„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...
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’...
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...
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...
Newspaperman Walter Jameson is assigned to shadow his friend Professor Craig Kennedy for a month to report on how he solves mysterious crimes and to give „an intimate picture of the man and his work.” Basically, Kennedy’s a scientist who uses his superior scientific knowledge and a bunch of contraptions he makes to expose the criminals. „The Dream Doctor” is the third book in the Dr. Kennedy series written by Arthur B. Reeve, the short stories were stitched together into ps...
Arthur J. Rees is a past master in the art of fashioning ingenious mystery-detective yarns and „The Moon Rock” is one of his best. The author’s many admirers will find keen enjoyment and many puzzling moments in their endeavors to solve the mystery. Robert Turold had spent his life trying to prove his claim to an ancient title. Yet, when it seems he is about to finally succeed, his body is found in a remote cottage on the Cornish coast, an apparent suicide. Detective Branne...
An ancient English country house with a storied and bloody history is the setting for this intriguing mystery. The new Mrs. Meredith has invited all her friends from her freer, wilder life in London to meet with her at her husband’s family home. However, she is seemingly taken ill and can’t accompany the party on their final jaunt to a neighbor’s house after dinner. Later she is dead of a gunshot wound, an heirloom pearl necklace is missing, and Scotland Yard is homing in o...
The whole story revolves around the Northern Valley, which at the end of the 18th century had a great debt for the state, about 5 million. This noble kingdom, from which the state of Tennessee was to be created, was conquered by the confiscation and rifles of the settlers over the mountains and cost North Carolina neither blood nor money. The republic was too young to develop. This is a historic event for North Carolina. How could she get out of this situation?
Guy Garrick, a detective who has made a scientific study of crime, has been the hero of a number of earlier short stories. In the present novel he is engaged in tracking down a gang of motor bandits. The police, the city detectives, the automobile detectives and Guy Garrick are all working on the problems, and the unravelling and subsequent glory of Garrick are very exciting. The eleventh volume in the chronicles of Craig Kennedy, scientific detective, takes up the familiar...
Thorne Smith best-remembered for humorous novels, many turning on some fantastic plot device which thrusts the protagonist into grotesque predicaments, often via unwitting transformation. The 1926 publication of „Topper” brought the author immediate acclaim. Elegant, fun-loving George and Marion Kerby are the toast of the town, until they wreck their flashy car and discover they’ve become, well, ghosts. Making the best of a bad situation, they decide that being dead is the ...
„The Trimmed Lamp” follows „The Four Million” and provides another series of twenty-five short stories that take place in New York City in the early years of the 20th century and are representative of the surprise endings that popularized O. Henry’s work. Contents: „A Madison Square Arabian Night”, „The Rubaiyat of a Scotch Highball”, „The Pendulum”, „Two Thanksgiving Day Gentlemen”, „The Assessor of Success” and others. Stories of the lives of blue collar workers and middl...
Settle in for a whimsical, thoroughly enjoyable whirlwind tour through the prodigious imagination of American short-story master O. Henry. When he wrote the following, he may have discounted his own creativity. „Whirligigs”, comprised of 24 short stories and published in 1910, is evidence of this. O. Henry writes of love and loss, of mystery and drama, of journalism and murders and trials. He creates a tapestry of characters, young and old, wealthy and poor. It offers some ...
O. Henry (whose real name is William Sydney Porter) is famous for his many short stories of everyday-life America, full of wit, charm, and inventiveness. This collection of classic tales set on the wrong side of the law showcases a master craftsman at the top of his form. „The Gentle Grafter” is a collection of 14 short stories about grafters who travel, peddle and swindle in the South. Those grafters have different business ethics and moral senses, and their artistic plots...
O. Henry is most widely recognized for his stories’ dry wit, plot twists and surprise ending. But another major element in his fiction is his love of the American urban environment, as well as a keen appreciation of the rapid diversification that occurred in many cities in the early twentieth century. In „The Voice of the City”, O. Henry uses excellently written short stories and high vocabulary to convey a sense on New York. This collection brings together an array of tale...
Arthur Morrison was a prolific journalist and author best known for his detective fiction that featured the lawyer-detective Martin Hewitt, who was the most successful rival to Arthur Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes. His realistic novels and stories are sober in tone, but the characters are portrayed with a Dickensian colorfulness. His attitude toward the people he described was paternalist, rather than radical, and he opposed socialism and the trades-union movement. This was...
Arthur Morrison, who was English novelist, short story writer and journalist, wrote pioneering realistic narratives about working-class life in London’s East End. He is also celebrated for his exciting mystery stories, featuring the detective Martin Hewitt, who served as a natural successor to Sherlock Holmes. This comprehensive book presents Morrison’s collection of short stories. The collection includes: „Chance of the Game”, „Spotto’s Reclamation”, „A „Dead ’Un”, „The Di...
