An Afternoon to Kill

This Victorian mystery with twists and turns will keep you gripped until the very last page: "Prim and petticoated and poisonous" (Kirkus Reviews, starred review). Lancelot Jones was on his way to his first job—as tutor to an Indian Rajah's son. But the Rajah's ancient plane and incompetent pilot dropped him in the middle of a desert. The wrong desert, at that. Seeking shade, he finds the only dwelling of any size within miles and its curious owner, an old Englishwoman named Alva Hine. Taking him into her home, Alva begins to tell Lancelot an incredible tale. She tells him a strange story of a summer fifty years ago, of love and hate and murder in a respectable middle-class Victorian household . . . And as the afternoon wears on, Alva's story begins to take on an increasingly sinister note for the weary Mr. Jones. Soon, he has more than one reason to want to hear the end of the story . . . "[An] amazing...