These eclectic short works of fiction should be read as lyric essays of the human condition—comparable in intensity and emotion to lyric poetry—created out of the human spirit and brought to life by the experiences and imagination of the writer. Each story is a vignette of the human heart in conflict with itself as it struggles to resolve those human dilemmas that confront, confound and confuse us in making the choices that determine how we live our lives. The more troubling and controversial the questions, the more relevant and compelling—and important—the story. These are emotionally charged stories about things that matter—love and honor and pity and pride and compassion—that speak truth to life’s mysteries and perplexities, the only kind of stories worth writing or reading. Includes Readers Guide.

At a Hallowe’en party, Joyce—a hostile thirteen-year-old—boasts that she once witnessed a murder. When no one believes her, she storms off home. But within hours her body is found, still in the house, drowned in an apple-bobbing tub. That night, Hercule Poirot is called in to find the “evil presence.” But first he must establish whether he is looking for a murderer or a double murderer.…

A few weeks after marrying an attractive widow, Gordon Cloade is tragically killed by a bomb blast in the London blitz. Overnight, the former Mrs. Underhay finds herself in sole possession of the Cloade family fortune. Shortly afterward, Hercule Poirot receives a visit from the dead man’s sister-in-law who claims she has been warned by “spirits” that Mrs. Underhay’s first husband is still alive. Poirot has his suspicions when he is asked to find a missing person guided only by the spirit world. Yet what mystifies Poirot most is the woman’s true motive for approaching him.…

Baghdad is holding a secret superpower summit, but the word is out, and an underground organization in the Middle East is plotting to sabotage the talks. Into this explosive situation appears Victoria Jones, a young woman with a yearning for adventure who gets more than she bargains for when a wounded spy dies in her hotel room. The only man who can save the summit is dead. Can Victoria make sense of his dying words: Lucifer…Basrah…Lefarge.…

When an elderly priest is murdered, the killer searches the victim so roughly that his already ragged cassock is torn in the process. What was the killer looking for? And what had a dying woman confided to the priest on her deathbed only hours earlier? Mark Easterbrook and his sidekick Ginger Corrigan are determined to find out. Maybe the three women who run The Pale Horse public house, and who are rumored to practice the “Dark Arts,” can provide some answers?

Sheila Webb expected to find a respectable blind lady waiting for her at 19 Wilbraham Crescent—not the body of a middle-aged man sprawled across the living room floor. But when old Miss Pebmarsh denies sending for her in the first place, or of owning all the clocks that surround the body, it’s clear that they are going to need a very good detective. “This crime is so complicated that it must be quite simple,” declares Hercule Poirot. But there’s a murderer on the loose, and time is ticking away.…