Nicola Tyson - best known for her slyly humorous, psychologically compelling figurative paintings - has written a series of letters to deceased artists. Titled 'Dead Letter Men', the volume includes missives to Pablo Picasso, Francis Bacon, Edouard Manet, Thomas Gainsborough, James Ensor, Max Beckmann and the anonymous man on the street. They appear alongside some of her own photographs and portraits of the artists

Attending a university fancy dress ball should have been a matter of grinning and bearing it. Fancy dress isn't everyone's idea of a good time, after all. For one man, however, the act of hiring a costume is to have consequences far beyond what any reasonable person could expect. What he hires is far more than just a costume. It is a mystery. A forgotten secret begins to emerge that has lain hidden for more than seventy years. What begins as a curious discovery quickly becomes a quest, and then the quest becomes an obsession. But whose secret is it? With almost nothing to go on, uncovering the secret is a trial of will that has its own cost. What the man discovers brings to light the story of a battle against evil fought in the dust of Southern Rhodesia before the Second World War, but it also exposes something else, something nobody could have expected.

"Another triumph with this pioneering crime novel."—Publishers Weekly The sixth book in the Library of Congress Crime Classics, an exciting new classic mystery series created in exclusive partnership with the Library of Congress. This classic crime fiction mystery features a love triangle with a murderous twist. An undelivered letter with a cryptic message holds the key to an unsolved murder When Henry Moreland is found dead on a lonely New York road after a violent storm, it seems he died of natural causes while walking to the home of his betrothed, Eleanor Argyll. An examination of the corpse reveals, however, that he was killed by a single, powerful stab wound. His wallet was untouched, eliminating robbery as the motive—but who would want to murder the well-liked and respected man? Richard Redfield, an old family friend who harbors a secret love for Eleanor, vows to bring Henry's killer to justice. Richard soon finds himself out of his element. Together with a legendary detective named Mr. Burton, he embarks on an unsuccessful mission to find the murderer. When suspicion turns to Richard himself, he leaves the family behind and goes to work in the "Dead Letter" office in Washington. Then a mysterious letter from the past turns up, and a new hunt begins... This twisting tale is the first full-length American detective novel, written under a pseudonym by Metta Victor in the 1860s. It revived American crime fiction, which had languished after Edgar Allan Poe's short stories of the 1840s. Combining elements of Wilkie Collins's The Moonstone and the "sensation" novels popular in England, it opened the doors for generations of American crime writers to follow.

Before Raymond Chandler, before Dorothy Sayers or Agatha Christie, there was Metta Fuller Victor, the first American author—man or woman—of a full-length detective novel. This novel, The Dead Letter, is presented here along with another of Victor’s mysteries, The Figure Eight. Both written in the 1860s and published under the name Seeley Regester, these novels show how—by combining conventions of the mystery form first developed by Edgar Allan Poe with those of the domestic novel—Victor pioneered the domestic detective story and paved the way for generations of writers to follow. In The Dead Letter, Henry Moreland is killed by a single stab to the back. Against a background of post–Civil War politics, Richard Redfield, a young attorney, helps Burton, a legendary New York City detective, unravel the crime. In The Figure Eight, Joe Meredith undertakes a series of adventures and assumes a number of disguises to solve the mystery of the murder of his uncle and regain the lost fortune of his angelic cousin.

Banker Henry Moreland is murdered while on his way to visit his fiancee, Eleanor Argyll. When local law enforcment is unable to solve the case, Argyll family friend and lawyer, Richard Redfield, goes to New York to enlist the services of Mr. Burton, a famous detective.

Richard is set to join a new law firm owned by his friend's (Eleanor's) father. Inevitably he is dragged into the murder mystery of Eleanor's fiancé Henry. With detective Burton in tow, Richard must find the clue that is hidden in plain sight as a "dead letter" in the post office! Excerpt: "I paused suddenly in my work. Over a year's experience in the Dead Letter office had given a mechanical rapidity to my movements in opening, noting and classifying the contents of the bundles before me; and, so far from there being any thing exciting to the curiosity, or interesting to the mind, in the employment, it was of the most monotonous character.Young ladies whose love letters have gone astray, evil men whose plans have been confided in writing to their confederates, may feel but little apprehension of the prying eyes of the Department; nothing attracts it but objects of material value—sentiment is below par; it gives attention only to such tangible interests as are represented by bank-bills, gold-pieces, checks, jewelry, miniatures, et cetera..."