Known as the "American Agatha Christie," author Mary Roberts Rinehart produced a vast array of top-notch mysteries over the course of her career, with occasional incursions into other genres. The After House is a gripping whodunit that revolves around a series of grisly axe murders. Set on board a ship, this murder mystery is sure to leave you on the edge of your seat.

"An astonishing story of love and mystery, which equals if not surpasses in interest those other lively stories of Mrs. Rinehart's. The novel is one of the sprightliest of the season and will add to the author's reputation as an inventor of 'queer' plots.

BONUS: This edition contains an After You discussion guide. When tragedy strikes across the ocean, Ellie Lerner drops everything—her marriage, her job, her life in the Boston suburbs—to travel to London and pick up the pieces of her best friend Lucy’s life. While Lucy’s husband, Greg, retreats into himself, his and Lucy’s eight-year-old daughter, Sophie, has simply stopped speaking. Desperate to help Sophie, Ellie turns to a book that gave her comfort as a child, The Secret Garden. As its story of hurt, magic, and healing blooms around them, so, too, do Lucy’s secrets—some big, some small. Peeling back the layers of her friend’s life, Ellie is forced to confront her own as well: the marriage she left behind, the loss she’d hoped to escape. And suddenly Ellie’s carefully constructed existence is spinning out of control in a chain of events that will transform her life—and the lives of those around her—forever.

Claudio’s apartment faces a wall. Rising from bed, he sets his feet on the floor at the same time, to ground himself. Cecilia sits at her window, contemplating a cemetery, the radio her best companion. In parallel and entwining stories that move from Havana to Paris to New York City, no routine, no argument for the pleasures of solitude, can withstand our most human drive to find ourselves in another, and fall in love. And no depth of emotion can protect us from love’s inevitable loss.

Ralph Leslie absolutely loves his job as a steward on millionaire Marshall Turner's lavish super-yacht until a brutal killer starts murdering the crew causing the passengers to panic and Ralph must try to stay alive long enough to catch the killer. Reprint.

By the bequest of an elder brother, I was left enough money to see me through a small college in Ohio, and to secure me four years in a medical school in the East. Why I chose medicine I hardly know. Possibly the career of a surgeon attracted the adventurous element in me. Perhaps, coming of a family of doctors, I merely followed the line of least resistance. It may be, indirectly but inevitably, that I might be on the yacht Ella on that terrible night of August 12, more than a year ago

Ralph Leslie, a young doctor by professor, signs on as a private helper on a yacht. Soon the yacht is rocked with sensational triple axe-murders and Leslie is the only person who can inspire trust in the crew. But who is the killer? How will he get caught now? Excerpt: "The yacht Ella lay in the river not far from my hospital windows. She was not a yacht when I first saw her, nor at any time, technically, unless I use the word in the broad sense of a pleasure-boat. She was a two-master, and, when I saw her first, as dirty and disreputable as are most coasting-vessels. Her rejuvenation was the history of my convalescence. On the day she stood forth in her first coat of white paint, I exchanged my dressing-gown for clothing that, however loosely it hung, was still clothing. Her new sails marked my promotion to beefsteak, her brass rails and awnings my first independent excursion up and down the corridor outside my door, and, incidentally, my return to a collar and tie."

The Essential Rinehart Collection continues with Volume 3 of Mary Roberts Rinehart’s funny and fast-paced novels. Her fans are in for a triple treat in this mystery collection. Three of her novels, all set in the early 1900’s, are collected here for the first time. Each story features a cast of memorable characters, mysterious happenings and leads up to an astonishing conclusion! These well-written novels, which combine mystery and adventure, demonstrate Rinehart's tremendously vivid powers as a storyteller. These mysteries will leave you eager to read the other volumes in this series.

Looking for adventure, an erstwhile medical student joins the crew of a yacht and finds himself adrift in a sea of murder Medical school left Leslie with a diploma, a new dress suit, and an incipient case of typhoid fever. While convalescing, he hatches a plan to postpone embarking on a career as a surgeon by launching instead on an epic voyage of adventure, mystery, and romance on the high seas. When Leslie signs up as a steward aboard the private yacht Ella, he expects to swab decks and polish brass. Instead, he ends up trying to solve a murder case. Everyone onboard is a suspect—the volatile captain, the beguiling but aloof Miss Elsa Lee, the twitchy Mr. Turner, the second mate who disappears early in the voyage and is assumed lost at sea—and all are trapped in the middle of the ocean with the real killer. This ebook features a new introduction by Otto Penzler and has been professionally proofread to ensure accuracy and readability on all devices.