A strange jewel that wrought mischief and magic as it passed from hand to hand down the ages starts its strange eventful dramatic history. Now almost in our own day the Sphinx Emerald turns up in Cairo to work its malign magic in a memorable drama. „The Bride of the Sphinx” is the seventeenth story of the popular series about the Sphinx Emerald.
Dick Donovan was a pseudonym used by (Mr) Joyce Emmerson Preston Muddock (1842-1934). Muddock was also a journalist and wrote many other books. His series characters included not only Dick Donovan, the Glasgow Detective, but also Russian Secret Service agent Michael Danevitch, Vincent Trill of the Detective Service, private detective Tyler Tatlock and early forensic criminologist Fabian Field among others. „The Chronicles of Michael Danevitch of the Russian Secret Service” is...
”The Clue of the Dead Hand” novela features detective Peter Brodie and has a Scottish setting. It tells of a murder and a simultaneous mysterious disappearance at Corbie Hall, „a strange, weird sort of place...” that has „an eeriness about it... calculated to make one shudder.” As much a rationalized ghost story as a detective story, it also involves male impersonation.
„The Coming Race” (1870) by Edward Bulwer-Lytton is an early science fiction novel. It offers a fascinating vision of a shadowy underworld populated by strange and beautiful creatures who closely resemble the angels described in Christian lore. These beings, known as Vril-ya, live underground, but are intending to leave their subterranean existence and conquer the world...
„The Deaves Affair” by Hulbert Footner. A millionnaire family is attacked by a blackmailer. They will be ruined if he always succeeds. A young struggling artist in New York City Evan is engaged to protect the old man from the crowd and from their blunders. But he had to play the role of a detective to help this family to discover the romantically inclined mystery in this affair. Will he succeed?
„The Devil-Tree of El Dorado” concerns the discovery of the legendary city of Manoa in British Guiana, high atop Mt. Roraima, at that date an incredibly remote part of the world. Most desirable, all the expected thrills of an Atlantean thriller plus some: flying damsels; immortals; a satisfying variety of monsters including the „frightful shape, with its maddening leer and its blood-curdling scream” that welcomes us to the book.
More thrilling adventures from the master story tell H. Bedford-Jones! This series about the Sphinx Emerald constitutes, as has been said, a veritable Outline of History – or perhaps „Highlights of History” would be more accurate. For this reason the greatest event in all history could not be left out. Here, then, we see the Holy Family during the exile in Egypt.
The first book in the triology, „The Fifth Queen” recounts Katharine’s arrival at court and the early stages of her relationship with England king Henry VIII. Growning up far from court, she is wholly unused to the corruption and intrigue that now surround her. Soon Katharine is locked in a vicious battle with Thomas Cromwell, the Lord Privy Seal, as she fights for political and religious change. The book details a battle for power between Katharine, Throckmorton, and Cromwel...
This is three novels bound as one. The wonderful „Fifth Queen” trilogy by Ford Madox Ford (1873 – 1939) is about Katharine Howard, the 5th wife of Henry VII which present Katharine Howard’s arrival at the Court of Henry VIII, her eventual marriage to the king, and her death. Depicting some of the era’s most notorious figures, including Thomas Cromwell, Throckmorton, Bloody Mary, and the King himself, Ford makes history both entertaining and undeniably human.
Armed with a donkey cart filled with rum, cheese and a tavern signpost, pub owner Humphrey Hump and Captain Patrick Dalroy, a crimson-haired giant with a tendency to burst into song, take to the road in this rollicking, madcap adventure, encountering revolution, romance, and a cast of memorable characters. In this hilarious, satirical romp, G.K. Chesterton demonstrates his intense distrust of power and „progressives,” railing against Prohibition, vegetarianism, theosophy, and...
Nick Peters was a repairer of watches who fond of friendly arguments with Fin Corveth, a free-lance journalist. One day Peters is murdered, and Corveth finds himself involved in a baffling mystery in which a little brass ball plays an important part for the little brass ball conceals an emerald locket, which in turn conceals a blank square of folded paper. It becomes clear that greater events are afoot than simple murder...
Austin Freeman and Dr. John James Pitcairn, a medical office at Halloway Prison, writing under the common pseudonym, Clifford Ashdown. This mystery collection is the first work of Freeman and it is a delightful bundle of adventures features the gentleman criminal Romney Pringle, an engaging crook and literary agent who lives in Furnival’s Inn, cycling everywhere no matter what the scam! This series of six stories feature many colourful, bizarre characters from the Chicago Hei...
Welcome to the „The Gold Idol” book, were we present to you one of the best work of remarkable author of „pulp fiction” Francis Henry „Frank” Atkins (1847-1927), who contributed widely to the pre-sf Pulp magazines, writing at least three Lost-World novels along with much else. Despite his commercial success at the time, little is known about Atkins’ personal life. His son was writer Frank Howard Atkins too.
„The Good Soldier” (1915) by Ford Madox Ford is a modernist classic, an intricately worked novel. It tells the stories of two outwardly happy couples who meet at a health spa in Germany just before the start of the First World War, and whose loveless, adultery-ridden relationships are strained and gradually disintegrate, with tragic consequences. The story is narrated by the character John Dowell, half of one of the couples whose dissolving relationships form the subject of t...
„The Great Gatsby”, Fitzgerald’s third book, stands as the supreme achievement of his career. The story follows the enigmatic and mysteriously wealthy Jay Gatsby as he chases the object of his hopeless desire, the beautiful Daisy Buchanan. The result is a chronicle of the drama and deceit that swirl around the lives of the wealthy, which cemented Fitzgerals’s reputation as the voice of his generation. The novel delves into the dark corners of the Jazz Age to tell a tragic tal...
Divided into three separate parts, according to subject matter, „Tales of the Jazz Age” includes two of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s better-known short stories, „The Curious Case of Benjamin Button” and „The Diamond as Big as the Ritz”. Set in the Jazz Age, Fitzgerald’s own term for the Roaring Twenties of newly confident, post-war America, this collection of early 11 short stories shows a comic genius at work, fashioning every genre from low farce to shrewd social insight, along wi...
„Taps at Reveille” (1935) is a collection of 18 short stories by F. Scott Fitzgerald, published in 1935 and dedicated to Fitzgerald’s agent Harold Ober. It was the fourth and final collection of short stories Fitzgerald published in his lifetime. It brings together several of his best stories from the late 1920s and early 1930s, including „Crazy Sunday”, and „Babylon Revisited”, a story considered by many to be his masterpiece in the genre.
Set in the South of France in the decade after World War I, „Tender Is the Night” is the story of a brilliant and magnetic psychiatrist named Dick Diver who marries one of his patients, a wealthy schizophrenic, Nicole Warren; as she slowly recovers, she exhausts his vitality until he is, in Fitzgerald’s words, un homme épuisé („a used-up man”). The novel explores how love can be won, lost, and perverted by the myriad forces that shape our lives, including money, illness, and ...
From the author of the Thorndyke detective stories. The stories follow the adventures of Romney Pringle, a gentleman con man, thief and master of disguises–who is not above using his keen observation and wits to track down other criminals. These twelve tales conjure up the authentic atmosphere of Victorian London and offer a thrilling alternative to the ascetic honesty of Sherlock Holmes!
Dick Donovan’s detective was considered a great ‘rival’ to Holmes. For a time his detective stories were as popular as those of Arthur Conan Doyle. „The Adventures of Tyler Tatlock, Private Detective” is a thrilling collection of mystery and adventure tales (21 in all) including „The Queensferry Mystery” in which a series of remarkable house burglaries take place during the winter months in Edinburgh. This series also includes Sherlockian titles such as „The Sign of the Yello...
„Some Do Not...”, the first volume of Ford Madox Ford’s highly regarded tetralogy „Parade’s End”. Set during the First World War, the novel follows the conflicted relationship between conservative English aristocrat Christopher Tietjens, his beautiful but headstrong wife, Sylvia, and fearless young suffragette Valentine Wannop. An unforgettable exploration of the tensions of a society confronting catastrophe, sexuality, power, madness, and violence, this narrative examines ti...
This collection dates from 1893 and includes 13 short stories written by British journalist and author of mystery and horror fiction J. E. Preston Muddock. Many of Muddock’s mystery stories feature the character Dick Donovan, a Glasgow Detective, named for one of the 18th Century Bow Street Runners. The character was so popular that later stories were published under this pen name. Muddock also wrote true crime stories, horror, and 37 novels, most as „Dick Donovan.”
In the Twelfth Century an intrigue at the court of the great Sultan Saladin brings forth the Sphinx Emerald to play its strange magic role. A miniature image of the sphinx hypnotizes its owners and inspires them to make history-changing decisions. Ninth story in the series about the Sphinx Emerald from the master story tell H. Bedford-Jones!
Traveling through southern Florida, a New Yorker Don Counsel is being framed by Ernest Riever for a murder he did not commit. Riever is holding the real killer captive on his yacht while detectives are searching for Counsel. Meanwhile a young Pen Broome tries to help Counsel out. Riever’s men find Counsel and trap him in a ballast bulkhead, but Pen rescues him. Will Counsel be able to prove his innocence?