Ralph Cosham

Rumors abound that the Paris Opera House is haunted by a ghost. Nobody has ever seen it, but it makes itself known through malevolent acts. First published in book form in 1911, this gothic novel by Gaston Leroux has been fascinating readers for more than a century and is the inspiration for the long-running hit musical.

At first enjoying a peaceful retirement, former Quebec homicide detective Armand Gamache reluctantly agrees to help a neighbor search for her missing estranged husband and teams up with two former colleagues on a search that reveals the workings of a psychologically damaged mind.

A stranger is found murdered in the village bistro and antiques store and all clues point to bistro owner Olivier being the killer. Once again, Chief Inspector Gamache and his team are called in to strip back layers of lies, exposing both treasures and rancid secrets long buried--but not forgotten.

"No one liked CC de Poitiers -- not her family, not her lover, not her neighbors in Three Pines. When Chief Inspector Armand Gamache is called to investigate CC's sudden death on the day after Christmas, it seems like an impossible murder. How could she have been electrocuted in the middle of a frozen lake in the midst of Three Pines annual curling match without anyone seeing a thing? In the beautiful but deadly Quebec winter, Gamache digs for secrets...

No outsiders are ever admitted to the monastery of Saint-Gilbert-Entre-les-Loups, hidden deep in the wilderness of Quebec, where two dozen cloistered monks live in peace and prayer. They grow vegetables, they tend chickens, they make chocolate. And they sing. Ironically, for a community that has taken a vow of silence, the monks have become world famous for their glorious voices, raised in ancient chants whose effect on both singer and listener is...

A ne'er-do-well exploits his gentle daughter's beauty for social advancement in this masterpiece of tragic fiction. Hardy's 1891 novel defied convention to focus on the rural lower class for a frank treatment of sexuality and religion. Then and now, his sympathetic portrait of a victim of Victorian hypocrisy offers compelling reading.

The Screwtape Letters by C.S. Lewis is a classic masterpiece of religious satire that entertains readers with its sly and ironic portrayal of human life and foibles from the vantage point of Screwtape, a highly placed assistant to "Our Father Below." At once wildly comic, deadly serious, and strikingly original, C.S. Lewis's The Screwtape Letters is the most engaging account of temptation-and triumph over it-ever written.

Shadows are falling on the usually festive Québec Christmas season for Chief Inspector Armand Gamache. Most of his best agents have left, his old friend Jean-Guy Beauvoir hasn't spoken to him in months, and hostile forces are lining up against him. When he receives a message from Myrna Landers that a longtime friend has failed to arrive in Three Pines, Gamache welcomes the chance to get away from the city. Is there peace to be found in Three Pines?...

The clearing of a cemetery stokes the fires of revolution in eighteenth-century France. Paris, 1785. An ambitious young engineer, Jean-Baptiste Baratte arrives in Paris charged with emptying the overflowing cemetery of Les Innocents, an ancient site whose stench is poisoning the neighborhood's air and water. A self-styled modern man of reason, Baratte sees his work as a chance to clear away the burden of history. But he soon suspects that the destruction...

Selected stories from Kipling's two "Jungle Books" chronicle the adventures of Mowgli, the boy reared by a pack of wolves in an Indian jungle. Also includes "Rikki-Tikki-Tavi."