Margaret Millar

In this suspenseful masterpiece about corrupted love, Rupert Kellogg's wife, Amy, goes missing after an ill-fated trip to Mexico--and Rupert becomes the focus of a paranoid investigation. Amy Kellogg is not having a pleasant vacation in Mexico. She's been arguing nonstop with her friend and traveling companion, Wilma, and she wants nothing more than to go home to California and the Bay Area. But an uncomfortable stay in a Mexican hotel takes a nightmarish turn when Wilma is found dead on the street below their room--an apparent suicide. Rupert Kellogg has just returned from seeing his wife Amy through the difficulties surrounding the apparent suicide of her friend in Mexico. But Rupert is returning alone--which worries Amy's brother. Amy was traumatized by the suicide, Rupert explains, and has taken a holiday in New York City to settle her nerves. But as gone girl Amy's absence drags on for weeks and then months, the sense of unease among her family changes to suspicion and eventual allegations lead to a paranoid investigation.

In the 1960s the masters of crime fiction expanded the genre's literary and psychological possibilities with audacious new themes, forms, and subject matter--here are four of their finest works This is the second of two volumes gathering the best American crime fiction of the 1960s, nine novels of astonishing variety and inventiveness that pulse with the energies of that turbulent, transformative decade. In Margaret Millar's The Fiend (1964) a nine-year-old girl disappears and a local sex offender comes under suspicion. So begins a suspenseful investigation of an apparently tranquil California suburb which will expose a hidden tangle of fear and animosity, jealousy and desperation. Ed McBain (a pen name of Evan Hunter) pioneered the multi-protagonist police procedural in his long-running series of 87th Precinct novels, set in a parallel Manhattan called Isola. Doll (1965) opens at a pitch of extreme violence and careens with breakneck speed through a tale that mixes murder, drugs, the modeling business, and psychotherapy with the everyday professionalism of McBain's harried cops. The racial paranoia of a drunken police detective in Run Man Run (1966) leads to a double murder and the relentless pursuit of the young Black college student who witnessed it. In Chester Himes's breathless narrative, New York City is a place with no safe havens for a fugitive whom no one wants to believe. In Patricia Highsmith's The Tremor of Forgery (1969) a man whose personality is disintegrating is writing a book called The Tremor of Forgery about a man whose personality is disintegrating, "like a mountain collapsing from within." Stranded unexpectedly in Tunisia, Howard Ingham struggles to hold on to himself in a strange locale, while a slightly damaged typewriter may be the only trace of a killing committed almost by accident. Volume features include an introduction by editor Geoffrey O'Brien (Hardboiled America), newly researched biographies of the writers and helpful notes, and an essay on textual selection.

From the Edgar-Award winning author of Beast in View, this landmark novel of domestic suspense is a gripping tale of ordinary lives ripped apart by lust, deceit, adultery, conspiracy and betrayal. On a Saturday night in April, Ron Galloway's friends have all arrived at his Ontario lakeside vacation lodge for a boys' weekend without their wives. But as the night wears on and the host himself doesn't arrive, the party turns sour. Then Ron Galloway's suspicious wife, convinced he is having an affair and trying to track him down, arrives on the scene, followed by the police. It is clear something is very wrong. In the hours and days that follow Ron Galloway's disappearance, the secret of an ugly infidelity comes to light, tearing apart Galloway's circle of friends and destroying two marriages. Did Ron Galloway commit suicide to escape his own unforgivable betrayals? What sinister set of circumstances brought him to his desperate end, and how will his survivors cope with the truth without tearing one another apart?

A nightmare is haunting Daisy Harker. Night after night she walks a strange cemetery in her dreams, until she comes to a grave that stops her in her tracks. It's Daisy's own, and according to the dates on the gravestone she's been dead for four years. What can this nightmare mean, and why is Daisy's husband so insistent that she forget it? Driven to desperation, she hires a private investigator to reconstruct the day of her dream death. But as she pieces her past together, her present begins to fall apart...

Virginia Barkeley is a nice, well brought-up girl. So what is she doing wandering through a snow storm in the middle of the night, blind drunk and covered in someone else's blood? When Claude Margolis' body is found a quarter of a mile away with half-a-dozen stab wounds to the neck, suddenly Virginia doesn't seem such a nice girl after all. Her only hope is Meecham, the cynical small-town lawyer hired as her defence. But how can he believe in Virginia's innocence when even she can't be sure what happened that night? And when the answer seems to fall into his lap, why won't he just walk away?

THE FAIRER SEX? NOT THESE LADIES... The female of the species is absolutely deadlier than the male in these 14 cunningly-crafted tales of suspense, crimes of passion, and murder, all by women writers. Edited by MWA Grandmaster and bestselling mystery author John D. MacDonald, these bone-chilling stories show the depths both men and women will stoop to get what they want. Christianna Brand brings us a story of two sisters who engage in the ultimate cat-and-mouse game, with the prize being their lives. A woman accustomed to the finer things appears in Margaret Manners' twisting tale of a socialite who will go to any lengths to keep what's hers. Carolyn Thomas spins a tale of long-overdue revenge in the balmy Caribbean. From Veronica Parker Johns come the story of a cheating wife who's too clever for her own good. And Juanita Sheridan delivers a marriage slipping toward disaster amid the tropical paradise of Hawaii. Fourteen tales of scheming women (and even a few dangerous men) told by the very best classic women mystery writers as they reveal... The Lethal Sex.

Santa Barbara in the 1960s was home to two of the 20th century's most important mystery writers, Margaret Millar and her husband, Ken (Ross Macdonald). It was also home to nearly 400 species of bird. This is the charming story of Ken and Maggie's quest to see them all. The addiction that is birdwatching comes to vivid life in Margaret Millar's delightful memoir of her early days as a naturalist. Part autobiography and part birdwatcher's journal, it is a moving elegy to a bygone place and time. Millar brings her meticulous plotting and no small amount of suspense to these charming stories of a belligerent brown towhee named Houdunit, a larcenous raven called Melanie, and a rat who carefully ferments his grapes before eating them, to name only a few. Ornithology was a passion for both Ken and Maggie and they devoted their lives to it with the same keen sense of detail and, in the case of Margaret, storytelling vigor as they brought to their writing. In this book, the only memoir she wrote, Millar takes us on her journey from curious amateur to obsessive completionist. It is a phenomenon nearly any birding enthusiast will recognize. Ken and Margaret Millar were founding members of the Santa Barbara Audubon Society.

Young housewife Daisy Harker's world is upended when a blank spot in her memory and a reoccurring nightmare link her to an unsolved murder and a decades-old conspiracy Jim and Daisy Harker are a young, well-to-do couple in San Felice, California, and though childless they maintain the sort of domestic happiness that others can only aspire to. But a darkness exists at the outer edges of Daisy's mind and she has no idea why it's there. In a series of reoccurring nightmares she wanders a cemetery, eventually finding her own gravestone. According to the dream, December 2nd, 1955 is the day she died. Street smart but honorable, Stevens Pinata is a man with his own mysteries. An orphan left on a church doorstep as a child, he isn't even certain of his ethnicity, let alone his goals in life. As a private investigator he works with bail bonds and quick shakedowns. But when a pretty young woman like Daisy Harker comes into his office with a crazy request to "find her lost day" he is intrigued. He is too decent to take advantage of a crazy woman, but Mr. Harker is a wealthy man and who is Pinata to turn down money? What unfolds is a masterpiece of suspense and one of the books that forever changed the domestic thriller. Millar's razor sharp prose cuts a masterful plot and slashes at the racism, sexism, and entitlement endemic to an era otherwise celebrated for its prosperity.

A treasure trove of Millar rarities join her final novels to form a collector's dream anthology. Perhaps no other installment in Collected Millar displays the staggering variety of form and ranging interests of Margaret Millar as the present volume. On one end readers will find her final two mystery novels, which display the hallmarks of the writer in her heyday; the sharp social commentary and poignant black humor both well-couched in a brilliantly devised plot. The other end of the collection sees her collected shorter works, which includes the return of two fan favorites, Dr. Paul Prye and Inspector Sands. Last but certainly not least is her darkly humorous autobiographical children's novel. Banshee (1983)The moral hypocrisy of society's upper crust is laid bare when the untimely death of the young daughter of wealthy Californian landowners slowly destroys the community that loved her in life. Spider Webs (1986) The motives and prejudices of twelve jurors are on full display in the case of a Caribbean yacht captain who has been accused of murdering a wealthy white client for her jewelry. Collected Short Fiction with an Introduction by Tom Nolan (2004) Millar may have been better known as a novelist but the short stories in this collection prove that she was also a master of the short form. Two novellas and three short stories possess all the hallmarks of her stunning novel-length mysteries, including a return to two favorite characters: The psychologist Dr. Paul Prye and Detective Inspector Sands. It's All in the Family (1948) Out of print for decades, and extremely hard to find until now, Margaret Millar's bestselling and only book-length foray into children's literature stars a precocious (maybe pernicious) young girl named Priscilla, whose flair for the dramatic is matched only by her preternatural intellect. This semi-autobiographical story remains a delightful depiction of a pre-war childhood, even if the protagonist skews more Wednesday Addams than Dorothy Gale of Kansas.

Hailed as one of the greatest psychological mysteries ever written and winner of the 1956 Mystery Writers of America Edgar Award for Best Novel, Beast in View remains as freshly sinister today as the day it was first published. Thirty-year-old Helen Clarvoe is scared and all alone. The heiress of a small fortune, she is resented by her mother and, to a lesser degree, her brother. The only person who seemingly cares for her is the family's attorney, Paul Blackshear. A shut-in, Helen maintains her residence in an upscale hotel downtown. But passive-aggressive resentment isn't the only thing hounding Helen Clarvoe. A string of bizarre and sometimes threatening prank phone calls has upended her spinster's routine. Increasingly threatened, she turns to a reluctant Mr. Blackshear to get to the bottom of these strange calls. Blackshear is doubtful of their seriousness but he quickly realizes that he is in the midst of something far more sinister than he thought possible. As he unravels the mystery of the calls the identity behind them slowly emerges, predatory and treacherous.

The Library of America and editor Sarah Weinman redefine the classic era of American crime fiction with a landmark collection of four brilliant novels by the female pioneers of the genre, the women who paved the way for Gillian Flynn, Tana French, and Lisa Scottoline. Though women crime and suspense writers dominate today s bestseller lists, the extraordinary work of the mid-century pioneers of the genre is largely unknown. Turning in many cases from the mean streets of the hardboiled school to explore the anxieties and terrors lurking in everyday life, these groundbreaking novelists found the roots of fear and violence in a quiet suburban neighborhood, on a college campus, or in a comfortable midtown hotel. Their work, influential in its day and still vibrant and extraordinarily riveting today, is long overdue for rediscovery. This volume, the second of a two-volume collector s set, gathers four classic works that together reveal the vital and unacknowledged lineage to today s leading crime writers. From the 1950s here are Charlotte Armstrong s "Mischief," the nightmarish drama of a child entrusted to a psychotic babysitter, Patricia Highsmith s "The Blunderer," brilliantly tracking the perverse parallel lives of two men driven toward murder, Margaret Millar s "Beast in View," a relentless study in madness, and Dolores Hitchens s "Fools' Gold," a hard-edged tale of robbery and redemption."

She was beautiful and evil - she murdered minds as well as bodies... 'Superb ... BEAST IN VIEW is cunningly plotted and has an ingenious final twist' MAIL ON SUNDAY

Gildan, raikkaan ja rakastuneen amerikkalaisrouvan aviosiippa B. J. häipyi aikoinaan meksikolaistyttösen matkassa etelään ja sille tielle jäi. Vuosien perästä jo toistamiseen leskeksi jäävä Gilda pistää sievoisen summan likoon, jotta löytäisi kadottamansa, tämä kun on kuulopuheiden mukaan rikastunutkin valtavasti. Nuori juristi Tom Aragon pestataan moskiittojen ja roisien lahjusten Meksikoon nuuskimaan karkurin jälkiä. Mutta tiet häipyvät hämärään niin kuin todistajat perä perää manan maille. Mitä on meneillään?

The Cambridge Dictionary of Scientists is an invaluable one-stop reference book for anyone wanting a brief and accurate account of the life and work of those who created science from its beginnings to the present day. This alphabetically organized, illustrated biographical dictionary has been thoroughly revised and updated, covering over 1,500 key scientists (157 more than in the previous edition) from 40 countries. Fields represented include physics, chemistry, biology, geology, astronomy, mathematics, medicine, meteorology and technology, with special attention paid to pioneer women whose achievements and example opened the way to scientific careers for others. As well as recent Nobel Prizewinners, this new edition includes winners of the Fields Medal, the mathematician’s equivalent of the Nobel Prize. Illustrated with around 150 portraits, diagrams, maps and tables, and with special panel features, this book is a clear and accessible guide to the world’s prominent scientific personalities.

The Cambridge Dictionary of Scientists is an invaluable one-stop reference book for anyone wanting a brief and accurate account of the life and work of those who created science from its beginnings to the present day. This alphabetically organized, illustrated biographical dictionary has been thoroughly revised and updated, covering over 1,500 key scientists (157 more than in the previous edition) from 40 countries. Fields represented include physics, chemistry, biology, geology, astronomy, mathematics, medicine, meteorology and technology, with special attention paid to pioneer women whose achievements and example opened the way to scientific careers for others. As well as recent Nobel Prizewinners, this new edition includes winners of the Fields Medal, the mathematician’s equivalent of the Nobel Prize. Illustrated with around 150 portraits, diagrams, maps and tables, and with special panel features, this book is a clear and accessible guide to the world’s prominent scientific personalities.