Dorothy Gilman Books In Order

The Unexpected Mrs. Pollifax

‘Mrs. Pollifax is an enchantress.’THE NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEWMrs. Virgil Emily Pollifax of New Brunswick, New Jersey, was a widow with grown children. She was tired of attending her Garden Club meetings. She wanted to do something good for her country. So, naturally, she became a CIA agent. This time, the assignment sounds as tasty as a taco. A quick trip to Mexico City is on her agenda. Unfortunately, something goes wrong, and our dear Mrs. Pollifax finds herself embroilied in quite a hot Cold War and her country’s enemies find themsleves entangled with one unbelievably feisty lady.

The Amazing Mrs. Pollifax

Emily Pollifax is one of a precious few gray haired female sleuths who solve their cases through unflagging determination, moral courage and wisdom that comes with age. In The Amazing Mrs. Pollifax, Emily answers the call of that ‘nice Mr. Carstairs’ to go to Istanbul as a courier and search for a missing agent. This book is recorded on 6 cassettes/8.5 hours

The Elusive Mrs. Pollifax

While waiting for a view of her night blooming cereus, the mild seeming Mrs. Pollifax received urgent orders for a daring mission to aid an escape. Soon, the unlikely looking international spy was sporting a beautiful new hat that hid eight forged passports…
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A Palm for Mrs. Pollifax

‘Mrs. Pollifax gives Agatha Christie’s Miss Marple a rival to reckon with.’TORONTO STARA secret agent like no other, Mrs. Pollifax was leading a very full life: Garden Club, karate, yoga and a little spying now and then. This time the mysterious Mr. Carstairs sent her to Switzerland to a famous health resort where the world’s intelligence agents had gathered. Her mission: to track down a missing package of plutonium just enough to make a small atomic bomb. It was a job that suited Mrs. Pollifax’s talents. She’s good with people and even better at sniffing out their secrets. But it was not until she became enchanted with Robin, the young jewel thief, that her new adventure really began…
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Mrs. Pollifax on Safari

‘Mrs. Pollifax is the American cousin to Agatha Christie’s Miss Marple.’TORONTO STARMrs. Pollifax has been sent on safari by the C.I.A. and told only to take pictures of all of her companions, in order to find the international assassin whose next target is the president of Zambia. It sounded so simple, but shortly after Mrs. Pollifax started taking pictures, someone stole her film. And right after that she was kidnapped by Rhodesian terrorists. And right after that well, read for yourself…
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Mrs. Pollifax on the China Station

‘Absorbing and worthwhile…
You won’t want to put the book down’PORTLAND TELEGRAMOnce again, Mrs. Pollifax, the cheerful little woman with the flyaway white hair and a penchant for old hats is plunged headfirst into another hair raising CIA mission. Posing as a tourist in China, Emily Pollifax meets the sinister challenges of the Orient to safeguard a treasure for the CIA…
and all but loses her life in the bargain.

Mrs. Pollifax and the Hong Kong Buddha

Newly married Mrs Pollifax had just begun to settle into blissful domesticity with husband Cyrus, when who should come bumping and jolting up her driveway, but Bishop, his fingertips in a veritable tingle over a new case for which he required her ullustrious assistance. And with less than 30 minutes in to pack, she is on her way to Hong Kong, in pursuit of an agent who has stopped informing, and a friend, who for all intents and purposes has vanished into thin air. But Mrs Pollifax soon discovers that she cannot go unscathed in this unpredictable world of terrorism and moral anarchy. For her adversaries are people who murder eagerly, casually and at the twitch of a finger. Mrs P’s indomitable spirit has endured much, but this time the dreadful odds may be too great, even for her. ‘The Hong Kong Buddha, like the proverbial first potato chip, gives you an irrestible craving for the first six Mrs Pollifax books’Newport News Daily Press

Mrs. Pollifax and the Golden Triangle

‘A rousing caper for Pollifax fans.’ BOOKLISTAlthough Mrs. Pollifax is determined to give up spying for good, she can’t help but agree to carry a small object to an agent in Thailand, and get one in return. The moment she lands, however, Mrs. Pollifax is horrified to find her contact dead and her husband kidnapped. The next thing she knows, she’s tramping through the ominous Thai countryside, led by a curious fellow who may be trying to help her find her husband. Or he may have other, more sinister plans…
. From the Paperback edition.

Mrs. Pollifax and the Whirling Dervish

Mrs. Pollifax is on hand in Morocco to back up an inept CIA agent, and it’s a good thing. Their first informant is killed, and Mrs. Pollifax begins to get the idea that her colleague is not who he says he is. Still, she forges ahead, checking out suspicious informants, and coming to the conclusion that someone is an imposter and someone wants her dead…
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Mrs. Pollifax and the Second Thief

The assignment is a snap: Mrs. Pollifax just has to shoot some pictures at a quiet funeral outside Washington and take them to Sicily, where her old friend Farrell a former CIA agent turned art dealer anxiously awaits them. But like all Mrs. P’s assignments, so ostensibly suitable for the CIA’s favorite garden club member, this one quickly turns lethal. Her welcoming committee in Palermo includes a most unlikely CIA agent and several unseen enemies. Unfriendly eyes also observe Mrs. P’s rendezvous with Farrell in a secluded mountain village and weapons are soon displayed. With mysterious forces hot after them, she and Farrell scurry for safety to a fortified country villa, where the bizarre chatelaine, once a star on Madison Avenue, is almost as unnerving as the dangers she’s protecting them from. So, though the sun shines brightly, the food is delicious, and romance is in the air, Mrs. Pollifax is too busy handing out karate chops and playing catch me if you can with an assassin to enjoy the amenities…
.’Mrs. Pollifax gives Agatha Christie’s Miss Marple a rival to reckon with.’ The Toronto Star

Mrs. Pollifax Pursued

‘Mrs. Gilman has a nice, relaxed style and an easygoing way of telling a story…
. Should delight you whether you’re looking for smiles or thrills.’ The New York Times Book Review The last thing Mrs. Pollifax expects to find in her junk closet is a young woman hiding. Kadi Hopkirk insists that she’s being followed by two men in a dirty white van. Under the cover of darkness, Mrs. P. tries to drive Kadi back home to Manhattan, only to have a dark green sedan give them a run for their money and, Mrs. P. begins to suspect, their lives. Finally Kadi shares the startling truth: her friend, Sammy, is the son of the assassinated president of an African country and, unbeknownst to the young man’s bodyguard, he passed her something under the table during a recent meeting. Ever resourceful, Mrs. P. puts in a call for help to her CIA colleague, Carstairs, who installs them in a safe house at a carnival! Before Mrs. P. knows it, a dash to safety expands into an assignment that leads to hair trigger violence in exotic places…
.’Lively…
Funny…
All’s right with the world as long as Mrs. Pollifax is part of it.’ Mobile Register’This fast moving tale sports a lively, energetic style, much like its hero*ine.’ Library Journal

Mrs. Pollifax and the Lion Killer

As millions of readers know, that intrepid charmer and part time CIA agent Emily Pollifax is a joy, with a warm heart, nerves of steel, and manners as impeccable as her karate. The New York Times calls her ‘an enchantress,’ and Publishers Weekly describes her deeds of derring do in exotic places as ‘sheer pleasure.’In her new adventure, Mrs. Pollifax accompanies her young friend Kadi Hopkirk to the African country of Ubangiba, where Kadi’s childhood friend, Sammat, is soon to be crowned king. This impromptu journey is a response to an S.O.S. from Sammat to Kadi; and Mrs. P., reluctant to allow the girl to venture alone into what she fears may be grave danger, crashes the party. Sunny little Ubangiba is no great shakes as nations go. Under Sammat’s selfless leadership it is recovering from the devastation wrought by two greedy presidents for life who preceded him in office. But Sammat has dangerous enemies. Everywhere rumors are springing up that he is a sorcerer and that his evil power is responsible for a rash of shocking murders in which the victims appear to have been clawed to death by a lion. These crimes are especially terrifying because there are no lions in Ubangiba. Without the comforting backup of the CIA, Mrs. Pollifax wades into the fray, hunting for the source of the bloody terrorism that threatens Sammat and Ubangiba. Not to mention Kadi and Mrs. Pollifax. Home has never looked so good, or seemed so far away.

Mrs. Pollifax, Innocent Tourist

Pollifax fans rejoice! The courageous Connecticut matron whose prize winning geraniums are second only to her dazzling defense maneuvers is back. Hailed an ‘enchantress’ by The New York Times, Mrs. Pollifax is the CIA’s most indispensable ‘bloodhound’ and as to be expected she’s hot on the track, stealthily sniffing out some major skullduggery. This time she’s on loan to her retired CIA friend Farrell. Her bag lady act is the first phase of a mission to the Middle East: to smuggle out of Jordan the final manuscript of the dissident Iraqi novelist, Dib Assen, recently murdered in an Iraqi prison. Allegedly fiction, the script encodes the shocking truth of Saddam Hussein’s reign. Allah willing, Farrell is to rendezvous near Amman with a man called Ibrahim, who will deliver the manuscript. All Mrs. P. has to do is look as much like a tourist as possible to deflect suspicion from her ‘cousin,’ Farrell. But hardly are the two airborne when the coils of Middle Eastern intrigue begin to unwind. Mrs. Pollifax’s seatmate is not the affable Arab businessman he seems and the little carved plaque he secretly stashes in her carry on bag is not a mere souvenir. It is not imagination that persuades Mrs. P. that wherever they go she and Farrell are followed, even to the old castle where Farrell is to meet the mysteriously elusive Ibrahim. To elude their pursuers in such a politically volatile country isn’t easy. But Mrs. P. takes her challenges straight up and this one may be our genteel hero*ine’s stiffest yet…
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Mrs. Pollifax Unveiled

Seven weeks ago, a young American woman, Amanda Pym, faced down hijackers on board a flight to the Middle East and saved the lives of more than two hundred passengers. In a blaze of celebrity, she stepped off the plane in Damascus and was whisked away in a waiting car. Since then, NOTHING. The CIA believes she was kidnapped and murdered. Whose plans has the apparently ordinary young woman interfered with? The machinations of the mukhabarat, Syria’s dreaded police? The schemes of cutthroat terrorists? Or has she simply gone into hiding? Masquerading as Amanda Pym’s worried aunt, Mrs. Pollifax begins her determined search, slipping through Damascus’ crooked streets and colorful, crowded souks, and trekking deep into the desert, hoping that rumor and whispers which is all she has to go on will lead her to the truth.

The Clairvoyant Countess

As a psychic to the public, Madame Karitska has seen a lot. But when a chance encounter with Detective Lieutenant Pruden of the Police Department catapults her into the unforseen, she must use all of her resources to keep danger and death at bay…
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Kaleidoscope

Next to the incomparable Mrs. Pollifax, Dorothy Gilman’s best loved character is the mysterious Madame Karitska, who is blessed with a powerful gift of clairvoyance that attracts to her a stream of men and women craving help with their misfortunes, desperate to know what the future holds…
. When a brilliant young violinist dies in a horrific accident, Madame Karitska has only to hold the victim s instrument in her hands to perceive the shocking truth. But when an insecure wife asks whether her husband will abandon her to join a sinister cult, Madame Karitska as wise as she is lovely chooses not to reveal all that she foresees. And when an attach case is suddenly dropped into her lap by a man fleeing a crowded subway, she knows it s time to consult her good friend Detective Lieutenant Pruden.A nine year old accused of murder, a man dying a slow death by witchcraft for the hunted and the haunted, Madame Karitska s shabby downtown apartment becomes a haven, where brilliant patterns of violence, greed, passion, and strange obsessions mix and disintegrate with stunning, kaleidoscopic beauty. Once again Dorothy Gilman exercises her own uncanny power to render readers spellbound. From the Hardcover edition.

Girl in Buckskin

Orphaned Becky Pumroy was forced to live a life of drudgery and servitude when her parents were killed during an Indian attack. She had almost resigned herself to picking up after the spoiled Leggett girls when she received some startling news: wealthy Joshua Smeed wanted to marry her. But Mr. Smeed was much older and rumor had it he helped put his previous wives in their early graves. Rather than meet the same fate, Becky ran away with her brother Eseck, a young man who had lived with the Indians for five years. Becky knew that the American wilderness was dangerous with wild animals that roamed free, with harsh and unrelenting winters, with Indians who no doubt were ready to destroy her brother and herself. But what Becky found was something very different indeed a place and a people that wouldn’t change her life forever…
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Uncertain Voyage

With a broken marriage and a nervous breakdown barely behind her, Melissa sails for Europe. When a strange traveler urgently asks her to deliver a book to a secret address, Melissa agrees much against her better judgment. Soon Melissa realizes she’s being followed. Her life is suddenly in danger. And as she finds herself forced to fight alone against an enemy she cannot understand, Melissa discovers something extraordinary about herself, something she never suspected…

A Nun in the Closet

From the bestselling author of the Mrs. Pollifax books comes a new mystery habit to acquire. From the moment Sister John and Sister Hyacinthe reach the old house left to their abbey by a mysterious benefactor, their cloistered world begins to crumble. First, there is the wounded man hiding in the house, then the suitcase stuffed with money sitting at the bottom of the well, not to mention fearful apparitions in the night. Lord only knows what’s going on. That is, until the good sisters, armed only with their faith and boundless energy, set things right even if it means a shocking revelation or two about ghosts, gangsters…
and murder.

The Tightrope Walker

‘A superb book.’THE HOUSTON CHRONICLEWhen quiet, shy Amelia Jones reads a desperate message that has fallen out of a barrel organ in the antique shop she just bought, she can’t forget the words, ‘They’re going to kill me soon…
‘ Armed only with the woman’s first name and the note written years before, Amelia begins a journey into the past, a search that takes her from the protective cocoon she’s wrapped herself in to a precarious world where nothing is the way it seems, where fear is second nature, and dark secrets just might uncover murder her own…
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The Maze in the Heart of the Castle

He Was Only Sixteen When Tragedy Struck…
. His name was Colin, and although he still couldn’t believe it, his parents were gone, both dead from the plague. Scared, confused, and angry, he sought out a monk who told him about a haunted castle on Rheembeck Mountain and the old, strange wizard who lived there. Perhaps there Colin would find a way to stop his pain…
. But instead of answers, the wizard showed him a locked oak door. Beyond it lay an ancient stone maze that led to a mystical land, a place where bandits roamed freely, where people lived within dark caves, afraid of the light, where cruelty was the way of the world, and where beautiful girls were not always what they seemed. The wizard opened the oak door and invited Colin to enter. If Colin came through this strange place alive, he might indeed be able to ease the pain in his heart. But once inside, there could be no going back…
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Incident at Badamyâ

‘Gilman keeps you turning the pages.’UPIAfter Gen Ferris’s missionary father commits suicide in 1950, it is up to her to get out of Burma alone. She has one hundred dollars in her knapsack, a slingshot, a magical Burmese puppet, and the New York City address of an aunt she doesn’t know. But Gen is captured by Red Chinese forces and imprisoned with six other lost travelers. She vows to escape, not believing that her destiny lies in captivity, never dreaming of the forces that will finally come to her aid…
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Caravan

‘A lushly romantic adventure story set in the North African desert in 1914, told by the impeccable Lady Treal as she reminisces in her London town house about her decidedly peccable past…
Well written, expertly plotted, perfectly paced.’
NEWSDAY
With her anthropologist husband murdered and their Caravan stolen by fierce Tuareg tribesmen, Caressa’s choices are death or a life of slavery. Concealing her dangerous beauty beneath the faded robes of an Arab boy, she embarks on the adventrue of her life, harassed by vicious nomads, slave traders and the envious witch doctor, Isa. Only a handful of carnival magic tricks stand between her and oblivion. Then she discovers an inner magic so mysteriously compelling that the desert people call her a sorceress. With it she will secure her freedom and discover the love of her life…
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From the Paperback edition.

Thale’s Folly

As myriad readers will gladly attest, there is nothing more entertaining than a Dorothy Gilman novel, for the author of the beloved Mrs. Pollifax novels brings to her work a distinctive mix of romance and mystery that inspired the New York Times Book Review to say of a recent Gilman jewel, ‘Should delight you whether you’re looking for smiles or thrills.’ That promise is honored with dividends in Thale’s Folly. At the request of his father, New York City novelist Andrew Thale tackles an odd assignment to check out an old family property in western Massachusetts, neglected since Aunt Harriet Thale’s death years ago. Much odder still is what he finds. Far from being deserted, Thale’s Folly is fully inhabited by a quartet of charming squatters, former ‘guests’ of kindhearted Aunt Harriet. Elegant Miss L’Hommedieu, Gussie the witch, Leo the bibliophile, and beautiful nineteen year old Tarragon, who is unlike any girl Andrew has ever met in Manhattan. Andrew is entranced by these unworldly creatures and their simple life. Yet all is not well in Thale’s Folly. A thief breaks into the farmhouse, and an old friend of the ‘family’ disappears. While the peace that appears to have been Aunt Harriet’s only legacy to her companions is destroyed, Andrew and Tarragon are drawn into mysteries they cannot fathom. But, for the first time, Andrew begins to understand that love and loyalty are life’s greatest treasures. Once again, Dorothy Gilman enchants us. Thale’s Folly is just as tempting as a delicious caper from the unsinkable Mrs. Pollifax.

A New Kind of Country

Novelist Dorothy Gilman, author of the bestselling Mrs. Pollifax series, had reached a point of no return in her life. With her sons in college, Ms. Gilman was searching for something unknowable, unnameable…
until she bought a small house in a little lobstering village in Nova Scotia, Canada. And so she began her life again, discovering talents and interests she never realized were hers, accepting the inner peace she had always fought, and most of all, understanding the untapped part of herself, almost as if it were A New Kind of Country, to challenge, explore, and love.