Stacking The Shelves is a meme hosted by Tynga’s Reviews and Reading Reality, all about sharing the books you are adding to your shelves, whether physical or virtual. This means you can include books you buy in physical stores or online, books you borrow from friends or the library, review books, gifts, eBooks, and audiobooks.
Purchased eBooks
The savvy Miss Withers investigates a mysterious hanging-while-driving in this delightful addition to a classic cozy mystery series.
Amazon
As snow falls on the steps of the New York Public Library, a line of cars moves sluggishly down Fifth Avenue. Oblivious to the traffic, a blue Chrysler roadster tears down the street, hops the curb, and slams to a halt. The car is empty, its driver thrown half a block back. He’s stone dead, his cigarette still burning, and a noose tied tight around his neck. First on the scene is Detective Oscar Piper, followed closely by Hildegarde Withers, a schoolmarm with more than a passing interest in crime. They are a close-knit pair, and would have been married by now if murder didn’t keep getting in the way. Piper and Miss Withers must race across New York, attempting to learn how a man can be hanged while driving, and to do whatever it takes to keep his twin from suffering the same fate.
Starring “one of the world’s shrewdest and most amusing detectives” (The New York Times)—regarded by some as an American Miss Marple—Stuart Palmer’s Hildegarde Withers Mysteries will captivate readers of classic and cozy mysteries. Murder on Wheels is part of the Hildegarde Withers Mysteries, which also includes The Penguin Pool Murder and Murder on the Blackboard
Series: The Hildegarde Withers Mysteries.
Publisher: MysteriousPress.com/Open Road
Publication Date: May 14, 2013. Initially published in 1932.
Print Length: 254 pages.
Because of the fog, the man in the brown suit arrives five minutes late for the ferry to Catalina Island. If he wishes to reach his destination today, his only option is the Dragonfly, a twelve-seat prop plane that makes up in speed what it lacks in comfort. The ride is bumpy, and all of the passengers—including a honeymooning couple, a film producer, and a would-be adventuress—find themselves feeling queasy. But none react as badly as the man in the brown suit, who sweats, shakes, and screams, “I’m dying! I don’t want to die!”—and by the time they reach Catalina, he already has. Vacationing schoolmarm Hildegarde Withers notices the corpse when they’re taking it off the plane. An amateur sleuth with a nose for murder, it doesn’t take her long to deduce foul play. But which of the passengers was dastardly enough to commit murder in mid-air? The Puzzle of the Pepper Tree is part of the Hildegarde Withers Mysteries series, which also includes The Penguin Pool Murder and Murder on the Blackboard.
Amazon
Series: The Hildegarde Withers Mysteries.
Publisher: MysteriousPress.com/ Open Road.
Publication Date: May 14, 2013. Initially published in 1933.
Print Length: 299 pages.
When fellow passengers on a ship bound for London start to disappear, Miss Withers must rely on a mischievous cat to help solve the mystery.
Amazon
Schoolteacher and occasional sleuth Hildegarde Withers has not had good luck with vacations. On her last trip, she found herself enmeshed in the investigation of a dead man on a small plane. Now, on a three-day steamer voyage to London, she’s about to encounter death again. A gruesome joke leads to a young woman going missing from the ship’s aft rail. Is she somewhere onboard, or has she fallen into the sea? In either case, turning about will do nothing for her, so the ship steams on. Soon the passengers descend into a nightmare, as body after body appears. Putting an end to the chaos falls to Miss Withers, who must depend on the testimony of a particularly mischievous silver Persian cat. The teacher and the feline will make it to London safe and sound—so long as their curiosity doesn’t get the best of them. The Puzzle of the Silver Persian is part of the Hildegarde Withers Mysteries series, which also includes The Penguin Pool Murder and Murder on the Blackboard.
Series: The Hildegarde Withers Mysteries.
Publisher: MysteriousPress.com/ Open Road.
Publication Date: May 14, 2013. Initially published in 1943.
Print Length: 303 pages.
Oscar Piper doesn’t belong on Mexican trains. A New York City detective, he’s in the Dominican Republic as part of an international delegation come to cut the ribbon on a new transcontinental highway. This grants him the honor of a trip to Mexico City on the hottest, dustiest train in North America—a crowded slow coach that’s about to become a crime scene. The alderman’s wife does not know how the bottle of Elixir d’Amour got into her bag. She only knows that when the porter smelled it, he dropped dead. She seems to have been the intended target for the poisoned perfume—but who would want to kill a corrupt politician’s trophy wife? Oscar sends a wire to his friend Hildegarde Withers, a schoolteacher and amateur sleuth, whom he knows will not wilt in the Mexican heat. Before she begins her investigation, she has only one question: “¿Cómo se dice ‘murder’?” The Puzzle of the Blue Banderilla is part of the Hildegarde Withers Mysteries series, which also includes The Penguin Pool Murder and Murder on the Blackboard.
Amazon
Library Loot
When a wealthy bachelor is murdered in his baroque Boston mansion, a bizarre clue holds the key to whodunnit
Martin Greenough’s walled-off mansion is the last remaining holdout in the Boston parkland known as the Fenway―and the fact that it eluded condemnation by the city is a testament to the elderly bachelor’s great wealth. Childless and nearing the end of his life, he surrounds himself with only his cat, his servants, and a friend, Mrs. Warden―to say nothing of the circle of extended family members whose lives he both subsidizes and rules from afar, the nieces and nephews who all seem to be more fond of Uncle Mart’s money than they are of his character.
On the eve of his birthday, Greenough requests the presence of his heirs at his home, insisting that he has something important to discuss. Before that discussion can take place, though, the man is murdered in his study. In one way or another nearly everyone there would benefit by his death, and none gathered seem terribly upset by it, so finding the culprit is no easy task for Inspector Kane of the Boston PD. But as he untangles the threads and unburies dark family secrets, the discovery of a bizarre clue might hold the key to solving the crime.
A classical “closed circle” mystery featuring a colorful cast of characters, Cat’s Paw exemplifies the puzzling, house-bound tales for which Roger Scarlett is remembered today. It is sure to delight any fan of pure, Golden Age detective stories―especially those with a love of architecturally-focused plots.
Amazon
Not much variety this week, but most of the Miss Withers series went on sale, so I wanted to pick up a fewI didn’t have.
Golden Age of Detective Fiction 
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