Stephen pulled up the collar of his coat as he walked briskly along the platform. Overhead a dim fog clouded the station. Large engines hissed superbly, throwing off clouds of steam into the cold raw air. Everything was dirty and smoke-grimed.

Stephen thought with revulsion: ‘What a foul country – what a foul city!’ His first excited reaction to London, its shops, its restaurants, its well-dressed, attractive women, had faded. He saw it now as a glittering rhinestone set in a dingy setting…

Mrs.Ariadne Oliver had gone with the friend with whom she was staying, Judith Butler, to help with the preparations for a children's party which was to take place that same evening.

At the moment it was a scene of chaotic activity. Energetic women came in and out of doors moving chairs, small tables, flower vases, and carrying large quantities of yellow pumpkins which they disposed strategically in selected spots.

It was to be a Hallowe'en party for invited guests of an age group between ten and seventeen years old…

Hercule Poirot looked with interest and appreciation at the young woman who was being ushered into the room. There had been nothing distinctive in the letter she had written. It had been a mere request for an appointment, with no hint of what lay behind that request. It had been brief and business-like. Only the firmness of the handwriting had indicated that Carla Lemarchant was a young woman.

And now here she was in the flesh-a tall, slender young woman in the early twenties. The kind of young woman that one definitely looked at twice. Her clothes were good, an expensive well-cut coat and skirt and luxurious furs…

When Captain Roger Angmering built himself a house in the year 1782 on the island off Leathercombe Bay, it was thought the height of eccentricity on his part. A man of good family such as he was should have had a decorous mansion set in wide meadows with, perhaps, a running stream and good pasture.

But Captain Roger Angmering had only one great love, the sea. So he built his house-a sturdy house too, as it needed to be, on the little windswept gull-haunted promontory-cut off from land at each high tide…

Mrs. Oliver looked at herself in the glass. She gave a brief, sideways look towards the clock on the mantelpiece, which she had some idea was twenty minutes slow. Then she resumed her study of her coiffure. The trouble with Mrs.

Oliver was-and she admitted it freely-that her styles of hairdressing were always being changed. She had tried almost everything in turn. A severe pompadour at one time, then a wind-swept style where you brushed back your locks to display an intellectual brow, at least she hoped the brow was intellectual. She had tried tightly arranged curls, she had tried a kind of artistic disarray. She had to admit that it did not matter very much today what her type of hairdressing was, because today she was going to do what she very seldom did-wear a hat…

Linnet Ridgeway! "That's Her." saidMr.Burnaby, the landlord of the Three Crowns. He nudged his companion. The two men stared with round bucolic eyes and slightly open mouths. A big scarlet Rolls-Royce had just stopped in front of the local post office. A girl jumped out, a girl without a hat and wearing a frock that looked (but only looked) simple. A girl with golden hair and straight autocratic features-a girl with a lovely shape-a girl such as was seldom seen in MaltonunderWode…

"You do see, don't you, that she's got to be killed?"

The question floated out into the still night air, seemed to hang there a moment and then drift away down into the darkness towards the Dead Sea.

Hercule Poirot paused a minute with his hand on the window catch. Frowning, he shut it decisively, thereby excluding any injurious night air! Hercule Poirot had been brought up to believe that all outside air was best left outside, and that night air was especially dangerous to the health…

Внебрачный сын могущественного графа Эверарда Альфред в бою с орками получил смертельное ранение - последний его вздох приняла дриада и родила сына. Так у графа появился удивительный внук, названный Айлексом, что означает Защитник. Несравненный разведчик и следопыт, посвященный во все тайны Вечного Леса… такие ох как нужны Семигорью, ведь по ту сторону границы - орки, зарящиеся на владения людей. И вот Айлекс скрытыми тропами ведет из города к замку графа святую сестру церкви Хранителя Мирдль, и Вечный Лес принимает и преображает ее, даровав ей Силу. Использует ли она эту Силу в интересах своей церкви или против нее и простят ли ее Вечный Лес и ее любимый Айлекс, если она совершит жестокую ошибку?

Черная цитадель. Черный город, окруженный многовековыми черными стенами. Какие тайны скрываются за ними? Почему он спустя века опустел и оказался заперт? Почему маги, пытавшиеся проникнуть туда и разгадать его тайны, все как один погибали? Почему так волнует и людей, и народ дэйлор легенда о Последнем Магистре, которым сможет стать тот, кто сумеет войти в Черный город, преодолев все его ловушки?

И не слишком ли велика цена, что заплатит смельчак, попытавшийся использовать для достижения этой цели темную Силу, изменяющую суть любого, кто продастся ей?

Таинственные записи появляются в дневнике Хоакина Истессо, разбойничьего капитана. Судя по почерку, он оставляет их сам. Но как? Когда? Зачем? Одна тайна тянет за собой другую, и чтобы разгадать их, разбойник отправляется в путь. Хоакину предстоит узнать многое. Куда исчезают кометы из пророчеств? В чем суть бунтарства? И почему, наконец, невозможно убить Ланселота?