Heavily influenced by Doyle’s growing belief in Spiritualism after the death of his son, brother, and two nephews in World War I, the book focuses on Edward Malone’s at first professional, and later personal interest in Spiritualism. This is the third and last novel in the „Professor Challenger” series, and is a marked departure from the previous tales. Professor Challenger and Malone return for the adventure, this time exploring the spiritual world. Malone, along with Chal...
„The White Company” is the story of Alleyne Edricson’s quest to win the hand of his lady love, the Lady Maud Loring. The place is England and the Continent, the year is 1366 during the reign of the King of the English, Edward III, and his realm is twenty-nine years into The Hundred Years’ War with France. Setting off on his adventures, he finds himself part of the White Company – a group of mercenary archers en route to France. A roistering tale of knight-errantry follows, ...
This was one of several fictional historical works that Doyle wrote during the last five years of the 19th century, as he tried to find something to replace Sherlock Holmes. First published in 1897, this murder mystery relates the story of a young Frenchman, Louis, who, having grown up in England, returns to France at the false invitation of his Uncle Bernac. Louis quickly finds himself in personal danger as well as involved in a conspiracy against Napoleon. We’re soon the ...
The final, and certainly climactic, adventure of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s Professor George Edward Challenger is 1928’s „When the World Screamed”. It is another Professor Challenger story where a new craziness pressures him to make the earth feel the existence of human being on its surface. Professor says the earth is a giant creature and it doesn’t even care or know that we – the human being – exist on its surface. Professor believes that by drilling into the center of the ...
This is the story of a young doctor in Victorian Britain. In this collection of letters written to an American friend, Stark Munro tells of the trials and tribulations that face him as he tries to build his practice. Each letter contains two elements: one part is the narrative of events in the life of a young medical graduate in his efforts to set up a practice, as his own man, with a very little assistance from anyone else; the other part of each letter is didactic, presen...
This is one of the works of fiction published during Doyle’s life. Published in 1929, only a year before the author’s death, this short novel amply demonstrates that Doyle still retained all his great abilities as a spinner of riveting yarns, even in his twilight years. The book concerns Maracot’s exploration of the world beneath the sea. Maracot and his companions find themselves stranded on the ocean floor, and discover a very unexpected world, in fact a civilisation, dee...
Set in an English-Scottish border village during the waning days of the Napoleonic era, this adventure story introduces us to Jock Calder, whose quiet way of life is shattered when a mysterious stranger steps ashore near his home. The stranger changes forever the lives of Jock, his cousin Edie, and his best friend Jim, sending the young men into the jaws of the final battle to defeat The Great Shadow that threatens to devour the whole of Europe. We see the boy grow into a s...
Ten tourists from England, Ireland, America and France, six men and four women are on a vacation trip down the Nile in 1895. Without warning they are captured by Islamic terrorists, and the possibility of rescue becomes more remote with each passing day. Their choice is a stark one: either convert to Islam and become slaves for the rest of their lives or die. In this story, the reader is swept out of the placid stream of existence and dashed against the horrible jagged fact...
Mystery of the Cloomber unfolds, revealing Heathstone’s war crime against a Buddhist priest. Narrated by John Fothergill West, a Scottish man, who moves from Edinburgh to Wigtownshire to care for the family estate when his father’s half brother dies. Near the estate is The Cloomber Hall, for years uninhabited, but now the residence of John Berthier Heatherstone, a general of the Indian Army. General Heatherstone is nervous to the point of being paranoid. As the story unfold...
„The Poison Belt”, a novella by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, is remarkable in that we, with the central characters, are permitted to witness what seems to be a global apocalypse, while enduring only minimal emotional fall out. Professor Challenger urgently summons his fellow explorers (Professor Summerlee, Lord John Roxton, and reporter E.D. Malone) to a meeting. Oddly, he requires each to bring an oxygen cylinder with him. The mysterious substance suddenly becomes a deadly thre...
A brilliant adventure tale of life in the Court of Louis XIV and of Canada under French rule... and Huguenot persecution The Refugees is set in both 17th Century France and in the wilds of North America. Although Doyle wasn’t a Christian, he writes with a great deal of sympathy as he describes the plight of French Protestants in the late 17th century. The year is 1690 and the De Catinat family is facing disaster. Because they are Huguenots, French Protestants, Louis XIV has...
The restless, questing intellect of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle spurred him far beyond the ingenious puzzles he constructed for Sherlock Holmes. Arthur Conan Doyle’s „The Lost World” focuses on a story about an expedition in the South American Rainforest, leading its four protagonists on a plateau which seems to surround a world believed to be long-gone. Professor Challenger is the one defending his findings, Professor Summerlee is the skeptic, and there are two unbiased observe...
„The Disintegration Machine” is a story featuring Doyle’s famous character Professor Challenger. It was first published in The Strand Magazine in January 1929. The story centers on the discovery of a machine capable of disintegrating objects and reforming them as they were. This short story is a part of the „Challenger series”, a collection of stories about the wealthy eccentric adventurer Professor Challenger. Unlike Conan Doyle’s laid-back, analytic character, Sherlock Ho...
Love humor writing? Can’t get enough of classic adventure tales? First published in 1902, „The Adventures of Gerard” are the autobiographical reminiscences of an old fictional brigadier soldier who served under Napoleon. He never hesitates to embellish his own bravado, importance, and attractiveness to the ladies, to such an extent that it can’t help but be humorous. Etienne Gerard, a hussar of the French Army, is dashing, flamboyant, and unbelievably full of himself. The b...
„Beyond the City” explores the relationships between the residents of three adjoining homes. The cast of characters includes a widowed doctor with two daughters, a retired admiral with a wife and son, and a feminist living with her nephew. Destiny brings these three peculiar households together in the placid English countryside. The desire for money and romance drive these Victorians beyond the natural boundaries of their middle-class lives. As the web of lust and deceit dr...
„The Exploits of Brigadier Gerard” is a volume collecting 8 short stories about a courier and cavalryman in the personal service of Napoleon Bonaparte. The stories in „The Exploits of Brigadier Gerard” are all told in the first person by an aged Gerard looking back on his military endeavours in the early 1800s when there was no man prouder to serve the Emperor Napoleon. Etienne Gerard is a dashing, chivalrous, and stalwart French officer who becomes involved various suspens...
The people of the small town of Tamfield are not used to exciting things happening. When millionaire Raffles Haw moves to town, rumors spread like wildfire about him. When his home is overtaken by workmen and strange boxes are seen coming and going, it only adds to the intrigue. Robert and Laura are his nearest neighbors and are soon delighted to meet this eccentric new addition to the small English town. The advent of Mr. Haw, however, changes the town, and particularly th...
John and Ezra Girdlestone, father and son, run a British merchant company trading to the African coast with several sailing ships, all dangerously ill-maintained. Their small office is in London, their business is quite personally run, and the firm and its owners are well respected in the City by the 1870s. John Girdlestone is deeply and ostentatiously religious, to the cynical amazement of his son. The senior Girdlestone also is the tightly-controlling guardian of an heire...
Narrated by the character for whom the title is named and set in the late 1600’s, Micah Clarke describes the battle of peasants against the existing king of England in the hopes that they can replace the monarch with his brother who feels he has been unjustly denied the throne. Micah Clarke, a young, innocent peasant joins forces with other peasants, among the Puritans, to fight for this pathetic duke’s cause. It was attempt by Conan Doyle to present the story of the Purita...
As well as penning some of the most popular detective fiction, Conan Doyle also wrote thrilling adventure stories. „Rodney Stone” is a combination of both. Nelson, Beau Brummell, Fox and King George III himself appear in a tale at the heart of which is, as one character says, „a pretty conspiracy – a criminal, an actress and a prize-fighter, all playing their parts”. The book is narrated by Rodney, in 1851 thinking back over the events 1803, when Rodney was 17 and his best ...
„A Duet, with an Occasional Chorus” is a novel by British author Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, published in 1899. The novel features the story of a happily married couple which is threatened by a previous lover of the husband. Also, the novel tells the adventures of a young couple, starting from their wedding preparation and ending with the birth of their first child. They are funny and cute, love each other, passionate and want always to be together. They make rules for family l...
A historical romance and tale of adventure, set in England during the fourteenth century. Descendent of a noble family, Nigel Loring is the last of his race, and living alone with his aged grand-mother, upon a small remnant of their great estate. In service to King Edward III, Sir Nigel Loring must prove himself worthy of the hand of his the Lady Mary by performing three deeds in her honor. On his way to the altar, Nigel rescues a woman from dishonor, fights a pirate leader...
Set in the fictional South American country of Costaguana, this story of revolution, deception, and self-betrayal centers on Nostromo, a handsome Italian sailor, who, like Costaguana, is being consumed by secret guilt and corruption. The story begins halfway through the revolution, employing flashbacks and glimpses of the future to depict the lure of silver and its effects on men – corrupting and destroying some, revealing the strengths of others.Nostromo is considered by m...
This book is about a young captain who is hastily given his first command of a „ghost” ship. It‘s about a first mate who will lose his mind to madness as the malaria sickness spreads without medicine. This book is about a calm sea with not a sigh of a wind to move the ship. The Shadow Line by Joseph Conrad describes that demarcation line in the journey of life that divides the happy, bright, fantastic and irresponsible youth with the darker ages of manhood. Conrad goes on t...
