Title: The Book of the Lion / The Whip / No Tears for the Dead
Description: >*The Book of the Lion*: Avery Bradlock wanted Henry Gamadge to tell him the value of his famous late brother's unpublished correspondence. But after one curious evening with the Bradlock household, Gamadge became far more interested in the strange circumstances surrounding Paul Bradlock's death two years earlier. What had the well-known poet and playwright been doing in Central Park on the night he was murdered? Could the woman whose apartment Paul had visited that evening supply the answer? When Gamadge went to question the lady, he discovered that his most promising witness, indeed his only witness, was suddenly dead. Someone was writing the final act to a deadman's play in blood.

> *The Whip*: In Chicago Carla Ives stands accused of the poisoning murder of her diabetic widowed great-aunt and guardian, Mrs. Sarah Willingham, whose every cruelly barbed word was like the lash of the whip to her vulnerable ward. Tasked with determining whether Carla, who has actually confessed to the heinous crime, is criminally insane, idealistic psychiatrist Dr. Mark Sargeant persuades the beautiful young woman to tell him the story of the miserable years which she spent under her cold guardian’s “care.” What he learns convinces him that Carla could not have been Mrs. Willingham’s murderer—yet who was it, in that case, who killed the hateful old woman?

>*No Tears for the Dead*: Constance had felt uneasy from the moment Ballard had taken her as his bride to Hitchcock house, once a proud family mansion, now an inn designed to save what was left of the Hitchcock fortune. This was to be her honeymoon, but now the honeymoon had ended in the horror of Ballard's gruesome death, and Constance's initial mistrust of the people around her had sharpened to razor-edged fear. Ballard's vengeful sister... her obscenely fat business partner... the sinister trio of guests with their masked identities... the bitter, aging heiress with her history of mental breakdowns... none of them could be trusted. But one person above all filled Constance with dread - the handsome, secretive, possibly sinister man who was tempting her to love again....
Subjects: Detective and mystery stories, Romance, Gothic, Fiction, gothic, Gothic Romance
Time periods: 1940s