A Little Less Than Kind

By Charlotte Armstrong

After his father's sudden death, a college student seeks revenge.

Ladd Cunningham never felt comfortable in his father's office. After high school he went to Stanford University rather than enter the family business, and he planned never to return. But then his father became ill, dying a slow, painful death, and Ladd was forced to come back.

Ladd's new stepfather David Crown presses him, trying to learn if Ladd plans to finish college or take the reins at Cunningham Company. Ladd says nothing, and Crown gives him a box of his father's effects. Inside the dead man's planner, Ladd finds a note implicating Crown in his father's death. Murder is too good for a criminal. Ladd wants vengeance -- slow, calculated, and irreversible.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Head of Zeus
• Release date: Jun 1, 2014
• ISBN: 9781784083151

Charlotte Armstrong

Edgar Award–winning Charlotte Armstrong (1905–1969) was one of the finest American authors of classic mystery and suspense. The daughter of an inventor, Armstrong was born in Vulcan, Michigan, and attended Barnard College, in New York City. After college she worked at the New York Times and the magazine Breath of the Avenue, before marrying and turning to literature in 1928. For a decade she wrote plays and poetry, with work produced on Broadway and published in the New Yorker. In the early 1940s, she began writing suspense. Success came quickly. Her first novel, Lay On, MacDuff! (1942) was well received, spawning a three-book series. Over the next two decades, she wrote more than two dozen novels, winning critical acclaim and a dedicated fan base. The Unsuspected (1945) and Mischief (1950) were both made into films, and A Dram of Poison (1956) won the Edgar Award for best novel. She died in California in 1969.