Police at the Funeral

Police at the Funeral
Author: Margery Allingham
Publisher: Penguin Group
Total Pages: 252
Release: 1964
Genre: Fiction
ISBN:
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The imperious Caroline Faraday runs her house like a Victorian fiefdom, unconcerned with the fact that it's 1931. Furniture and meals are heavy and elaborate, both motorcars and morning tea are forbidden on account of vulgarity. The Faraday children - now well into middle age -- chafe at the restrictions, but with no money of their own, they respond primarily by quarreling amongst themselves. Their endless squabbling is tedious but nothing more until one of them turns up missing and then dead, followed shortly by his petulant, whining sister. Though neither will be much missed, decency demands that Caroline Faraday hire the nearly respectable Albert Campion to investigate their untimely ends. Unfortunately, what Mr. Campion discovers will force the modern world relentlessly into Mrs. Faraday's stuffy Victorian parlor. A richly detailed and entertaining romp, with a fascinating resolution and an unconventional and winning sleuth - Chicago Tribune

Police at the Funeral

Police at the Funeral
Author: Margery Allingham
Publisher: Open Road Media
Total Pages: 307
Release: 2023-06-13
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 1504088352
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From the Golden Age mystery author comes “a richly detailed and entertaining romp, with a fascinating resolution and an unconventional and winning sleuth” (Chicago Tribune). Albert Campion heads to Cambridge as a favor to a friend, whose fiancée is employed by the elderly Faraday family, to investigate the disappearance of her uncle Andrew. What the self-proclaimed “Deputy-Adventurer” finds is foul play of the most heinous kind: murder. Andrew is found floating in a river, bound and shot in the head. Needless to say, in a household of unlikable characters—presided over by an authoritarian widow—he’s not sorely missed. But fear has pervaded the dour family, bringing up decades of suppressed hatreds, petty jealousies, and nasty impulses—all of which lead to a second shocking killing. As the number of Faradays dwindle, so should the number of suspects. But Campion discovers that in a family this dysfunctional, it’s hard to stop what hatred has set in motion. Praise for Margery Allingham “Margery Allingham stands out like a shining light.” —Agatha Christie “The best of mystery writers.” —The New Yorker “Allingham was a rare and precious talent.” —The Washington Post “Margery Allingham deserves to be rediscovered.” —P. D. James, New York Times–bestselling author “Don’t start reading these books unless you are confident that you can handle addiction.” —The Independent From the Golden Age mystery author comes “a richly detailed and entertaining romp, with a fascinating resolution and an unconventional and winning sleuth” (Chicago Tribune). Albert Campion heads to Cambridge as a favor to a friend, whose fiancée is employed by the elderly Faraday family, to investigate the disappearance of her uncle Andrew. What the self-proclaimed “Deputy-Adventurer” finds is foul play of the most heinous kind: murder. Andrew is found floating in a river, bound and shot in the head. Needless to say, in a household of unlikable characters—presided over by an authoritarian widow—he’s not sorely missed. But fear has pervaded the dour family, bringing up decades of suppressed hatreds, petty jealousies, and nasty impulses—all of which lead to a second shocking killing. As the number of Faradays dwindle, so should the number of suspects. But Campion discovers that in a family this dysfunctional, it’s hard to stop what hatred has set in motion. Praise for Margery Allingham “Margery Allingham stands out like a shining light.” —Agatha Christie “The best of mystery writers.” —The New Yorker “Allingham was a rare and precious talent.” —The Washington Post “Margery Allingham deserves to be rediscovered.” —P. D. James, New York Times–bestselling author “Don’t start reading these books unless you are confident that you can handle addiction.” —The Independent

More Work for the Undertaker

More Work for the Undertaker
Author: Margery Allingham
Publisher: Open Road Media
Total Pages: 309
Release: 2023-05-30
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 1504087992
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“A top-notch mystery full of keen characterization, humor, old English atmosphere, a charmingly decadent family, and a few sudden deaths.” —The New York Times A beggarwoman on a bench arouses Albert Campion’s curiosity—and helps Scotland Yard lure him into a case of family dysfunction. The seemingly destitute woman is none other than a member of the eccentric Palinode family, which has recently lost two of its members. The police suspect a poisoner is on the loose, which is why Campion is willing to go undercover as a lodger in the boardinghouse where they live. As the recently deceased are exhumed, Campion becomes acquainted with the old-fashioned, out-of-the-ordinary family members, who talk in crossword puzzle clues, sneak out at night, and cook vats of stinky food in the basement to save money. And if that’s not enough to keep Campion on his toes, the local undertaker seems to be digging himself into a hole . . . Praise for Margery Allingham “Margery Allingham stands out like a shining light.” —Agatha Christie “The best of mystery writers.” —The New Yorker “Don’t start reading these books unless you are confident that you can handle addiction.” —The Independent “One of the finest Golden-Age crime novelists.” —The Sunday Telegraph “Spending an evening with Campion is one of life’s pure pleasures.” —The Sunday Times

The Crime at Black Dudley

The Crime at Black Dudley
Author: Margery Allingham
Publisher: Random House
Total Pages: 242
Release: 2015-05-07
Genre: Campion, Albert (Fictitious character)
ISBN: 0099593491
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THE FIRST CAMPION MYSTERY 'Margery Allingham stands out like a shining light' Agatha Christie A suspicious death and a haunted family heirloom were not advertised when Dr George Abbershaw and a groupof London's brightest young things accepted an invitation to the mansion of Black Dudley. Skulduggery is most certainly afoot, and the party-goers soon realise that they're trapped in the secluded house. Amongst them is a stranger who promises to unravel the villainous plots behind their incarceration - but can George and his friends trust the peculiar young man who calls himself Albert Campion?

Funeral for a Friend

Funeral for a Friend
Author: Brian Freeman
Publisher: Blackstone Publishing
Total Pages: 324
Release: 2020-09-22
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 198266374X
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“You’re safe, Stride. I found the body at the Deeps. I buried him.” Jonathan Stride’s best friend, Steve Garske, makes a shocking deathbed confession: he protected Stride by covering up a murder. Hours later, the police dig up Steve’s yard and find a body with a bullet hole in its skull. Stride is pretty sure he knows who it is. Seven years ago, an out-of-town reporter disappeared while investigating anonymous allegations of rape against a prominent politician. Back then, the police believed that the reporter drowned at a dangerous swimming hole called the Deeps ... but the discovery of the body changes everything. Now Stride’s partner, Maggie Bei, is forced to ask Stride an uncomfortable question: Did you kill him? Stride is obviously hiding things. He was the last person to see the reporter alive. And he admits lying to Maggie about that meeting, but won’t tell her why. With suspicion in the murder pointing at him, Stride finds himself off the case and on leave from the Duluth Police. His only ally in clearing his name is his wife, Serena, who retraces the reporter’s investigation into the explosive allegations. The clues all point to a hot Duluth summer years earlier that everyone in town would prefer to forget. Someone was willing to kill rather than let those long-ago secrets come out, and the suspect with the strongest motive ... is Stride.

Confessions of a Funeral Director

Confessions of a Funeral Director
Author: Caleb Wilde
Publisher: HarperCollins
Total Pages: 164
Release: 2017-09-26
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 0062465260
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“Wise, vulnerable, and surprisingly relatable . . . funny in all the right places and enormously helpful throughout. It will change how you think about death.” —Rachel Held Evans, New York Times–bestselling author of Searching for Sunday We are a people who deeply fear death. While humans are biologically wired to evade death for as long as possible, we have become too adept at hiding from it, vilifying it, and—when it can be avoided no longer—letting the professionals take over. Sixth-generation funeral director Caleb Wilde understands this reticence and fear. He had planned to get as far away from the family business as possible. He wanted to make a difference in the world, and how could he do that if all the people he worked with were . . . dead? Slowly, he discovered that caring for the deceased and their loved ones was making a difference—in other people’s lives to be sure, but it also seemed to be saving his own. A spirituality of death began to emerge as he observed the family who lovingly dressed their deceased father for his burial; the nursing home that honored a woman’s life by standing in procession as her body was taken away; the funeral that united a conflicted community. Through stories like these, told with equal parts humor and poignancy, Wilde’s candid memoir offers an intimate look into the business of death and a new perspective on living and dying. “Open[s] up conversations about life’s ultimate concerns.” —The Washington Post “As a look behind the closed doors of the death industry, as well as a candid exploration of Wilde’s own faith journey, this book is fascinating and compelling.” —National Catholic Reporter “[A] stunner of a debut.” —Rachel Held Evans, author of Inspired

The Viking Funeral

The Viking Funeral
Author: Stephen J. Cannell
Publisher: St. Martin's Press
Total Pages: 382
Release: 2010-04-01
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 1429902612
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Driving along the freeway, Shane Scully glances over and sees Jody Dean, his oldest friend and LAPD colleague, at the wheel of an adjacent car. Why is Scully so surprised? Because it's been two years since Jody committed suicide in the Rampart Division parking lot by blowing his brains out with a service revolver. Shane served as a pallbearer at the funeral. What Scully will discover is that Jody and five other cops who are supposed to be dead are anything but; originally sent deep undercover to bust an extremely violent criminal network, they have become the LAPD's worst nightmare. Calling themselves the Vikings, they are rogue cops who know how the system works. In order to penetrate the group and set his cover, Scully is supposed to shoot his fiancée, Alexa. The setup goes awry and Shane finds himself looking down at his future wife's body. He is soon driven into the corridors of near-madness and into the bed of an extremely beautiful and utterly ruthless corporate seductress who threatens to destroy his soul. Shane's desperate and deadly undercover journey takes him from the embrace of Alexa and his teenage son, Chooch, to the Caribbean island of Aruba--to the decadence of Columbia's opulent palaces and the desperation of its deadly streets. In Viking Funeral, an electrifying thriller from Stephen J. Cannell, Sergeant Scully is driven to the psychological brink, his life in the hands of the most dangerous killer he's ever known--his closest childhood friend.

Funeral Diva

Funeral Diva
Author: Pamela Sneed
Publisher: City Lights Books
Total Pages: 119
Release: 2020-10-20
Genre: Poetry
ISBN: 0872868133
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Funeral Diva is the Winner of the Lambda Award for Lesbian Poetry! A poetic memoir about coming-of-age in the AIDS era, and its effects on life and art. "Sneed is an acclaimed reader of her own poetry, and the book has the feeling of live performance. . . . Its strength is in its abundance, its desire for language to stir body as well as mind."—Parul Sehgal, The New York Times Book Review "She is a writer for the future, in that she defies genre."—Hilton Als "This notable achievement, traveling from youth to adulthood, is a harrowing account of how Sneed transforms violence and pain into an artist's life."—Claudia Rankine, author of Citizen: An American Lyric "There's an eerie sense of timeliness to this book, which features prose and poetry by the writer and teacher Pamela Sneed and is largely — though not entirely — about mourning Black gay men killed too soon by a deadly virus."—Tomi Obaro, Buzzfeed "OH MY GOODNESS, it was amazing. I was in tears by the end. What starts off as beautiful memoir evolves into incredibly moving poetry, painful and sweet and lovely."—Marie Cloutier, Greenlight Bookstore, Brooklyn, NY "Balancing and mixing, with rhyme and reason, love and anger, good and bad, memory and the created present, all to tell the story of a life, a memoir unrestrained, devoid of artificial forms. Honest. Free."—Anjanette Delgado, New York Journal of Books In this collection of personal essays and poetry, acclaimed poet and performer Pamela Sneed details her coming of age in New York City during the late 1980s. Funeral Diva captures the impact of AIDS on Black Queer life, and highlights the enduring bonds between the living, the dying, and the dead. Sneed’s poems not only converse with lovers past and present, but also with her literary forebears—like James Baldwin, Toni Morrison, Audre Lorde—whose aesthetic and thematic investments she renews for a contemporary American landscape. Offering critical focus on matters from police brutality to LGBTQ+ rights, Funeral Diva confronts today's most pressing issues with acerbic wit and audacity. The collection closes with Sneed's reflections on the two pandemics of her time, AIDS and COVID-19, and the disproportionate impact of each on African American communities. "Riveting, personal, open-hearted, risky and wise."—Sarah Schulman, author of Conflict Is Not Abuse " . . . a tour de force about the collision between a coalescing 1980s 'Black lesbian and gay literary and poetic movement' in New York and the onslaught of AIDS."—Donna Seaman, Booklist "Pamela Sneed's Funeral Diva is deft, defiant, and devastating."—Tommy Pico, author of Feed "Funeral Diva is urgent and necessary reading to live by. This is writing at its finest. Keep this book close to your heart and soul."—Karen Finley, author of Shock Treatment "Reminiscent of Audre Lorde’s Zami, Pamela Sneed’s memoir is, in itself, a healing balm, affirming in its truths and honesty. I cannot remember ever reading a book that illustrates the impact of the AIDS epidemic on our community more poignantly than Funeral Diva."—Nicole Dennis-Benn, author of Patsy "Pamela Sneed takes enormous risks in this book. She tells the truth with fierce concentration and an abiding sense of purpose.”—Dorothy Allison, author of Bastard Out of Carolina