There was an Old Woman

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HarperPerennial, 1992 - Fiction - 248 pages
Cornelia Potts is a wicked old witch of a woman with millions of dollars, a henpecked husband, and six miserable children. When, one by one, the inhabitants of the Potts household are visited by death, Cornelia watches with delight. During a visit, Ellery Queen finds himself supervising a duel between Thurlow Potts and his half brother Robert, so he makes sure the guns are loaded with blanks. But when one of the brothers really dies, Ellery realizes he's up against a very cunning murderer.

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Contents

WHO LIVED IN A SHOE 39
3
SHE HAD SO MANY CHILDREN
19
SHE DIDNT KNOW WHAT TO DO
28
Copyright

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About the author (1992)

An unsuccessful entry in a mystery story contest turned into a career for Frederic Dannay and his cousin Manfred Lee. The story was picked up for publication in 1929, and the career of Ellery Queen, the pseudonym that Dannay and Lee chose, was off and running. The two wrote countless novels and short stories about Ellery Queen, a young detective who used reason to solve complex puzzles. Their emphasis was always on the intellectual rather than the emotional or intuitive capacities of the detective. In their successful series of novels, Ellery Queen is not only the name of the author, but also the detective-hero of the stories. Dannay and Lee founded Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine in 1941, and it proved to be important in keeping the genre vital. Ellery Queen has won numerous awards, including the Grand Master Award in 1960 from the Mystery Writers of America. More than 150 million Ellery Queen books are in print, and there have been Ellery Queen radio and television shows, as well as movies.

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