Enemy in the House

During the American Revolution, a woman fights to save her family.

Several years have passed since American colonists rose up against the tyranny of King George III, yet the war has no end in sight. As the struggle drags on, colonial commander George Washington's army supports itself by seizing land from those loyal to the Crown. In South Carolina, rebel leaders have their eyes on the Mallam estate, whose owner has fled to Jamaica, leaving his daughter Amity to manage the plantation. As a last-ditch effort to save her family's land, she marries Simon Mallam, a cousin and a rebel, then travels to Jamaica to learn if her father is alive or dead.

There she finds no less turmoil than she left behind. Her father's sugar plantation, Mallam Penn, is in danger. If the Mallam family is to have any future in the new world, one woman must stave off the armies of two nations.

Review Quote.

"Commendable." - The New York Times

"Intriguing." - Houston Chronicle

"One of the most thorough and ingenious plotters in the trade." - The New Yorker

Biographical note.

Mignon G. Eberhart (1899-1996) wrote dozens of mystery novels over a nearly six decade-long career. Born in Lincoln, Nebraska, she began writing in high school, trading English essays to her fellow students in exchange for math homework. She attended Nebraska Wesleyan University, and in the 1920s began writing fiction in her spare time, publishing her first novel, The Patient in Room 18, in 1929. With the follow-up, While The Patient Slept (1931), she won a §5,000 Scotland Yard Prize, and by the end of the 1930's was one of the most popular female mystery writers on the planet.

Before Agatha Christie ever published a Miss Marple novel, Eberhart was writing romantic crime fiction with female leads. Eight of her books, including While the Patient Slept and Hasty Wedding (1938) were adapted as films. Made a Mystery Writers of America grandmaster in 1971, Eberhart continued publishing roughly a book a year until the 1980s. Her final novel Three Days for Emeralds, was published in 1988.