Ethel Lina White

(Originally published as The Wheel Spins) by Ethel Lina White When a train bound for London halts high in the Austrian Alps, a young Englishwoman named Iris Carr befriends a kindly governess, Miss Froy. But when Iris wakes from a fainting spell, Miss Froy is gone-and every passenger insists the woman never existed. Trapped in a sealed carriage of strangers, Iris begins a desperate search for the truth. Is she suffering from sunstroke and delusion-or has she stumbled into a sinister plot that no one dares admit? First published in 1936, Ethel Lina White's gripping novel of paranoia and deception became one of the most celebrated thrillers of the interwar years. Alfred Hitchcock's 1938 adaptation, The Lady Vanishes, turned this story of a vanished passenger and a doubted witness into one of cinema's great suspense classics. This special film-tie-in edition contains the complete text of the original novel while highlighting its transformation into Hitchcock's masterpiece-a timeless tale of mystery, isolation, and the terror of not being believed.

It was a model English village, filled with flowers, Tudor cottages, and cobbled streets. Joan Brook loved working there as a companion to Lady d'Arcy, living in the huge mansion with its surrounding park. And small though the village was, it was not too small for Joan to have found a man there whom she could love. Suddenly the peaceful surface of life there is shattered as a poisonous letter is received by the town's most saintly citizen. It is followed by others; no one is safe from the anonymous letter writer. And the letters bring death. In the anguished days that follow, Joan realizes her own danger. For to receive on of these letters could mean the end of her love - and her life

A chilling classic thriller from the 1930s, by the author of The Lady Vanishes 'Adept at laying one icy finger on the back of your neck' Spectator 'An astonishing and diabolical shock... Required reading' New York Herald Tribune _____Everyone is talking about it: a serial killer is on the loose. Women are being slain across the countryside surrounding the isolated Warren mansion where Helen has taken up a domestic position. And each murder is closer to the house than the last... When the body of a local girl is discovered in the nearby village, Professor Warren orders the mansion be locked up overnight for the residents' safety. But as a storm rages outside and tensions mount within the home. Helen begins to wonder whether the murderer isn't already inside, stalking his next victim...

Though Ethel Lina White caught the attention of Alfred Hitchcock in the 1930s, the author was once as well known as the Crime Queens. During her short career from 1927 to her death in 1944, she wrote seventeen novels and many short stories. However, White has been forgotten over the years. Her books were not in print and her name was practically unheard of, even though they play a major role in the development of psychological suspense subgenre.Recently, the British Library's Crime Classics released Fear Stalks the Village and The Wheel Spins, two of the best works by White. The attention was tremendous, and a generation discovered her again. Crippen & Landru is proud to publish Blackout and Other Tales of Suspense, the first collection of White's works. The collection includes a short story that would later become the genesis for The Wheel Spins.

A brand new edition of the classic crime novel that inspired Alfred Hitchcock. Glamorous socialite Iris Carr is on her way back to England from a European summer holiday and looking forward to the comforts of home. On the train to Trieste, she strikes up a conversation with the kindly Miss Froy. At ease with her new companion, Irene dozes off, but wakes to find that Miss Froy has disappeared from the train. Worse still, all of her fellow passengers deny ever having seen such a woman. Doubting her sanity and fearing for her safety, Iris is determined to find the vanished lady, but it seems almost everyone else aboard is conspiring against her, and soon she realizes Miss Froy's life is at stake...

“Fear Stalks the Village has a sense of reality about it which few thrillers possess, and the characterisation is excellent. You will enjoy thrill upon thrill.” – Tatler “To the connoisseur of crime the name of Ethel Lina White is one to be spoken of with awe.” – News Chronicle Ambling along the lanes of a sleepy village in the Downs, passing cosy Tudor cottages rustling with wisteria, a novelist imagines the sordid truth hidden behind the quaint, rustic facade. Her musings are confirmed when a spate of anonymous poison pen letters shocks the community, turning neighbour against neighbour and embroiling everyone from the rector and the ‘queen of the village’ Decima Asprey to the high-born Scudamores. With venom in the air, the perpetrator a mystery and dark secrets threatening to come to light, a shadow of shame and scandal stretches over the parish, with death and disaster following in its wake. Revelling in the wickedness that lies beneath the idyllic veneer of village life, White’s 1932 mystery is an inventive interwar classic and remains one of the foundation stones of the village mystery sub-genre of crime fiction.

'Then the rhythm of the train changed, and she seemed to be sliding backwards down a long slope. Click-click-click-click. The wheels rattled over the rails, with a sound of castanets.' Iris Carr's holiday in the mountains of a remote corner of Europe has come to an end, and since her friends left two days before, she faces the journey home alone. Stricken by sunstroke at the station, Iris catches the express train to Trieste by the skin of her teeth and finds a companion in Miss Froy, an affable English governess. But when Iris passes out and reawakens, Miss Froy is nowhere to be found. The other passengers deny any knowledge of her existence and as the train speeds across Europe, Iris spirals deeper and deeper into a strange and dangerous conspiracy. First published in 1936 and adapted for the screen as The Lady Vanishes by Alfred Hitchcock in 1938, Ethel Lina White's suspenseful mystery remains her best-known novel, worthy of acknowledgement as a classic of the genre in its own right.