John Buchan Ebooki

One of the founders of the genre of „espionage” novel, but also an employee of British intelligence, and later a prominent political figure, whose career ended as Governor General of Canada. His first novel, Thirty-nine Steps, was a resounding success, published in 1915, in the midst of World War I. It first appears the charming image of Richard Hanney – a hero who later wandered through the pages of Baken’s novels, and the plot is associated with the activities of a group ...

South Africa, 1900. After his father dies, nineteen-year-old David Crawfurd is sent off to South Africa to earn his living as a storekeeper in the back of beyond. A strange encounter on the journey suggests that dark deeds and treacherous intrigues are afoot – all bound up with the mysterious primeval kingdom of Prester John. Laputa is a charismatic leader of an incipient native uprising, secretly preaching the incendiary creed of „Africa for the Africans,” and proclaiming ...

The story re-introduces the reader to an older Richard Hannay, married and the father of a young son, living on a country estate. Our hero is pulled out of retirement by his old comrade, Bullivant, asking him to help track down three missing persons, taken so that the villain can, as well as furthering his craze for crime and stopping his activities being investigated, obtain complete mental control over his acolytes. After much deliberation, Hannay accepts the case and so ...

A classic espionage and adventure novel set during The Great War, featuring the reckless Richard Hannay. Sequel to „The Thirty-Nine Steps” and precursor to Mr. Standfast. Tasked with unraveling a mysterious message, Hannay travels through Germany and the Middle East, searching for the elusive religious leader ’’Greenmantle’’. He is joined by three more of Buchan’s heroes: Peter Pienaar, the old Boer Scout; John S. Blenkiron, the American determined to fight the Kaiser; and ...

Edward Leithen is a young British lawyer who learns that one of his Oxford contemporaries, Charles Pitt-Heron, has just disappeared. Leithen learns from Pitt-Heron’s wife that he has been forced to flee. But a series of strange events that follow Pitt-Heron’s disappearance convinces Leithen that he is dealing with a sinister secret society. His suspicions begin to center on a wealthy, well-known, and intelligent businessman, who reveals himself to Leithen as an ardent anarc...

We wonder that so great a man as Abraham Lincoln should spring from humble people – but who knows what his more distant ancestry might have been? In a series of dramatic chapters, Mr. Buchan tells what he imagines to have been the ancestry of Lincoln. „The Path Of The King” is a series of short vignettes, loosely connected, starting in Scotland before the Normans arrived and involving the people who where in conflict with their Scandinavian cousins. It ends in America with ...

Sir Richard Hannay, retired mining engineer, lives a comfortable suburban life outside London, but feels old age and stodginess coming on and longs to have his mettle tested again. He gets his chance when a promise he made years ago in Rhodesia, to protect the son of an old acquaintance from a sinister conspiracy, and the action moves rapidly from England through the Scottish Borders to the Island of Sheep in the remote Norlands, where Hannay and his friends turn at last to...

Third and final part of the Dickson McCunn trilogy, where he and the usual sidekicks fall into a plot involving an exiled prince’s attempt to regain the throne despite the efforts of bad guys to keep him from it. The novel is set in the fictional Central European country of Evallonia in the early 1930s. It concerns the involvement of some Scottish visitors in the overthrow of a corrupt republic and the restoration of the monarchy. It is a sequel to Castle Gay, in which some...

John Buchan’s own favourite among his novels, in which he dealt with the hypocrisy which can lie close to the surface of apparently god-fearing respectability. The story is set in the Scottish Borders during the civil war and the main character is the new young minister in a small village. The minister wrestles with his own christian faith as opposed to the severe presbyterianism of the Kirk and also has to deal with a pagan coven, a wounded soldier from Montrose’s defeated...

„Sick Heart River” is the fifth book in the Edward Leithen series. This is Buchan’s last novel, about a man who is dying, and it must reflect Buchan’s own efforts to come to terms with his looming demise."Sick Heart River” finds Leithen now in his late fifties facing a terminal diagnosis of turberculosis. Leithen has enjoyed a dazzling career as eminent barrister, member of Parliament, Cabinet minister, and attorney-general but with only months left to live, he leaves it al...

„The Magic Walking Stick” is a children’s short story by John Buchan. Our hero is a teenage boy who buys a walking stick from a beggar – a magic walking stick that allows the boy to visit many places at his command... It is a fantastical story about a pair of magical walking sticks; one that will cease to function if it is used for any practical purpose, and another that will cease to function if it isn’t. Unfortunately, our protagonist doesn’t know which one he possesses. ...

„Uneasy lies the head that wears the crown” is a time-tested adage that suits Peter Pentecost, a young monk and legitimate claimant to England’s Throne. But he is not alone as others are vying for power too. Soon a plot is hatched against the present King Henry VIII and Peter is sucked into the intrigue... Buchan’s description of the ruthless king is compelling. His knowledge of the time of Henry’s reign and his love of the Oxfordshire countryside are apparent. This histori...

In the mid-sixteenth century, Jean de Rohaine, a middle-aged French nobleman, journeys to Scotland in search of adventure and a new beginning. In Scotland he meets up with his old friend, Quentin Kennedy, who informs him of a great battle to be waged. Having witnessed Royalist troops butchering suspected Covenanters, he follows the example of ‘godly’ refugees and escapes to the safety of the hills around Eskdalemuir and the head of Ettrick Water. Whilst staying at the Manse...

Although this book was listed in a collection of Richard Hannay stories, Hannay makes only a brief appearance at the beginning. Begins in the pleasant atmosphere of a country house in the Scottish borders, where Richard Hannay is the guest of his old friend, Sandy Arbuthnot. The action is set in Olifa, a fictional country on the west coast of South America. When Sandy Arbuthnot’s friend John Blenkiron discover that a charismatic industrial tycoon is plotting to rule the wor...

Vernon Milbourne, orphaned since childhood and haunted by a recurring dream, is friends with the protective lawyer and MP Sir Edward Leithen. An Aegean cruise takes them to the mysterious island of Plakos, where Vernon is fascinated by the island’s myths. Local superstitions turn to menace as Vernon’s encounter with a beautiful woman results in obsession and adventure. „The Dancing Floor” centres on a young English woman, Kore Arabin, who inherits a house on a remote Greek ...

Set during the Napoleonic Wars, „The Free Fishers” is classic Buchan and his last historical novel. It’s a fast-paced tale of treason, espionage and romance. Anthony Lammas, a professor at the St. Andrews University, finds himself involved in a web of intrigue that threatens the whole country. A conspiracy to betray England’s defences to Napoleonic agents is discovered by Lammas, a young professor who sets out to save his former students appearing to be in grave danger. You...

When Sir Edward Leithen leaves London to spend Whitsuntide as a guest at Flambard, he has no idea of the extraordinary sequence of events about to unfold. Among the collection of fellow guests, some of whom he knows and some he doesn’t, is the extraordinary mind of Professor Moe, a scientist who decides to select some of the houseguests as subjects for his latest experiment. He declares that he can make sure they can see into the future, and the people he chooses – for vari...

In John Buchan’s thrill-a-minute novel „Salute to Adventurers”, hero Andrew Garvald makes his way from the dreary moors of his native land to the deceptively bucolic landscape of early colonial America. A novel set during the beginning of the Jamestown Colony, „Salute To Adventurers” is an enthralling saga about one man’s struggle to survive and even find love in a land beset by trade controls with England enforced by pirates, religious strife manifested through a fanatic w...

Set in the closing years of the nineteenth century, „The Half-Hearted” tells the story of Lewis Haystoun, a dilettante and coward. Part I of the novel is a story of manners and romance in upper class Scotland. Part II is an adventure story on the North West frontier of India where Lewis saves the British Empire. The novel follows the life of Lewis Haystoun, a young Scottish laird, who finds himself unable to commit wholeheartedly to any course of action. His failure to seiz...

Regarded as one of the finest historical novels ever written, Jacobites, spies and thrilling intrigue are brought together by the master of suspense. As Bonnie Prince Charlie marches his army into England, his confidant Alastair Maclean is despatched on a secret mission. He is befriended by two extraordinary men – Dr. Samuel Johnson, an aspiring man of letters, and the shadowy figure known only as „Midwinter.” As he travels to rally the west of England to the Prince’s cause...

World War I espionage thriller meets modern-day morality tale in „Mr. Standfast”, the third of five Richard Hannay novels written by acclaimed storyteller John Buchan. In this nail-biting adventure story, Hannay must outwit a foe far more intelligent than himself; muster the courage to propose to the lovely, clever Mary Lamington; and survive a brutal war. Set, like „Greenmantle”, durinig World War I, it deals Brigadier-General Hannay’s recall from the Western Front, to eng...

Written in 1925, the novel opens with three gentleman friends – lawyer Sir Edward Leithen, banker John Palliser-Yeates, and Cabinet member Charles Lord Lamancha – discovering that they all suffer a common and debilitating malady, a loss of zest for life, all desperate to relieve the ennui that has engulfed them. The solution can only be something devilish, with a dash of daring. Enlisting the aid of another friend, Scottish landowner Sir Archibald Roylance, the trio contriv...

A true adventure story involving the unlikely hero Dickson McCunn, retired successful businessman and former greengrocer who sets out on a walking holiday in the Scottish Borders. There he meets a young English poet, and both soon become embroiled in the plot of an international gang to capture a Russian princess. With the help of the Gorbals Die-hards, an indomitable gang of urchins from Glasgow, they frustrate and finally defeat the gang. And in the process Dickson happen...

„John Burnet of Barns” was Buchan’s first fully realised, full-length work of fiction. The author’s third novel is story of adventure, treachery and revenge, set in the Scottish Borders in the 17th century, telling of a young nobleman who sets out to gain an education abroad, only to find himself betrayed in his absence by his cousin. Not just a romance, but adventures of a Scottish gentleman around the Netherlands and the wildest highlands of Scotland to find himself, rega...