Heyer's The Reluctant Widow (1950).

A former governess encounters spies employed by Napoleon in this adaptation of Georgette Heyer's novel (alternate film title: The Inheritance). Kathleen Byron (best known for Black Narcissus) is featured.

Five female mystery authors who can put a smile on your face.

"... In England I find it does not make one popular to kill people."—Georgette Heyer, The Unfinished Clue 141

• Joan Hess. I prefer Hess's Claire Malloy series (with Claire's dramatic daughter who always Speaks in Initial Capitals) to her Maggody novels, but few authors understand small-town weirdness better than Hess. (Also check out Hess's books under the pseudonym Joan Hadley)

• Georgette Heyer. Most critics declare that Heyer's romances are superior to her mysteries (perhaps because the latter were written with her husband), but her mysteries have much fun and ingenuity to offer. Winners include Behold, Here's Poison; Envious Casca (dubbed by Dean James as "the house party from hell"); The Unfinished Clue; and Why Shoot a Butler?. However, I found the solution to A Blunt Instrument to be unconvincing.

• Constance and Gwenyth Little.  A headless nurse in The Black Stocking. 'Nuff said.

• Charlotte MacLeod. When Sarah Kelling and Max Bittersohn showed up in Chinese disguise in The Family Vault and Professor Peter Shandy covered every inch of his house in tacky Christmas decorations to revenge himself on college colleagues in Rest You Merry, I realized I was in a different universe—and a very funny one.

The Times' recommended mysteries, 1936.

Eden Phillpotts, NYPL

"So prolific are our masters of mystery and detection," wrote the Times of London on July 24, 1936, "that it is only possible to make a brief selection from their latest contributions" (9). Here is what was recommended:

• Margery Allingham, Flowers for the Judge

• E. C. Bentley and H. Warner Allen, Trent's Own Case

• Thomas Burke, Murder at Elstree. "makes our flesh creep."

• Agatha Christie, The A.B.C. Murders; Murder in Mesopotamia

• G. Belton Cobb, No Alibi

• Freeman Wills Crofts, The Loss of the "Jane Vosper"

• [Margaret] Leonora Eyles, They Wanted Him Dead. Eyles was married to D. M. Murray, editor of the Times Literary Supplement.

• R. Austin Freeman, The Penrose Mystery 

• Georgette Heyer, Behold, Here's Poison

• Charles J. Kenny [Erle Stanley Gardner], This Is Murder

• L[eonard]. A[rthur]. Pavey, Forward from Youth. Summary from the London Mercury, 34 (1936): "Brian Ferrands, a victim of shell-shock, is found lying dead of exposure. His friend, Denis Wantage, is induced to search into the dead man's past to find the true reason for his suicide." Pavey was a World War I veteran.

• Eden Phillpotts, A Close Call

• Edward Shanks, Old King Cole. "an unusual 'thriller.'" Mystery author Martin Edwards is distantly connected to Shanks by marriage.

Classics for Pleasure Web cast with Michael Dirda.

The Library of Congress has posted the Web cast with Michael Dirda on his book Classics for Pleasure, in which he points readers to books they may have neglected, including works by G. K. Chesterton, Agatha Christie, Philip K. Dick, Frederick Douglass, H. Rider Haggard, James Hogg, M. R. James, Sheridan Le Fanu, Daphne du Maurier, and Jules Verne.

Dirda, who writes for the Washington Post Book World and hosts a weekly bookchat on washingtonpost.com, is a member of the Baker Street Irregulars. His favorite authors include John Dickson Carr and Georgette Heyer.