"What I intend to say to you will come as a shock ..." With these words, Lady Athelinda Playford -- one of the world's most beloved children's authors -- springs a surprise on the lawyer entrusted with her will. As guests arrive for a party at her Irish mansion, Lady Playford has decided to cut off her two children without a penny ... and leave her vast fortune to someone else: an invalid who has only weeks to live. Among Lady Playford's visitors are two strangers: the famous Belgian detective Hercule Poirot, and Inspector Edward Catchpool of Scotland Yard. Neither knows why he has been invited -- until Poirot begins to wonder if Lady Playford expects a murder. But why does she seem so determined to provoke a killer? And why -- when the crime is committed despite Poirot's best efforts to stop it -- does the identity of the victim make no sense at all?

V.I. Warshawski may have left her old South Chicago neighborhood, but she learns that she cannot escape it. When V.I. takes over coaching duties of the girls? basketball team at her former high school, she faces an ill-equipped, ragtag group of gangbangers, fundamentalists, and teenage moms, who inevitably draw the detective into their family woes. Through young Josie Dorrado, V.I. meets the girl?s mother, who voices her worries about sabotage in the little flag manufacturing plant where she works. The biggest employer on the South Side, discount-store behemoth By-Smart, pays even less, and Ms. Dorrado doesn?t know how she?ll support her four children if the flag plant shuts down. The elder Dorrado?s fears are realized when the plant explodes; V.I. is injured and the owner is killed. As V.I. begins to investigate, she finds herself confronting the Bysen family, who own the By-Smart company. Founder William?Buffalo Bill? Bysen, now in his eighties, has four sons who quarrel with each other and with him; the oldest,?Young Mr. William,? is close to sixty and furious that his father doesn?t cede more power to him. And then, there?s?Billy the Kid,? Young Mr. William?s nineteen-year-old son, whose Christian idealism puts him on a collision course with his father, his grandfather, and the company as a whole. When Billy runs away with Josie Dorrado, V.I. is squeezed between the needs of two very different families. As she tries to find the errant teenagers, and to track down a particularly cruel murderer, her own life is almost forfeit in the swamps that lie under the city of Chicago.

Once again, Tim Diamond and his younger brother Nick are flat broke. So when they're hired to investigate an anonymous death threat made to world-famous pop singer and movie actress Minerva, they jump at the chance. However, the Greek celebrity seems to have plenty of enemies so the question is, which one actually wants her dead? Meanwhile, Tim needs to resist Minerva's amorous advances and focus on the matter in hand.

The man in the photo is so blurred you can't see what he looks like, and that was before he was run over by a steamroller! His name was Lenny Smile and he ran a charity financed by Joe Carter. Carter wants to find out what happened to Smile and the money, so he hires the Diamond Brothers to solve the mystery. Suggested level: primary, intermediate.