Mary Roberts Rinehart was the American Agatha Christie. Both were great mystery writers. While Christie was justifibly famous for her ingeneous plots, in my opinion Rinehart was the better writer. Furthermore, Rinehart had an uncanny ability to creat and sustain throughout each of her books an atmosphere not merely of suspence but of foreboding. Although reading a Rinehart novel is great fun, it is also rather scary. Her classic story The Door is no exception. If you like well-written mystery novels that make you want to keep the door locked while you read them, read The Door -- and all of Mary Roberts Rinehart's other classics.

THIS IS THE SECOND TIME I HAVE READ THIS BOOK! MARY ROBERTS RINEHART WEAVES A STORY LIKE NO OTHER AUTHOR I HAVE READ. THE SET UP, THE CLUES, THE VICTIMS, THE MURDERER AND THE FINALE! ALL FANTASTIC! I CANT WAIT TO READ THE YELLOW ROOM!

i had picked this book in 1983 or thereabouts from a sale, when i started to read it i just had to finish it to see who the person was committing the murders but to my utter horror some creep had torn off the last page and i never knew who it was. i have searched for this book at various stores but have not located it until today. ofcourse i have to order it from amazon !

I have a copy of this book that once belonged to my grandmother, and it has been a favorite of mine for years! One can't help laughing at Bab's simplicity and superficiality, and yet her genuine sweetness. It also provides a charming glance into high society of the time. As for it being a "tear-jerker", as I have seen it described by another reviewer, it is pure comedy and very lighthearted. I'm glad to find it isn't out of print!

This is the absolute best book ever written. It should be required reading for anyone who has at least a marginal understanding of the english language. This is the epic tale of a young girl (her name is Bat/Bab) who is a sub-deb. A sub-deb, as the book so quaintly describes it, is a little girl who has yet to come out into society. When a girl makes her debut into society, she is called an uber-deb. An uber-deb is akin to a captain in the deb army, which, by a strange coincidence, is called The Deb Army.

The story of this book revolves around the trials and tribulations involved in becoming an uber-deb. An uber-deb, as everyone knows, is a very respectable position. When one is an uber-deb, one commands great respect. Bat/Bab is a siamese twin who wants more than anything to be an uber-deb, but his/her disability prohibits this honor from being bestowed. This story is the chronicle of his/her rise from lowly sub-deb to grand uber-deb.

When I read this book for the first time, I found myself weeping hysterically as Bat/Bab was mercilessly ridiculed and insulted. The cruelity of the uber-debs reflects our own trying times of moral decline. When Bat/Bab finally overcame his/her disability, i wept again, but this time it was tears of joy. This novel gives siamese twins, such as myself, hope for a future. After all, it's not every book you find that tells our particular tale. In short, I loved this book and would recommend it to anyone in search of a tear jerking novel about the human condition and man's inhumanity to man.

When I was a little girl, I would go stay with my Granny each summer. A reader, Granny had lots of books, and I loved to read them. One old book was called "More Tish", by Mary Roberts Rinehart. I loved that book and read it every summer while I was at Granny's. I have been searching for the others in the series for years. I still have that old book--its pages are yellow and crackling with age, but it remains my all-time favorite book! I love Tish and her buddies, and have laughed aloud many times while reading their exploits!

Tish is a strong feminist character, with much intelligence and spirit. The other characters, and the plot are just as wonderful. Please e-mail if you have read it or plan to.

These short stories were written during WWII, and obviously the shadow of war lies in the background, with men leaving for Europe or South Pacific, and women working for their country, or just waiting for the men to come back. And with a bit of crime and murder everywhere. It's a medley of classic criminal detection, with the hard-boiled policeman (but with a heart like that!) and crime+love stories full of tenderness. A bit old-fashioned, of course, but so agreable to read and enjoy : the heroine always needs a man to help her, and generally falls in love with him, but why not ? Of course, the end of the short story "alibi for isabel" is'nt what we expected, but that's fine : heroines by Mary R. Rinehart do'nt kill their husbands cold-blooded. Nice stories to enjoy.

Mary Roberts Rinehart Rocks!!!!

An amazing mystery writer whose work has long been overlooked!

This collection of books rectifies this omission. Mary Roberts Rinehart has been called the American Agatha Cristie -- and it is really true. Her novels have that well-mannered atmosphere of an Agath Cristie story combined with novel plot twists.

However, what gives Rinehart an edge is the true feeling you have for her characters- they are so life-like and well drawn that they seem fresh and contemporary even if the story settings are from the 1920's.

I highly recommend all of the novels in The Essential Rinehart collection. There are often two and sometimes three novels all published in one book- a good value and an interesting selection since each book has a shared theme with the others.

This book was written in 1912, but unless readers take the time to check out the publication history in the front of the book, they will probably never guess that this book is almost a century old. The Case of Jenny Brice is still an intriguing murder mystery with a realistic heroine. What strikes me most about this (and others by Rinehart) is that as you read, you don't think, "This is an amazing book to have been written 100 years ago." You think simply, "What an amazing book." This is a very short book, actually more of a novella, which makes it an excellent book to read when you can take a day just to enjoy a good mystery.

The Case of Jenny Brice is atmospherically set during a flood in a boardinghouse of a poor Pittsburgh neighborhood. From the very beginning, Rinehart develops a real sense of place. Unlike too many amateur detectives in novels, this heroine has a believable reason for being involved in the case. Again, seen as a product of 1912, Miss Pittman is an especially extraordinary woman, but even without that in mind, she is a convincing character. The Case of Jenny Bright has been referred to as not one of Rinehart's most outstanding mysteries, but in light of the stiff competition from her other novels, that is not really a criticism.

Compared with many of today's better mysteries, The Case of Jenny Bright holds its own. It is not just a curiosity because of its age; it is a fascinating mystery in its own right.

For decades Mary Roberts Rinehart was the queen of mystery thrillers -- the American Agatha Christie. These are the first two mystery novels she wrote and they are genuine classics. Although The Man in Lower Ten was written first, The Circular Staircase was Rinehart's first published novel (The Man in Lower Ten was published second and The Swimming Pool was her last mystery novel). Rinehart's special gift was in the evocation of an unremitting atmosphere of unease and potential danger and it is under such an atmosphere of apprehension that she spun her classic stories. The Man in Lower Ten -- in which a man is murdered in his berth in a railroad Pullman car -- was so scary and so popular that for some time after its publication travellers refused to sleep in any Pullman berth numbered lower 10. Unfortunately, for many years the classic mystery novels of Mary Roberts Rinehart were dismissed by many as old fashioned. This may apply to superficial details -- such as gas lighting and railroad Pullman cars -- but it definitely is not true of the novels themselves which are timeless in their ability to hold the reader in a grip of mystery and suspense. The Circular Staircase is one of the finest mystery novels ever written and The Man in Lower Ten is fitting companion in this first book of the new Essential Rinehart Collection. If you love good mystery/suspense novels please do yourself a favor and get to know the classics by this master of the genre.

I've had the 1939 edition of "My Story" for years, and I've been wanting this one for almost as many years. I am so happy to have found it. It was well worth the high price tag, too. This edition of "MY Story" is well bound and a nice addition to my MRR collection. The 17 years she added was all new Rinehart writing. Some of the items I knew from other sources, but she still wrote better than most of us. For her time, MRR was very honest, very real, and in "My Story" she shares her own heartbreaks, as well as the glory of being so famous. A real "lady" and a truly great writer.

Mary Roberts Rinehart has been called "The American Agatha Christie," and her books, especially the earlier ones, are appealing in the same way Christie's are: very clever, interesting mysteries.

But this 1934 title is a break-out novel, a dark and amazingly believable depiction of a woman from a loveless upper class home, and the choices that take her life to the precipice. Elinor's husband, Lloyd, has his own psychological damage, drawn by the author with superb insight. The interplay between the couple, as they each try to do the right thing, hampered by their demons, is the stuff great suspense is made of. Elinor's tragic infatuation with another man keeps the tension high. Once her husband dies in a hunting accident -- or was it? -- the tension keeps up as she tries to forge a life with the other man, blind at first to his flaws, and, later, as realization grows and she realizes that she's trapped. The amazing thing about this novel is the way Rinehart can make the reader understand Elinor's feelings, as a function both of her self-loathing, and of the morals of the era -- even though today most of us would just dump the jerk! But is she truly guilty of his murder?

Rinehart keeps you turning the pages, in a novel worthy of discussion groups about The Modern Crime Novel!

this book has been one of my all time favorites. it is an excellent story and mystery. i recommend this book; you will really enjoy it