Afternoon Tea Mysteries, Volume Three: A Collection of Cozy Mysteries

by Anna Katharine Green

This edition has a linked "Table of Contents" and has been beautifully formatted (searchable and interlinked) to work on your Amazon e-book reader, Amazon Desktop Reader, your iPad/iPhone ebook reader and any other device that carries the Amazon app.

Cozy mysteries are a subgenre of crime fiction in which sex and violence are downplayed. Cozies very rarely focus on sex, profanity or violence. The murders take place off stage, and are often relatively bloodless (e.g. poisoning), while sexual activity (if any) between characters is only ever gently implied and never directly addressed.

This edition contains eleven cozy stories by acclaimed authors, Susan Glaspell
Anna Katharine Green, G. K. Chesterton, Wilkie Collins, and Catherine Louisa Pirkis.

Included in this

Cozy Mystery Sisterhood – A Kristen Carter Mystery!
Kristen Carter, is a plain Quaker woman in her thirties who finds herself “thrown upon the world penniless and all but friendless” in 1920's London. With no way to earn a living, she decides to try her luck as a detective--which has the unfortunate effect of cutting her off from her friends and original position in society. In this Sister Monica has rented a house in fever-haunted Paved Court in Redhill, probably not the best location for the Sisterhood’s home for orphans. The Sisters take children begging around local villages each day and strange to relate, burglaries seem to follow in their tracks

Cozy Mystery A Jury of Her Peers
A man is found murdered in his bed. Suspicion falls on his wife. The local women examine her kitchen and gradually piece together the sequence of events.

Cozy Mystery The Trees of Pride
A novella by celebrated author, G. K. Chesterton. A man goes missing. Time passes. Bones are found in a well. And the locals in this English village are full of superstition. But is everything as it seems?

Cozy Mystery One of My Sons
In this mystery written by acclaimed mystery author, Anna Katharine Green, a dying man accuses one of his sons of his murder. Can the brilliant but reclusive detective, Ebenezer Gryce (featured in “An Ebenezer Gryce Mysteries Collection”) and Caleb Sweetwater get to the bottom of the mystery.

Cozy Mystery Poor Miss Finch
A mystery by Wilkie Collins. Lucilla is blind. She loves Oscar and has frissons every time he is near. What will happen when she regains her sight and discovers Oscar’s secret?

A must-have for fans of classic mysteries!

Genres: Mystery

702 pages, Kindle Edition

First published May 28, 2011

About the author

Anna Katharine Green (1846-1935) was an American poet and novelist. She was one of the first writers of detective fiction in America and distinguished herself by writing well plotted, legally accurate stories. Born in Brooklyn, New York, her early ambition was to write romantic verse, and she corresponded with Ralph Waldo Emerson. When her poetry failed to gain recognition, she produced her first and best known novel, The Leavenworth Case (1878). She became a bestselling author, eventually publishing about 40 books. She was in some ways a progressive woman for her time-succeeding in a genre dominated by male writers-but she did not approve of many of her feminist contemporaries, and she was opposed to women's suffrage. Her other works include A Strange Disappearance (1880), The Affair Next Door (1897), The Circular Study (1902), The Filigree Ball (1903), The Millionaire Baby (1905), The House in the Mist (1905), The Woman in the Alcove (1906), The House of the Whispering Pines (1910), Initials Only (1912), and The Mystery of the Hasty Arrow (1917).

Reviews

[M · Rating 3 out of 5]

It feels as if I'm cheating myself out of a books-read credit by counting this as one book, since the collection contains a couple of novellas and one outright (and rather long) book, Wilkie Collins's _Poor Miss Finch_. I greatly enjoyed the latter; the novellas and short stories I'd rate from good to so-so.

[Vivienne · Rating 4 out of 5]

A Pot of Tea, Not Just a Cup

This third collection of Afternoon Tea Mysteries is my probably my favourite. In this Volume, the first story ‘Sisterhood – A Kristen Carter Mystery’ by Tory Hageman, is a short story and one I have read before, although I can’t recall where. Light, but entertaining, and with a moral. ‘A Jury of Her Peers’, by Susan Glaspell is also a short story, but it packs a punch and tends to stay in the mind for a while after reading. In both these stories the writers perfectly capture the human condition in different ways, which is quite a feat in short story form.

‘The Trees of Pride’ by G.K. Chesterton is set in Cornwall in the most Celtic part of that Celtic county, and consequently has a somewhat mystic tone. It also has an unexpected conclusion. Anna Katherine Green’s ‘One of My Sons’ is a long story and is also one I have read before, in her ‘Ultimate Collection’, but worth reading again. This story keeps the reader guessing as to who the culprit is. The final story, ‘Poor Miss Finch’ by Wilkie Collins is extremely long, and could have done with an editor’s cut, however, his books tend to verbosity, although this must outdo them all. This story, like many of Collins novels, has a Gothic flavour. This is a story with ethical and moral dilemmas, and also challenges the perceptions of blindness and sight. Not one of his best novels, but still one I found compelling, for all its wordiness.

These volumes are great value and have the added benefit of not having to read the stories all at once. Overall, because of the high quality of these stories and the writing, this collection merits four and a half stars.