Summertime at Houston's Alley Theatre means the end of the regular season on the Large Stage and the return of the Summer Chills series. 2001's suspenseful offerings are Agatha Christie's Death on the Nile and Stephen Mallatratt's long-running London thriller The Woman in Black.

Death on the Nile, running June 29-July 15, solves the murder of well-liked and wealthy Kay Mostyn on a Nile cruise ship full of eccentrics. Christie is best known for her mystery novels including "Then There Were None" and "Murder on the Orient Express," although her play, The Mousetrap is the longest running theatre production in both London and Toronto.

The Woman in Black, playing July 20-Aug. 5, is set in a theatre, where Arthur Kipps, a middle aged solicitor, attempts to exorcise the ghosts of his past by paying an actor play them out. The actor, between conversations with Kipps in the present, becomes him in the past, reliving a long-ago journey from London to the desolate mansion of an elderly recluse in the North. There, Kipps encounters the Woman in Black, a haunt obsessed with revenge for her dead child and who has pursued him ever since. The Woman in Black has been running in London for over 13 years.

Tickets to all Summer Chills productions are $17. The Alley Theatre is located at 615 Texas Avenue. For reservations, call (713) 228-8421. The Alley Theatre is on the web at http://www.alleytheatre.com.

— By Christine Ehren