"The Stolen White Elephant" is a short story written by Mark Twain and published in 1882 by James R. Osgood. In this detective mystery, a Siamese white elephant, en route from Siam to Britain as a gift to the Queen, disappears in New Jersey. The local police department goes into high gear to solve the mystery but it all comes to a tragic end.
The main characters of the story include:
Also, a number of other detectives, servants and civilians play minor roles in the story.
It is just one of the stories in the first edition shown at right. The others are the same as were included in the earlier publication Punch Brothers Punch in 1878, with the omission of "Legend of Sagenfeld, In Germany", "Rogers", and "Speech on the Weather". And the addition of the titular story, "The Facts Concerning the Recent Carnival of Crime", "Mrs. McWilliams and the Lightning", and "A Curious Experience".
Contents include: "The Stolen White Elephant", "Some Rambling Notes of an Idle Excursion", "The Facts concerning the Recent Carnival of Crime", "About Magnanimous-Incident Literature", Punch Brothers Punch, "A Curious Experience", "The Great Revolution in Pitcairn", "Mrs McWilliams and the Lightning", "On the Decay of the Art of Lying", "The Canvassers Tale", "An Encounter with an Interviewer", "Paris Notes", "Speech on the Babies", "Concerning the American Language", "The Loves of Alonzo Fitz Clarence and Rosannah Ethelton".
The Stolen White Elephant public domain audiobook at LibriVox  | This article about a short story (or stories) is a stub. You can help Wikipedia by expanding it. |
Ellery Queen is a pseudonym created in 1928 by the American detective fiction writers Frederic Dannay (1905-1982) and Manfred Bennington Lee (1905-1971). It is also the name of their main fictional detective, a mystery writer in New York City who helps his police inspector father solve baffling murder mysteries. Dannay and Lee wrote most of the novels and short story collections in which Ellery Queen appears as a character, and these books were among the most popular American mysteries published between 1929 and 1971. Under the pseudonym Ellery Queen, they also edited more than thirty anthologies of crime fiction and true crime. Dannay founded, and for many years edited, the crime fiction magazine Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine, which has been published continuously from 1941 to the present. From 1961 onwards, Dannay and Lee commissioned other authors to write thrillers using the pseudonym Ellery Queen, but not featuring Ellery Queen as a character; some such novels were juvenile and were credited to Ellery Queen Jr. They also wrote four mysteries under the pseudonym Barnaby Ross, which featured the detective Drury Lane.
The Murder of Roger Ackroyd is a detective novel by the British writer Agatha Christie, her third to feature Hercule Poirot as the lead detective. The novel was published in the UK in June 1926 by William Collins, Sons, having previously been serialised as Who Killed Ackroyd? between July and September 1925 in the London Evening News. An American edition by Dodd, Mead and Company followed in 1926.
Ariadne Oliver is a fictional character in the novels of Agatha Christie. She is a mystery novelist and a friend of Hercule Poirot.
"The Adventure of Silver Blaze", one of the 56 Sherlock Holmes short stories written by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, is the first from the 12 in the cycle collected as The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes. It was first published in The Strand Magazine in December 1892.
Sketches New and Old is a collection of short stories by Mark Twain. It was published in 1875. All the stories are fictional except for "The Case of George Fisher." It includes the short story "A Ghost Story", among others.
Elephants Can Remember is a work of detective fiction by British writer Agatha Christie, first published in 1972. It features her Belgian detective Hercule Poirot and the recurring character Ariadne Oliver. This was the last novel to feature either character, although it was succeeded by Curtain: Poirot's Last Case, which had been written in the early 1940s but was published last. Elephants Can Remember concentrates on memory and oral testimony.
Hickory Dickory Dock is a work of detective fiction by Agatha Christie and first published in the UK by the Collins Crime Club on 31 October 1955 and in the US by Dodd, Mead and Company in November of the same year under the title of Hickory Dickory Death. The UK edition retailed at ten shillings and sixpence (10/6) and the US edition at $3.00. It features her Belgian detective Hercule Poirot. The novel is notable for featuring Poirot's efficient secretary, Miss Felicity Lemon, who had previously appeared only in the Poirot short stories.
Poirot Investigates is a short story collection written by English author Agatha Christie and first published in the UK by The Bodley Head in March 1924. In the eleven stories, famed eccentric detective Hercule Poirot solves a variety of mysteries involving greed, jealousy, and revenge. The American version of this book, published by Dodd, Mead and Company in 1925, featured a further three stories. The UK first edition featured an illustration of Poirot on the dust jacket by W. Smithson Broadhead, reprinted from the 21 March 1923 issue of The Sketch magazine.
Partners in Crime is a short story collection by British writer Agatha Christie, first published by Dodd, Mead and Company in the US in 1929 and in the UK by William Collins, Sons on 16 September of the same year. The US edition retailed at $2.00 and the UK edition at seven shillings and sixpence (7/6). All of the stories in the collection had previously been published in magazines and feature her detectives Tommy and Tuppence Beresford, first introduced in The Secret Adversary (1922).
Poirot's Early Cases is a short story collection written by Agatha Christie and first published in the UK by Collins Crime Club in September 1974. The book retailed at £2.25. Although the stories contained within the volume had all appeared in previous US collections, the book also appeared there later in 1974 under the slightly different title of Hercule Poirot's Early Cases in an edition retailing at $6.95.
Sherlock Holmes has long been a popular character for pastiche, Holmes-related work by authors and creators other than Arthur Conan Doyle. Their works can be grouped into four broad categories:
One, Two, Buckle My Shoe is a work of detective fiction by Agatha Christie first published in the United Kingdom by the Collins Crime Club in November 1940, and in the US by Dodd, Mead and Company in February 1941 under the title of The Patriotic Murders. A paperback edition in the US by Dell books in 1953 changed the title again to An Overdose of Death. The UK edition retailed at seven shillings and sixpence (7/6) while the United States edition retailed at $2.00.
Richard Henzel is a Chicago-based stage, film, TV, and voice-over actor.
Ben Taggart was an American actor.
The Case of the Frightened Lady is a 1940 British, black-and-white, crime, drama, mystery thriller, directed by George King and starring Marius Goring as Lord Lebanon, Helen Haye as Lady Lebanon, Penelope Dudley Ward as Isla Crane, George Merritt (actor) as Detective Inspector Tanner, Ronald Shiner as Detective Sergeant Totty and Felix Aylmer as Dr Amersham. It was produced by Pennant Picture Productions and presented by British Lion Film Corporation. The film is based on the 1931 play by Edgar Wallace.
The Vicious Circle is a 1957 British thriller film directed by Gerald Thomas and starring John Mills, Noelle Middleton, Wilfrid Hyde-White and Lionel Jeffries. The screenplay concerns a leading Harley Street specialist who is forced to work with the police to nail a gang of international criminals, after being falsely accused of murder. It was based on My Friend Charles (1956), a TV serial written by Francis Durbridge.
Merry Tales is a short volume with sketches by Mark Twain, published by Charles L. Webster and Company in March 1892.
Samuel Langhorne Clemens , well known by his pen name Mark Twain, was an American author and humorist. Twain is noted for his novels Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (1884), which has been called the "Great American Novel," and The Adventures of Tom Sawyer (1876). He also wrote poetry, short stories, essays, and non-fiction. His big break was "The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County" (1867).
Father Brown is a British period detective television series loosely based on the Father Brown short stories by G. K. Chesterton, starring Mark Williams as the crime-solving Roman Catholic priest. Broadcast began on BBC One on 14 January 2013. In April 2023 the BBC confirmed that filming had begun on an 11th series, for broadcast in early 2024, and also confirmed the return of Lorna Watson as Sister Boniface.