Harold Vermilyea

A curious toddler creates trouble when he finds bank robbers' loot

A priest sets out to catch the man who killed one of his colleagues.

Christabel Caine has the face of angel and the heart of a swamp rat. She'll step on anyone to get what she wants, including her own family. A master of manipulation, she covertly breaks off the engagement of her trusting cousin, Donna, to her fabulously wealthy beau, Curtis Carey. Once married to Curtis herself, Christabel continues her affair with novelist Nick Bradley, who knows she's evil, but loves her anyway.

Katherine Standish, who has been brought up in a strict manner in a prudish New England town, falls in love with a city slicker commercial artist, Peter Van Arden. The romance blossoms until Katie falls victim of some false information, and becomes convinced that Peter is already married and the father of two children.

On Chicago's South Side reporter Ed Ames finds the body of a dead girl. Her address book leads to a host of names of men frightened by her death but claiming never to have known her. Ames comes to know quite a lot, dangerously so.

Merle Kramer works as a stenographer for a psychiatrist. She is casually dating Karl Benson, a private eye and former cop. Merle mentions in passing that one of her boss's patients is an author with recurring dreams of murdering his wife, and she includes the fact that the wife owns valuable jewels. When the wife is found murdered in a manner identical to that of her husband's dream, the husband is naturally the prime suspect. But as the investigation of the police and insurance investigator Joe Cooper proceeds, it turns out that several people in the case, including Merle, are not what they seem.

After straight-arrow district attorney Joseph Foster says in frustration that he would sell his soul to bring down a local mob boss, a smooth-talking stranger named Nick Beal shows up with enough evidence to seal a conviction. When that success leads Foster to run for governor, Beal's unearthly hold on him turns the previously honest man corrupt, much to the displeasure of his wife and his steadfast minister.

Leona Stevenson is confined to bed and uses her telephone to keep in contact with the outside world. One day she overhears a murder plot on the telephone and is desperate to find out who is the intended victim.

The body of a young actress is brought to her home town by the man who loved her. He knows that she wanted all the church bells to ring for three days after she was buried, but is told that this will cost a lot of money. The checks that he writes to the various churches all bounce, but it is the weekend and, in desperation, he prays that a miracle will happen before the banks reopen. It does, but not in the way he hoped.

At the turn of the 20th century, travelling salesman Virgil Smith journeys to Vienna in the hope he can sell a gramophone to Emperor Franz Joseph, whose purchase of the recent American invention could spur its popularity in Austria.