Eppes marries Mary Elizabeth Randolph. He gives the newlyweds his mansion at Poplar Forest and visits it for the last time the following May. In a letter to James Monroe, Jefferson writes and then cancels “my race is near it’s term, and not nearer, I assure you, than I wish.”

Ben the tramp, self-confessed coward and ex-sailor, is back in the Merchant Service and shipwrecked in the Pacific. Ben the tramp, self-confessed coward and ex-sailor, is back in the Merchant Service and shipwrecked in the Pacific. Tired of being homeless and down on his luck, the incorrigible Ben has taken a job as a stoker on a cruise ship. But his luck doesn't last long when they are all shipwrecked in the Pacific. Seen through Ben's eyes, the uncharted island is a hive of cannibals, mumbo-jumbo, and gals who are more nearly naked than any he has ever seen. And every time he tries to bluff his way out of a situation, he just bluffs himself further in, somehow convincing the natives that he has God-like powers . . . Brought back by popular demand after a gap of three years, Ben the tramp's reappearance in Little God Ben transported his humour, charm and rare philosophy to a startlingly new setting in this quintessentially 1930s comedy thriller.

Ben the tramp, the awkward Cockney with no home and no surname, turns detective again - and runs straight into trouble. Ben encounters a dead man on a London bridge and is promptly rescued from the same fate by a posh lady in a limousine. But like most posh ladies of Ben's acquaintance, this one isn't what she seems. Seeking escape from a gang of international conspirators, Ben is whisked off to the mountains of Scotland to thwart the schemes of a poisonous organisation and finds himself in very unfamiliar territory. With its startling prelude, Detective Ben is a glorious adventure, told with the unsurpassed mixture of humour and creepy thrills that made J. Jefferson Farjeon famous and Ben the tramp one of the best-loved characters of the Golden Age.

The return of Ben, the prince of tramps with his rich Cockney humour and naive philosophies - and in trouble as usual. Strange things are happening in the untenanted houses of Jowle Street. There are unaccountable creakings and weird knockings on the door of No.29, where the homeless ex-sailor Ben has taken up residence. But even stranger things are happening in the House Opposite, from where a beautiful woman in an evening gown brings Ben a mysterious message - and an errand that puts him in more danger than he bargained for. Once Ben the 'passing tramp' had been immortalised on film by Alfred Hitchcock in No.17, his return in a new novel was guaranteed. The House Opposite tells the story of criminal goings-on from both sides of a London street, and was admired for being delightfully amusing and genuinely uncanny.

Ben the tramp is back at sea, a stowaway bound for Spain in the company of a wanted man - the Hammersmith murderer. Ben, wandering hungry through the foggy back alleys of Limehouse, is spooked by news of an old man murdered in Hammersmith - and runs! He crosses a plank, slips through an iron door, and goes to sea with the coal. But so does the man who did the murder, and a very pretty lady who did not. On the way, the Atlanta loses a stowaway, a pickpocket, a murderer, a super-crook, a wealthy passenger, the third officer and a lifeboat. And that is how Ben gets to Spain . . . Combining laughs and thrills on every page, J. Jefferson Farjeon's books about the adventures of Ben the tramp entertained 1930s detective readers like no other Crime Club series, and Murderer's Trail was more popular than ever.

Ben the tramp's uncanny knack of running into trouble is unsurpassed in the final crime thriller written for him by J. Jefferson Farjeon. On a grey afternoon he was destined never to forget, Ben sat down on a park seat and proceeded to think, not of cabbages and kings, but of numbers, lucky and unlucky. But it wasn't Ben's lucky day, or that of the nondescript-looking stranger sitting at the other end of the bench - murdered before his very eyes! That was the prelude to the most uncomfortable and eventful twenty-four hours Ben had ever spent in an uncomfortable and eventful life. J. Jefferson Farjeon's famous Cockney character Ben, who first appeared in No.17 and six other novels, was never so richly humorous or so absurdly heroic as in this, his last hair-raising adventure taking place at No.19, Billiter Road.

The first book featuring Ben, the lovable, humorous ex-sailor and down-at-heels rascal who can't help running into trouble. Ben is back home from the Merchant Navy, penniless as usual and looking for digs in fog-bound London. Taking shelter in an abandoned old house, he stumbles across a dead body - and scarpers. Running into a detective, Gilbert Fordyce, the reluctant Ben is persuaded to return to the house and investigate the mystery of the corpse - which promptly disappears! The vacant No.17 is the rendezvous for a gang of villains, and the cowardly Ben finds himself in the thick of thieves with no way of escape. Ben's first adventure, No.17, began life in the 1920s as an internationally successful stage play and was immortalised on film by the legendary Alfred Hitchcock. Its author, J. Jefferson Farjeon, wrote more than 60 crime thrillers, eight featuring Ben the tramp, his most popular character.

A definitive scholarly edition of the retirement papers of Thomas Jefferson The 612 documents in this volume include Jefferson's notes on his early career, one of the lengthiest documents of his retirement. Often misleadingly called his autobiography, the text describes Jefferson's experience as an American revolutionary, a legislator shaping and revising Virginia's laws, and a United States diplomat in France as its own revolution neared. Jefferson sits for a portrait by Thomas Sully commissioned for West Point. He takes the unusual step of allowing his recommendation of a book by John Taylor to be published, insuring a wide circulation of Jefferson's views on the proper balance between state and federal powers. In a private letter he asserts that the federal judiciary is amassing overarching power, "ever acting, with noiseless foot, & unalarming advance, gaining ground step by step, and holding what it gains." Jefferson receives a description of an African American commemoration of the nation's 1807 ban on the importation of slaves. Jefferson advises that the opening of the University of Virginia is not imminent even as he oversees its construction and defends the high cost, stating as his goal, "to do, not what was to perish with ourselves, but what would remain, be respected and preserved thro' other ages."

This volume's 571 documents cover both Jefferson's opposition to restrictions on slavery in Missouri and his concession that "the boisterous sea of liberty is never without a wave." Seeking support for the University of Virginia, he fears that southerners who receive New England educations will return with northern values. Calling it "the Hobby of my old age," Jefferson envisions an institution dedicated to "the illimitable freedom of the human mind." He infers approvingly from revolutionary movements in Europe and South America that "the disease of liberty is catching." Constantine S. Rafinesque addresses three public letters to Jefferson presenting archaeological research on Kentucky's Alligewi Indians, and Jefferson circulates a Nottoway-language vocabulary. Early in 1821 he cites declining health and advanced age as he turns over the management of his Monticello and Poplar Forest plantations to his grandson Thomas Jefferson Randolph. In discussions with trusted correspondents, Jefferson admires Jesus's morality while doubting his miracles, discusses the materiality of the soul, and shares his thoughts on Unitarianism. Reflecting on the dwindling number of their old friends, he tells Maria Cosway that he is like "a solitary trunk in a desolate field, from which all it's former companions have disappeared."

This volume's 598 documents span 22 April 1818 to 31 January 1819. Jefferson spends months preparing for a meeting to choose the site of the state university. He drafts the Rockfish Gap Report recommending the location of the University of Virginia at Charlottesville as well as legislation confirming this decision. Jefferson travels to Warm Springs to cure his rheumatism but instead contracts a painful infection on his buttocks. His enforced absence from Poplar Forest leads to detailed correspondence with plantation manager Joel Yancey. A work that Jefferson helped translate, Destutt de Tracy's Treatise on Political Economy, is finally published. Salma Hale visits Monticello and describes Jefferson's views on food, wine, and religion. In acknowledging an oration by Mordecai M. Noah, Jefferson remarks that the suffering of members of the Jewish faith "has furnished a remarkable proof of the universal spirit of religious intolerance." He receives long discussions of occult science and the nature of light by Robert Miller and Gabriel Crane. Abigail Adams dies, and Jefferson assures John Adams that their own demise will result in "an ecstatic meeting with the friends we have loved & lost and whom we shall still love and never lose again."

The 580 documents in this volume cover a wide range of fascinating topics. Jefferson receives impressions of a mammoth's tooth, altitude and meteorological observations, a call for a national pharmacopoeia, a discussion of primeval geology, and a letter that elicits Jefferson's opinion that cognition exists "in animal bodies certainly, in Vegetables probably, in Minerals not impossibly." Jefferson leases his Tufton and Lego plantations to his grandson Thomas Jefferson Randolph. The directors of the Rivanna Company rebut Jefferson's 1817 bill of complaint and he unwittingly ensures his eventual financial ruin by endorsing notes totaling $20,000 for Wilson Cary Nicholas. Jefferson adds to the collections of the American Philosophical Society and writes an extended introduction to the "Anas," a corpus of official papers and political anecdotes documenting his service as George Washington's secretary of state. Jefferson drafts legislation to establish a public education system in Virginia. He attends a Masonic cornerstone laying ceremony for the nascent Central College's first pavilion early in October 1817 and is greatly pleased by the passage on 21 February 1818 of a law establishing a commission to plan a new state university, raising his hopes that Central College might soon become the University of Virginia.

The 637 documents in this volume span 1 February to 31 August 1819. As a founding member of the University of Virginia Board of Visitors, Jefferson helps to obtain builders for the infant institution, responds to those seeking professorships, and orchestrates the establishment of a classical preparatory school in Charlottesville. In a letter to Vine Utley, Jefferson details his daily regimen of a largely vegetarian diet, bathing his feet in cold water each morning, and horseback riding. Continuing to indulge his wide-ranging intellectual interests, Jefferson receives publications on the proper pronunciation of Greek and discusses the subject himself in a letter to John Adams. Jefferson also experiences worrying and painful events, including hailstorm damage at his Poplar Forest estate, a fire in the North Pavilion at Monticello, the illness of his slave Burwell Colbert, and a fracas in which Jefferson's grandson-in-law Charles Bankhead stabs Jefferson's grandson Thomas Jefferson Randolph on court day in Charlottesville. Worst of all, Jefferson's financial problems greatly increase when the bankruptcy of his friend Wilson Cary Nicholas leaves Jefferson responsible for $20,000 in notes he had endorsed for Nicholas.

Volume Nine of the project documenting Thomas Jefferson's last years presents 523 documents from 1 September 1815 to 30 April 1816. In this period, Jefferson makes three trips to Poplar Forest. During two visits to the Peaks of Otter, he measures their altitude and his calculations are reprinted in several newspapers. Jefferson welcomes the returning war hero Andrew Jackson in a visit to Poplar Forest and offers a toast at a public dinner in Lynchburg held in the general's honor. With the end of the War of 1812, Jefferson uses European contacts to begin restocking his wine cellar and refilling his bookshelves. In a draft letter to Horatio G. Spafford, Jefferson indulges in a "tirade" against a pamphlet by a New England clergyman. Jefferson decides to drop the section from the letter but sends it to "Richmond Enquirer" publisher Thomas Ritchie with permission to publish it without Jefferson's name. An anonymous letter in the "Washington Daily National Intelligencer" on the interpretation of the U.S. Constitution elicits a similarly anonymous response from Jefferson. His family circle grows with the birth of a great-granddaughter. Despite a report of his death, Jefferson continues to enjoy perfect health.

The definitive edition of Thomas Jefferson's papers from the end of his presidency until his death continues with Volume Two, which covers the period from 16 November 1809 to 11 August 1810. Both incoming and outgoing letters are included, totaling 518 documents printed in full. General themes include Jefferson's financial troubles, which eventually led him to loan himself a large sum of money he was managing for Tadeusz Kosciuszko; his preparations to face a lawsuit stemming from his decision as president to remove Edward Livingston from a valuable property in New Orleans; other legal complications involving his landholdings and the settlement of estates he had inherited long before; his plans to breed merino sheep and share them gratis with his fellow Virginians; and his ongoing interest in the Republican party's success.

Highlights include a long list of books on agriculture that Jefferson probably compiled to guide the Library of Congress in its purchases; descriptions of inventions by Robert Fulton and more obscure figures such as the New Orleans engineer Godefroi Du Jareau; Jefferson's draft letter criticizing the Quakers as unpatriotic, much of which he later deleted; the letter in which he ordered a set of silver tumblers that have become known as the Jefferson Cups; and an important treatise on taxation by the distinguished French political economist Pierre Samuel Du Pont de Nemours, published here for the first time.

The 618 documents in this volume span 1 September 1819 to 31 May 1820. Jefferson suffers from a "colic," recovery from which requires extensive rest and medication. He spends much time dealing with the immediate effects of the $20,000 addition to his debts resulting from his endorsement of notes for the bankrupt Wilson Cary Nicholas. Jefferson begins to correspond with his carpenter, the enslaved John Hemmings, as Hemmings undertakes maintenance and construction work at Poplar Forest. Jefferson and his allies in the state legislature obtain authorization for a $60,000 loan for the fledgling University of Virginia, the need for which becomes painfully clear when university workmen complain that they have not been paid during seven months of construction work. In the spring of 1820, following congressional discussion leading to the Missouri Compromise, Jefferson writes that the debate, "like a fire bell in the night, awakened and filled me with terror," and that with regard to slavery, Americans have "the wolf by the ear, and we can neither hold him, nor safely let him go."