Along with Zane Grey and William MacLeod Raine, Charles Alden Seltzer is remembered today as an originator of what’s often called the formula western. In it, a cowboy hero, who is fast with a gun, meets and subdues a vicious villain and who also wins the heart and hand of a pretty sweetheart. „The Two-Gun Man” has all these elements firmly in place. It is set at an unspecified time in the open ranges of the Southwest, somewhere in the neighborhood of Raton and Cimarron, New...
Every person is interested to know whether there is life on Mars. Garrett Putman Servissis one of the first writers who touched on this topic. This story contains everything unimaginable: the invasion of people on Mars, ingenious inventions, the first space battle, alien abduction. This should be read to each.
Drag Harlan is a gunfighter with a fearsome reputation. He is known for his quickness with his guns. A mean, hard country man, he comes quite accidently by a dying man, Morgan. Morgan is cattleman and has left his ranch to his only daughter, Barbara. Seeing honesty in Harlan’s eyes, Morgan asks him to go to his daughter and protect her from fortune hunters. Thereafter Harlan establishes himself as the protector of Barbara Morgan and deals out punishment to the girl’s enemie...
If you enjoy the works of Charles Alden Seltzer then we highly recommend „The Trail Horde” for your book collection. A classic story that is considered to be Seltzer’s best work with action and romance trailing at every turn. After losing a ranch, a lone man battles against the rustlers and cattle thievin’ sidewinders who had grabbed the spread. Plot twists and detailed explanations of characters thoughts and motivations. Charles Alden Seltzer was one of the most successful...
In this 1916 western by American writer Charles Alden Seltzer, Ruth Harkness inherits a western ranch from her uncle. Rex Randerson plays the central role as her range boss and rescuer. Randerson meets her on her arrival, rescues her from a mired buckboard and is devotedly in love with her from that moment. Ruth however is engaged to Willard Masten who comes west as a member of her party. Masten who is a double dyed villain finds companions of his own caliber in Chavis and ...
Charles Alden Seltzer (15 August 1875–9 February 1942) was an American writer. He was a prolific author of western novels, had writing credits for more than a dozen film titles, and authored numerous stories published in magazines, most prominently in Argosy. „The Coming of the Law” is a story of a young eastern newspaper man who goes West to a small town, and takes charge of a run-down newspaper, fights against an association of cattle rustlers for the benefit of the small...
The fifth volume in the chronicles of Craig Kennedy, scientific detective, takes up the familiar and successful formula for a new round of adventures. Craig Kennedy continues to amaze with his usual sorts of crimes – jewel theft, missing persons, wrongly accused suspects, fixed horse races, arson, murder, and blackmail – but he uses scientific procedures to analyze the evidence, sometimes involving fantastical devices. „The Social Gangster” is the story focused on a mysteri...
The story concerns a complicated, angry, daredevil son, Calumet Marston, who returns to his boyhood homestead to find his hated father dead and a stranger, a woman named Betty, in charge. Her family had aided his father, and now she is „"the boss"”. He also left a testimony which states that Calumet must give a practical demonstration of reform in character if he wants to inherit his father’s money, and Betty is the one to be the judge of that. Written in the style of the e...
First published in the year 1922, „Square Deal Sanderson” was written by one of twentieth century’s most prolific authors Charles Alden Seltzer. This novel was written in the Western genre of writing and marks the latter’s mastery in the genre. Mary, our heroine, is running the ranch alone waiting for her brother, whom she has not seen in years, to come and help as she is about to loose the ranch to the bad guys. Square Deal Sanderson was a son of the great uncultured primi...
„The War Terror” is a detective novel by Arthur B. Reeve (October 15, 1880 – August 9, 1936), one of his Craig Kennedy series, often regarded as American Sherlock Holmes. Each story features a fascinating look at life in the early 20th century, and even includes some action along the way. A major spy operation is deployed in the heart of Europe in time of World War II. Detective Kennedy lands right in the middle of it and begins his face off with Nazi secret service. But th...
Enter an American Sherlock Holmes solving crimes in the early twentieth century. Craig Kennedy is a Columbia University chemistry professor by day and New York’s premier sleuth by night. With the help of his roommate and partner in detection, newspaper reporter Walter Jameson, Kennedy uses his mastery of technology to solve the most puzzling of mysteries. It is interesting to see the different cases they take on and how they solve them. Originally published in 1910, these t...
Originally published in 1913, it was one of the earliest works of Western fiction by Charles Alden Seltzer and played a significant role in popularizing that genre. A story of the Old West in which an American girl from the East finds herself confronted with a strange type of man dwelling in the shadow of an ancient grudge. Dakota, the man, first convinces her that he is a brute beyond redemption and then gradually wins her back to the belief in his own essential manliness....
„The Gold of the Gods” was first published in 1915. By then, Arthur Benjamin Reeve’s series of mysteries involving Professor Craig Kennedy and his sidekick, journalist Walter Jameson, had become something of a household name. Altogether, he wrote 18 novels featuring these two characters, and several short stories. Our story follows a theft of an ancient Inca dagger from an archeology professor. He asks Kennedy to assist in bringing it back. But there are threats beyond ones...
Detective Kennedy and his sidekick Walter Jameson are called in by a District Attorney to look into the murder of an actress in the middle of shooting a movie called „The Black Terror”. What follows is figuring out the puzzling trail of a calculating killer. Kennedy performs detailed tests in his laboratory and he eventually finds what caused the death of the film star, but he must still go through lots of adventures until he finds the murderer as well. The book is highly e...
The scientific detective known as the „American Sherlock Holmes” pursues a ruthless arch villain in this high-stakes suspense novel. „The Exploits of Elaine” is a collection of short stories about a beautiful young woman Elaine, who’s father was murdered by the mysterious gang leader The Clutching Hand, and who is subsequently terrorized by him and his gang. Using the latest advances in forensic science, the professor Craig Kennedy and his loyal sidekick, newspaper reporter...
M.P. Shiel, who wrote science fiction, mystery, and other genre fiction from the 1890s through 1930s, first established himself as a member of a Decadent movement in England. He was influenced by the Decadent movement lastingly than most of his contemporaries, in part because the tenets of Decadence resonated with his own personal history and racial views. As the movement faded, Shiel built on the underlying logic of Decadence to create adventure novels involving race-based...
The second collection of 12 of the early Craig Kennedy mysteries, written by Arthur Benjamin Reeve and published in 1912. His Craig Kennedy stories, of which these are early examples, earned their main character the nickname „the American Sherlock Holmes,” both for his highly rational and analytical detective work as well as for his ever-present Dr. Watson-like companion Walter Jameson. They solve crimes using cutting-edge technology of the early twentieth century with vary...
In the style of the early writers of the modern western, the Charles Alden Seltzer paints a vivid story of the depths to which any person can sink without discipline, charity and love. This is one of the best Seltzer’s work. He wrote his westerns from the experience of living on his uncle’s ranch in New Mexico. Seltzer’s best works also include „The Two-Gun Man”, „The Boss of the Lazy Y”, etc. Many of his novels were turned into Hollywood movies. „The Ranchman” is a rootin’...
Charles Alden Seltzer was one of 20th century America’s most prolific authors, and his specialty was Westerns that were so popular in the country in the decades after the frontier had been completely settled. In addition to the books he wrote, Seltzer would have a role in dozens of films as well, making him one of the most instrumental figures in the genre. „"Firebrand” Trevison” is a story about a ranch owner who runs afoul of a land grabber, both of whom are in love with ...
A railroad Vice President and his chauffeur have sudden and mysterious seizures on the way to work; a family in New York city undergoes an epidemic of beri-beri; the American consul in the Virgin Islands collapses and dies for no apparent reason; a Wall Street speculator is apparently stabbed to death with a rubber dagger. Who other than Craig Kennedy, armed with his knowledge of chemistry, technology and Freudian psychology could solve these mysteries? This mystery/detecti...
Professor Craig Kennedy is a scientist detective at Columbia University. He uses his knowledge of chemistry and psychoanalysis to solve cases, and uses exotic devices in his work such as lie detectors, gyroscopes, and portable seismographs. In this book Kennedy and Jameson (newspaper reporter) help Carton, the District Attorney, unravel a tangled web of corruption and criminal activity in their fair city. Carton is running for elections and is trying to clean up the corrupt...
A charming thief rescues the not-so-innocent in this delightful crime novel from the creator of the Craig Kennedy detective series. Constance Dunlap is a young woman who turns amateur criminal in order to save her husband from disgrace and imminent arrest. When this sadly doesn’t work out exactly as planned, Constance goes on to embrace a new life. More antiheroine than heroine, she uses her photographic memory and her sharp wit to help amateur criminals get back on the rig...
Another classic book of murder mystery and mayhem skillfully written with an in depth journey to find out who really did the evil deed and why. „The Shrieking Pit” is one of Arthur Rees’s earlier works. American private detective Grant Colwyn is on a leisurely holiday in a fashionable seaside hotel in Norfolk when one morning during breakfast the strange behavior of one of the other guests catches his attention. The young man later leaves the hotel without paying his bill, ...
In „The Stray Lamb”, author Thorne Smith draws inspiration from his most famous works, the beloved Topper series. It follows mild-mannered investment banker, cuckold, ordinary, faithful, and dipsomaniac T. Lawrence Lamb. He is given a new perspective on life through the eyes of many different animals as he assumes the shape of many including a stallion, goldfish, dog, lion and many others. Mr. Lamb gains wisdom, fresh insight, and a new much needed exuberance for life as he...
