Amanda Morely had a flash of fear when she went into her aunt’s empty darkened house, unreasoning fear because she did not suspect that below her, in a secret room, Ellie Peale’s killer was pacing with angry impatience. In fact neither Amanda nor her aunt, who had been rushed to the hospital that afternoon with a disabling stroke, had known the cleverly concealed bomb shelter existed. Only Harvey Sweet, petty criminal and part-time handyman, remembered it was there, the perfect hiding place for the killer, his half brother Claude.The inexplicable disappearance of Ellie Peale, a young supermarket clerk, was widely featured in the news. Even if the girl’s body were not found, it would be prudent for her murderer to get out of Albuquerque as soon as possible. If all went as Harvey had arranged, Claude would leave the shelter that night and be in another state by morning. Then Amanda appeared, cutting off his escape. Because she was taking care of a friend’s two-year-old daughter, she could not be lured from the house. Somehow the formidable brothers would have to prevent her from wrecking their plans. But Amanda, preoccupied with the crises in her own life, was blind to the signs of danger.The Menace Within is a spellbinding novel of love and fear, of the terrifying experiences of a young woman and of the people who in various unexpected ways are concerned with her desperate situation.

The man in the blue car parked in the shadows down the road was spying on the woman he planned to execute. His mortally injured wife had described her —young, with short fair hair that cupped her head in a ruffle—this woman who had locked the door in her face, refusing her sanctuary from her killer-rapist. After his wife had died in surgery, the man identified his enemy as Mary Vaughan. He was wrong. Mary had not even heard of the tragedy, and she was not fleeing from his revenge. She was taking her eighteen-year-old cousin Jenny Acton to Juarez for a few days to avoid a possible confrontation with Jenny's unsuitable and very resentful former fiance. Unfortunately word had been leaked to him that the Actons had sent their daughter to Santa Fe where she would be well out of his reach. Now Jenny's mother telephoned from New York that the hot-tempered ex-fiance might suddenly descend on them. Once on their way to Mexico, Mary was light-hearted with relief. Although Jenny pointed out that a blue car had been following them for a long time, she was not worried. It was only when they reached the hotel in Juarez that odd little happenings aroused her fears. Soon real danger followed these chilling portents. Here is an absorbing novel about a bewildered woman who does not know who is threatening her life or why.

Of what was Elizabeth March afraid? Was it of her husband’s strange way of spying on her? Or the suspicious actions of the other people in the house? Was someone really tampering with her sleeping pills? Poisoning the children? Forging her name to checks? Setting small fires in her workshop? Was it a plot against her—or was she herself slipping dangerously, murderously out of control?

The woman in Room 218 took the harmless-looking white envelope from the bellboy and opened it with only mechanical interest. Then, stupid with shock, she read the printed, unsigned message: “I’ve been waiting for this. If you don’t call off the wedding, I will.”Surely, the woman thought, she could identify who...? And she could do something about it.But who was the bride? Who had threatened her? And what was Celia’s role in this? Celia, who was as sleekly striking as a leopard—and as dangerous. She had been a heavy, dowdy, inarticulate girl of eighteen when she had left the tenement in a New England slum to work for the rich, pleasant Stevensons. If it had not been for an unfortunate episode with the -Stevensons’ son, she would never have become old Mr. Tomlinson’s housekeeper. Here, behind a mask of innocence, she maneuvered the first shocking tragedy that was to start her on the precarious climb to a world she was determined to enter, a world she had known only as an outsider.Letter of Intent is a chilling psychological drama about a woman, driven by ambition, who would use any weapon against her adversaries. The tension mounts until the action reaches an unexpected shattering climax.

The Widow Was A Killer.... Martin Fennister's death was officially listed as a suicide. Annabelle, his widow, inherited a mere thirty thousand. Then Gerald Mallow died in a mysterious automobile accident. He had a lot of money and he left it all to his beautiful secretary. The secretary was Annabelle! This is the story of a man who set out to trap Annabelle. He swore he'd make her confess to double murder.

A few months after Philip Byrne had jilted Margaret Russell to marry her sister Cornelia when she had received an unexpected legacy from a cousin, Miss Wilma Trumbell, Margaret was asked to mind their house, as Cornelia needed a holiday after being ill. It also meant looking after Hilary Beverton, an inquisitive eight-year old who had been staying with them. The dark and gloomy house was trouble enough without Hilary breaking ornaments and collecting mementos of the absent owner, Mrs. Isabel Foale. Among other things Hilary found was a photo of Philip, and Margaret realised he had lied when he said he didn't know the owner. One day when Hilary was at the movies, Margaret was startled to see a young man trying the unlocked door. He said he was looking for Mrs. Foale, then introduced himself as Jerome Kincaid, saying he had gone to school with Margaret, but she ' was not sure she remembered him. Her next visitor was much more unpleasant-a small, dark-skinned, drunken man calling himself Julio who came to wind the clock and insolently demanded payment. Adding to Margaret's worries, Hilary became feverish with a chill and was in bed when Miss Elizabeth Honeyman called for a book she had lent Mrs. Foale. During the conversation Margaret gathered Philip had stayed with Mrs. Foale after her husband's death, but Miss Honeyman had doubts that he was Mrs. Foale's cousin, as had been stated. That night, Julio came back. Margaret, keeping the door closed, told him to go away. The next morning she found bloodstains where he had stood. Without thinking, she immediately washed them away. Frightened he might come back, she is startled by the doorbell.

A sane, happily married man does not throw himself out of a twelfth-story window. Nor could Sarah Trafton accept the psychiatrist's monstrous theory that her husband Charles had been driven to kill himself before she could kill him. That his dreadful nightmares, his strange panic, had been caused by fear of her. There had to be a rational reason for his suicide. To find it Sarah returned to the pheasant farm she had inherited from Charles--the farm with the brilliant fairy-tale birds which was managed by his autocratic Aunt Bess, with the help of her taciturn son Hunter, her owl-like nephew Milo, and his fluttery wife Evelyn. These relatives warned Sarah against probing into Charles' past. Even Kate Clemence who had loved Charles, and Harry Brenden who obviously liked Sarah, implied that for Charles' sake it would be better if she did not discover too much. And they were all curiously evasive about the death of Charles' beautiful stepmother Nina. Here is an absorbing story of a young widow who learns that her questions have forced her into a duel with a murderer. That her only hope of survival is to identify her deadly antagonist.

Young Katy Meredith had never intended to return to the town where she had grown up. In New York she had built a new life of her own, safe from the terrifying memories of her childhood and from the tragedy that had threatened to scar her forever. Then the anonymous letters began to arrive, letters that revived the past with all its horrors. And Katy knew there was only one way to stop them. She had to leave the man she loved and go back...back tot the town she hated and feared...back to the people she dreaded to see again...back to whomever it was who had written the letters and now was awaiting her return to complete a diabolical design of evil....