Books by Patricia Wentworth

For Althea Graham, suffering the whims of her malevolent invalid of a mother, the old family home is a prison. So when two strangely competitive offers for the Graham's house are made to her it suggests that house may hold some dark rewarding secret. Then old Mrs Graham is found murdered in the gazebo ...

Murder on haunted ground . . .Mary Stokes was walking through Dead Man's Copse one evening when she saw, in the beam of a torch, the corpse of a young woman dressed in a black coat, black gloves, no hat and an eternity ring set with diamonds in her ear. But when she and Detective Sergeant Frank Abbott went back to the wood the body had vanished.This would have been mystery enough for Miss Silver to solve if a woman had not also reported that her lodger had gone out on Friday dressed in a black coat, black beret, black shoes and large hoop earrings 'set all round with little diamonds like those eternity rings.' She never came back...

The Catherine-Wheel had once been a home for pirates and smugglers, but now is looked like it was harbouring a murderer.There was a certain heavy air of intrigue and mystery emanating from the old inn high on the cliff top. The Catherine-Wheel had once been a home for pirates and smugglers, but now is looked like it was harbouring a murderer.It had begun with an advertisement in the paper requesting descendants of the late innkeeper, Jeremiah Taverner, to stay for a weekend at the inn. They had arrived, a mixed assortment, to the family reunion eager to discover the secrets of their ancestry. But one of them had been hideously murdered, bringing the inn's stormy past into frightening focus.Scotland Yard, already suspicious of dope smuggling in the area, sends Maud Silver to investigate before the fireworks start to fly.

No one would ever have guessed that Paulina Paine was deaf, and that her ability to lip-read was astonishing. So the two men who met one day during the showing of a new art exhibition did not realise until too late that the middle-aged tweedy figure sitting out of earshot could understand every word they said. And it had been no ordinary conversation. In fact, Paulina was so shaken by its implications that she went to see Miss Silver straight away. As the violence escalates, Miss Silver finds herself at a very tense house party where all the guests are linked in some way to Paulina. And one of them is a killer ...

There is a curse on the Benevents . . .Somewhere among the dust and cobwebs of the sinister Benevent Mansion lies the legendary Benevent treasure. But a terrible death has been prophesied for whoever uncovers it.When Candida Sayle is invited to visit her elderly maiden aunts, she dismisses such gloomy thoughts. But as Candida begins to discover the family's dark secrets she puts herself in grave danger.Thankfully Miss Silver has investigative skills of her own.

James Cray was always a cruel man . . .When he was 21 James Lessiter told Henrietta Cray that he loved her before all things and so broke Catherine Lee's heart. But James has a side to him that most people do not see. When the engagement is broken off noone is sure why and Rietta refuses to explain.Twenty years later James returns to the village an extremely wealthy man. Rietta is still unmarried and Catherine is a penniless widow living in a cottage on the Lessiter estate.Trouble is inevitable, for Catherine has started to sell some of the valuable contents of the cottage to keep up a lifestyle she cannot afford but James has his suspicions and is looking forward to exposing her. He has always enjoyed seeing someone else suffer whatever the cost.