The Spiral Staircase

"Adept at laying one icy finger on the back of your neck" - Spectator Helen Capel takes the position of lady-help in a remote country house owned by the Warren family and, before long, learns that a murderer is on the loose. As four young girls lose their lives - the last of them strangled in a lonely house just five miles away - Helen realises that the maniac is closer than she fears. In a bone-chillingly creepy atmosphere with suspicions swinging between characters, this is a book that will stay with you long. As with her other books this one also was made into a successful noir film.

Ethel Lina White was born in Abergavenny in Wales. White began early contributing essays and poems to children's papers while a child herself. She then moved to short stories, several years later to full length books. Her first three, published between 1927 and 1930, were general fiction. Her first crime novel, published in 1931, was Put Out the Light, and she went on to be one of the best-known crime writers of the 1930s and 1940s in Britain and the US. Her novel The Wheel Spins (1936) was made into the acclaimed film, The Lady Vanishes, by Alfred Hitchcock.