Access to all Library services will be unavailable on Wednesday, August 19, 2026 starting at 9 pm due to server maintenance. Services are expected to resume in the early morning hours of Thursday, August 20.
Join us for a weekly discussion of 'The Queens of Crime' by Marie Benedict. We will meet on Tuesdays, March 4, 11, 18, 25 from 11 am on Zoom. Contact mwiggins@library.lacounty.gov to get your invitation for the Zoom meeting. For adults.
"The New York Times bestselling author of The Mystery of Mrs. Christie returns with a thrilling story of Christie's legendary rival Dorothy Sayers, the race to solve a murder, and the power of friendship among women. London, 1930. The five greatest women crime writers have banded together to form a secret society with a single goal: to show they are no longer willing to be treated as second class citizens by their male counterparts in the legendary Detection Club. Led by the formidable Dorothy L. Sayers ,the group includes Agatha Christie, Ngaio Marsh, Margery Allingham and Baroness Emma Orczy. They call themselves the Queens of Crime. Their plan? Solve an actual murder, that of a young woman found strangled in a park in France who may have connections leading to the highest levels of the British establishment. May Daniels, a young English nurse on an excursion to France with her friend, seemed to vanish into thin air as they prepared to board a ferry home. Months later, her body is found in the nearby woods. The murder has all the hallmarks of a locked room mystery for which these authors are famous: how did her killer manage to sneak her body out of a crowded train station without anyone noticing? If, as the police believe, the cause of death is manual strangulation, why is there is an extraordinary amount of blood at the crime scene? What is the meaning of a heartbreaking secret letter seeming to implicate an unnamed paramour? Determined to solve the highly publicized murder, the Queens of Crime embark on their own investigation, discovering they're stronger together. But soon the killer targets Dorothy Sayers herself, threatening to expose a dark secret in her past that she would do anything to keep hidden. Inspired by a true story in Sayers' own life, New York Times bestselling author Marie Benedict brings to life the lengths to which five talented women writers will go to be taken seriously in the male-dominated world of letters as they unpuzzle a mystery torn from the pages of their own novels"-- Provided by publisher
AGE GROUP: | Adults |
EVENT TYPE: | Books, Poetry, & Writing |
TAGS: | Women’s History Month | Book Club |
La Crescenta Library first opened in November 1914 as the 78th branch of the Los Angeles County Public Library. The collection was first housed in a local church building, and subsequently moved several times; once into a school house, later into a local store front, and into the Sears building in 1926.
By 1932, the library had settled into a building at 3930 La Crescenta Avenue. As the population of La Crescenta grew, so to did the demand for a new building. The library found an appropriate site on the corner of Foothill Blvd and La Crescenta Ave, and opened in March of 1963.
By 2005 the population had once again outgrown the library's space, so the La Crescenta community sought a new building. Thanks to funding from Los Angeles County Supervisor Michael D. Antonovich, and Congressman David Dreier, the County of Los Angeles was able to construct an updated facility in its current location.
The building broke ground in 2007, and reopened in January 2010. The new 14,000 square foot facility, built in the style of the arts and crafts movement, features modern technology and meeting space open to the public.
