The Thirteenth Chair

The curtain rises on Helen O’Neill and William Crosby stealing a kiss—until their family friend arrives and refuses to congratulate them. He says he has a reason, but won’t reveal it until tomorrow.

In Bayard Veiller’s 1916 play, a New York mansion gathers a circle of guests for an evening that turns deadly during a séance. Helen and William’s happy news is shadowed by Edward Wales’s unexplained warning; then medium Rosalie La Grange and Inspector Donohue are drawn into a murder mystery where suspicion closes in and the truth seems beyond ordinary reach. With thirteen people caught in the same gathering, every silence and every secret matters. What will the séance reveal—and who has reason to fear its answer?

With centuries of literature, it's inevitable that some will fall through the cracks. We hunt down public domain works and restore them so they're not lost to the world.

Who are we? We're Cairn Press. Our background is in design, publishing, typography, and technology. These skills fuel our mission to create the highest quality Public Domain eBooks available online, at an affordable price. We give them the treatment they deserve; our proprietary process restores books for a better overall user experience in design, readability, and e-reader compatibility.