A superior collection of short mystery fiction all featuring Hercule Poirot as the investigator.

Sam Spade accepts a case from Brigid O'Shaughnessy who is masquerading as a Miss Wonderly. Almost immediately, his partner, Miles Archer is killed and feels duty-bound to find his killer. He becomes involved with an odd assortment of characters, each searching for a statue of a blackbird, worth a fortune.

While en route from Syria to Paris, in the middle of a freezing winter's night, the Orient Express is stopped dead in its tracks by a snowdrift. Passengers awake to find the train still stranded and to discover that a wealthy American has been brutally stabbed to death in his private compartment. Incredibly, that compartment is locked from the inside. With no escape into the wintery landscape the killer must still be on board. Fortunately, the brilliant...

Nero Wolfe and his assistant must bridge eras and oceans to find the link between a Wild West lynching and a respectable British peer.

"Ten strangers are lured to an isolated island mansion off the Devon coast by a mysterious "U.N. Owen." At dinner a recorded message accuses each of them in turn of having a guilty secret, and by the end of the night one of the guests is dead Stranded by a violent storm, and haunted by a nursery rhyme counting down one by one...as one by one...they begin to die. Who among them is the killer and will any of them survive?" --Cover, p. 4.

When a fencing student ends up skewered through the heart, a Balkan beauty claiming to be Nero Wolfe's daughter is accused of the crime, and Wolfe and Archie are thrust into a tangle of international intrigue.

On a quiet morning in St. Mary Mead, a maid wakes Colonel Bantry and his wife to inform them that a young woman is dead in their library. The victim is dressed in a tawdry dress, with dyed hair and heavy make-up. Mrs. Bantry knows that as long as the murder remains unsolved her husband will be the target of suspicion and gossip, so she asks Miss Marple for help. The victim is 18-year-old Ruby Keene, a dancer at the Majestic Hotel, whose body is identified...

Nero Wolfe is retained by a tycoon to expose an alleged Communist.