Every corpse is a clue. A woman is found murdered in a field. Tattooed on her feet is a strange combination of numbers and letters. Detective Beatrice Kaspary quickly identifies these as map co-ordinates, which lead the police to a 'treasure box' containing several severed body parts -- and a note from the killer with a series of cryptic clues to the identity of the next victim. So begins a desperate scavenger hunt in which Beatrice herself becomes...

"In 1913 Marcel Duchamp's Nude Descending a Staircase exploded through the American art world. This is the story of how he followed the painting to New York two years later, enchanted the Arensberg salon, and--almost incidentally--changed art forever. Many people (of both sexes) were in love with Duchamp. Henri-Pierre Roché and Beatrice Wood were among them; they were also, briefly, and (for her) life-changingly, in love with each other. Both kept...

Mrs. Bradley, with her trusty chauffeur George, arrives at Chayning Court for the engagement party of her god-daughter, Eleanor Bing. Later that evening, Eleanor's fiance is found dead in the bath. The police are called in and conclude that his death was nothing more than a tragic accident, but Mrs. Bradley is not satisfied. She launches her own investigation, using her prodigious charm and wit to help the local police catch a killer.

Beatrice Alexander's family ran a doll hospital in their home in New York's Lower East Side, where she grew to love fixing and making dolls. Beatrice dreamed of becoming an artist, but her family couldn't afford to send her to sculpting school. She never stopped dreaming, and when World War I broke out, she came up with the idea to make dolls modeled after nurses to support the war effort and help keep children happy -- but they needed to be unbreakable...

Relates, from the point of view of his servant Salai, how Leonardo da Vinci came to paint the Mona Lisa.