Mystery writer Cornelia Van Gorder has rented a country house called "The Oaks", which not long ago was the scene of some murders committed by a strange and violent criminal known as "The Bat". Meanwhile, the house's owner, bank president John Fleming, has recently embezzled one million dollars in securities and has hidden the proceeds in the house, but is killed before he can retrieve it.
Don Gallico is an inventor of stage magic effects who aspires to become a star in his own right. Just before his first performance his act is shut down by capricious manager Ross Ormond who wants Gallico's brilliant buzz saw effect for the act of The Great Rinaldi, an established star. With this defeat, and the humiliation of having already lost his wife Claire to Ormond, Gallico decides it is time to take matters into his own hands.
Mystery writer Marian Carstairs is hard at work trying to finish her latest novel. Her three children meanwhile are entertaining themselves by trying to solve a murder in their own neighborhood. In between gathering clues, the kids play matchmaker by trying to fix up their widowed mom with the handsome detective investigating the case.
Charlie Chan, with son Jimmy on a week's pass from the Army, takes up a request for help at a castle-home, miles from anywhere in the American desert south-west and inhabited by an eccentric, reclusive historian and his wife, a descendant of Lucrezia Borgia. Once there, he finds the request's legitimacy denied by all who are present, but still necessary as one houseguest has already been murdered, the other guests are at each other's throat, and the Borgia-related chatelain is suspected...
When the elderly woman sponsoring a treasure hunt is murdered on board her docked ship, Charlie Chan must deal with a treasure map in four pieces, the ghost of a hanged pirate, a talking parrot, a recalcitrant sea captain and several suspicious passengers - and a second murder.
Stories of women who live in an all-women hotel. One (Bari) works hard and marries a millionaire; another (Hughes) cheats and goes to jail.
Officer Karl Torok's best friend, Count Alvinczy, is elected president of the Hungarian cabinet. Meanwhile, Alvinczy's wife, Madalaine, receives a message from a blackmailer, threatening her husband. When the blackmailer winds up dead, Madalaine appears to be the most likely suspect. Torok, however, knows the case is more complicated than it seems and dedicates himself to revealing the truth behind the mystery.
A wide-eyed working girl wins a $5,000 sweepstakes and plunges into the lush life of New York City, where she meets a bellboy who is more than he seems.
A divorced woman finds success as a fashion designer.
A struggling widow and her daughter take in a black housekeeper and her fair-skinned daughter. The two women start a successful business but face familial, identity, and racial issues along the way.
An aspiring writer and her boyfriend, a professional agitator head off to the Big Apple in search of good fortune. Unfortunately, the agitator soon finds himself in trouble with the cops. Meanwhile the writer attempts to become a Greenwich Village Bohemian type. She and her new friends are all starving for their art until a kindly gent offers them financial assistant. They refuse on principle. Tragedy pays a call when the writer learns that her boyfriend has been untrue.