Tuesday 31 October 2017

Books from Profile Books

October 2017

Ruth Rendell was an acknowledged master of psychological suspense: these are ten (and a quarter) of her most chillingly compelling short stories, collected here together for the first time.  In these tales, a businessman boasts about cheating on his wife, only to find the tables turned. A beautiful country rectory reverberates to the echo of a historical murder. A compulsive liar acts on impulse, only to be lead inexorably to disaster. And a wealthy man finds there is more to his wife's kidnapping than meets the eye.   Atmospheric, gripping and never predictable, this is Ruth Rendell at her inimitable best. A Spot of Folly is by Ruth Rendell.

June 2018

The Case of the Purloined Brooch: Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, a Sensational Glasgow Murder and the Quest for Justice by Margalit Fox.  On 21 December 1908 Marion Gilchrist, a wealthy 82-year-old spinster, was found bludgeoned to death in her Glasgow home. There were no suspects and no signs of forced entry, but a valuable diamond brooch was missing. Seventeen years later a convict called William Gordon was released from Scotland's remote Peterhead Prison: concealed in a false tooth and written on waterproof paper minutely folded and tightly rolled, was an urgent message. It was from Oscar Slater, the German Jew and part-time pimp, who had spent the previous 16 years in Peterhead for Marion Gilchrist's murder. The message appealed for help from the one man he believed could prove his innocence: Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. This book is a vivid account, drawn entirely from contemporary sources, of Sir Arthur's ultimately successful quest to overturn Slater's conviction, now considered one of the great miscarriages of justice in Scottish history.


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