The Astonishing Father Brown Author:G. K. Chesterton Don't open this book! In The Blast of the Book, one of Father Brown's friends brings him an ancient volume, discovered in Africa, with a hideous curse inscribed on the cover. Five men have abruptly vanished after opening it. Will Father Brown be the next? Father Brown's immediate solution to the baffling case is even stranger than the ... more »case itself. In the Oracle of the Dog, Father Brown ponders upon how a dog, a long way from the scene of a crime, barks and whines at the instant his master is killed. Sitting at his desk a hundred miles away, composing a sermon, Father Brown solves a mystery that has the police, the witnesses and other amateur sleuths baffled. In The Man in the Passage, a beautiful actress is murdered in the presence of several prominent people, including Father Brown. Each witness saw the murderer at the end of a passage, yet each one gives a different report of his appearance. The courtroom is incredulous till the diminutive priest humbly proposes a startling solution. The Absence of Mr. Glass appears to involve a murder and disappearance. Dr. Orion Hood, renowned criminologist, finds the one solution that fits the known facts, and publicly accuses the murderer. But the skeptical Father Brown, in one of Chesterton's funniest stories, demonstrates that neither the murder or the disappearance really happened.« less