House of Storm

On a storm-ravaged Caribbean isle, a woman confronts love and murder.

After her father's death, there is nothing for Nonie to do but come to Beadon Island. Royal Beadon, plantation owner and descendent of the man who first settled this windswept spit of tropical land, was her father's closest friend, and he asks Nonie for her hand. As she prepares for her wedding, though, Nonie feels uneasy. The marriage is rational, but there is nothing rational about her sudden feelings for Jim Shaw.

The heir to one of the neighboring plantations, Jim is the only person who makes Nonie feel at home on the island. But when his aunt and benefactor is murdered, suspicion falls on Jim. Caught between a suspected killer and a man she does not love, Nonie fights to keep her sanity. A storm is coming to Beadon Island, and if she is not careful, the tropical winds might sweep her away.

Review Quote.

"Mounting tension ... one of [Eberhart's] most successful glamour romances yet." - The New York Times

"Mignon Eberhart's name on mysteries is like sterling on silver." - Miami News

"Eberhart can weave an almost flawless mystery." - The New Yorker

Biographical note.

Mignon G. Eberhart (1899-1996) wrote dozens of mystery novels over nearly sixty years. Born in Lincoln, Nebraska, she began writing in high school, swapping English essays with 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 1930s she was one of the most popular female mystery writers on the planet.

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