In mid-1943, and up to his elbows in war work, Henry Gamadge is longing for a quiet weekend. But when a half-forgotten classmate requests assistance, Gamadge is unable to refuse the tug of an old school tie. The problem, says Sylvanus, concerns his Aunt Florence—a giddy socialite terrified of Nazi bombs. Florence has moved her extensive household of hangers-on to the family mansion in upstate New York. But menace seems to have followed them, in the form of threatening messages inserted into the manuscript of Florence's painfully bad novel in progress. Several members of the household are convinced the messages are emanating from Another World, but the politely pragmatic Gamadge suspects a culprit closer to home.

Frazer's Mills, in upstate New York, is a small, isolated village, where everyone knows everyone else and things haven't changed much (and the mills have been closed for quite some time). When murder suddenly intrudes upon this sedate rural backwater, Henry Gamadge arrives to solve the mystery and restore order.

Henry Gamadge is summoned to a secluded estate by way of a crossword puzzle, the only means of communication for a widow being held captive by her relatives. They claim she's lost her mind; she thinks they have shut her away to keep her from spilling on her late husband's suspicious suicide. Gamadge knows that a woman who can convey her situation in the space of a crossword is most definitely in possession of her mental faculties. But can he sort out the secrets of a clan so scandal-averse they would do anything to avoid it?

Something is not right at the elegant Fenway mansion on the Upper East Side of New York City. The only clues are coded distress messages thrown out of a window and addressed to Henry Gamadge and, once he gets himself admitted to the mansion, a missing page in a book. But who is the member of the household who has asked for Gamadge's assistance, and what is the nature of the danger?

It should be a fairly routine job for Henry Gamadge: Examining the papers of a dead poet and playwright with some early promise but not much in the way of commercial success. But it's not so much the life and letters as the death of the author (murdered in Central Park) that interests Gamadge. Add in a dead witness and the odd behavior of the family, and Gamadge decides something criminal is afoot. The New York Times call this "another top-flight Elizabeth Daly story"

The Clayborn clan has been waiting 25 years to divvy up Grandmama's fortune, locked up by her will, and to open a small room in the Clayborn mansion. Tomorrow The Room is to be opened, and the Clayborns can't wait to get their fingers on the old lady's reportedly priceless button collection. Harriet Clayborn, who doesn't quite trust her family, asks Henry Gammadge to witness the Opening of The Room, to make sure there's no funny business. Gammadge agrees, and it's a good thing this masterful sleuth is on hand: the Room has been hiding something grislier than buttons.

Just about any of the guests at Johnny Redfield's party seems to have a good reason to have killed the guest of honor, Johnny's Californian aunt who, with her "astral name" and vague pretensions of mysticism, does not exactly blend in the elegant New York atmosphere that surrounds her. And what's more, no one has a solid alibi. It will take all of Henry Gamadge's ingenuity to figure out this closed-room mystery.

Young Rena Austen, newly wed, is afraid she's made a terrible mistake. Her husband, once a dashingly romantic figure of a wounded war hero, has turned into a moody lay-about, and they are sharing a gloomy house on the Upper East Side of New York with his unpleasant, always-there family. When her husband reacts in a frighteningly angry way to Rena pulling a particular volume off the library shelf, she has had enough, and flees her home in fear for her life. Thankfully, Henry Gamadge is on hand to solve the mystery of the book and the dead body that inevitably turns up. This 1951 novel is, sadly, Gamadge's last appearance, but on the bright side he is as charming here as he was on his first outing.

Acquitted of murdering her husband, Mrs. Vina Gregson remains essentially a prisoner, trapped in her elegant New York apartment with occasional furtive forays to her Connecticut estate. A jury may have found her innocent, but Mrs. Gregson remains a murderess in the eyes of the public and of the tabloid journalists who hound her every step. She has recently begun receiving increasingly menacing letters written, she is certain, by the person who killed her husband. Taking the matter to the police would heighten her notoriety, so she calls on Henry Gamadge, the gentleman-sleuth who is known for both his discretion and his ability to solve problems that baffle the police.

In the sticky summer of 1943, a secluded cottage in the Berkshires sounds just the ticket to the newly married Clara Gamadge. The resident ghost, a slender woman in a sunbonnet who died just one year ago in the cottage Clara is now renting, merely adds to the local color. It's all nothing more than a spooky game, until the woman's sister is strangled while Clara sits in a chair by her bed. The only clue: Clara's panicked memory of a woman in a sunbonnet standing at the door. Happily, Henry Gamadge arrives in time to calm his wife and solve the mystery (though not without some stellar help from Clara!).

Alice Dunbar was a very proper upper East Side woman with a very boring life. There is, in fact, absolutely no reason anyone can think of for Alice to go missing, and yet that's exactly what she does, shortly after the death of an elderly aunt. Henry Gamadge thinks there's more to the story, and as he tracks down Alice's last trip, he turns up a secret life no one suspected. Originally published in 1949.

What begins as a courtesy call on his wife's friend, Miss Julia Paxton, turns into another case for Henry Gamadge, Elizabeth Daly's sleuth and expert in rare books, in this, the 11th book in the series, set in post-World War II New York. Miss Paxton presents Gamadge with a mystery: a framed etching that had always hung in the hallway of the Ashbury mansion has suddenly sprung an inscription dated 1793. Miss Paxton swears nothing had been written on that portrait before the previous Sunday. Did Iris Vance, a relative and professional medium, made it happen? And how? Henry Gamadge is pretty sure the solution to this mystery has nothing to do with the supernatural, but he can't quite make out what it all means. Was it a joke? Petty larceny? Or is something much more dangerous going on, and has Gamadge somehow stumbled onto a criminal conspiracy?

Third in the Henry Gamadge series. One hundred years earlier, a beautiful guest had disappeared from the wealthy Vauregard household, along with the second volume of the collected works of Byron. Improbably, both guest and book seem to have reappeared, neither having aged a day. The elderly Mr. Vauregard is inclined to believe the young woman's story of having vacationed on an astral plane. But his dubious niece calls in Henry Gamadge, gentleman-sleuth, expert in rare books, and sufficiently well-bred to avoid distressing the delicate Vauregard sensibilities. As Gamadge discovers, the household includes an aging actress with ties to a spiritualist sect and a shy beauty with a shady fiancé.

The hospital sees nothing to question about the death of the reclusive Mr. Crenshaw, and it's not as though he had any friends to press the issue. He did, though, have one casual acquaintance, who happens to pick up Mr. Crenshaw's battered old edition of The Tempest...and happens to pass that book on to Henry Gamadge. Gamadge, of course, is not only an expert in solving pesky problems but also an expert in rare books, and his two sets of expertise combine to uncover the extraordinary puzzle of Mr. Crenshaw, which began in California and ended on the other side of the country, at a chilly New England rendezvous.