John R. Carling (1880? - 1920?)
Frank Willard is studying in Germany when he receives a letter summoning him home for Christmas and for his brother George's wedding. His bride is to be Daphne, the love of Frank's life, leaving Frank conflicted. He decides to attend, but what has happened to George? - Summary by Lynne Thompson
2. The Tickencote Treasure
William Le Queux (1864 - 1927)
Paul Pickering is a doctor without a fixed practice, and when an old sea captain asks him to join a voyage around the Mediterranean, that's finally an exciting prospect for him. The journey goes well until they spot a most strange vessel somewhere off the coast of Algeria. It is an old Elizabethan craft that looks to have been submerged for hundreds of years and recently bubbled back up to the surface. The men board it and find that it had been hermetically sealed all these centuries, all contents intact. But it does not, as first hoped, contain gold. The men find barely legible manuscripts and a mysterious old man, who appears to be as old as the vessel itself... - Summary by Carolin
Genre(s): Action & Adventure Fiction, Crime & Mystery Fiction
Language: English
3. The Third Volume
Fergus Hume (1859 - 1932)
A widely publicized and unsolved murder of five and twenty years is brought to the forefront in a best-selling novel entitled “A Whim of Fate". While Spencer Tait is looking forward to reading it, his best friend Claude Larcher, learns of the tragic death of his father which mirrors every detail of the new book. Not believing it to be a coincidence the two friends resolve to discover what truly happened so many years ago and who committed the vile act. As they delve deeper into the past, the motives, the evidence, and the list of potential suspects becomes so confusing that a solution to the mystery seems impossible. Will they ever know WHO killed Georges Larcher???? - Summary by Celine Major
Genre(s): Crime & Mystery Fiction
Language: English
4. The Prelude To Adventure
Hugh Walpole (1884 - 1941)
Olva Dune is a Cambridge undergraduate who commits a murder and at that moment feels the presence of God. In a tour de force Walpole novelizes the Francis Thompson poem The Hound of Heaven, about a fearful soul pursued by an insistently loving God. (One could enrich the reading of the novel by first reading the poem (“I fled Him, down the nights and down the days;… Fear wist not to evade as Love wist to pursue…. Whom wilt thou find to love ignoble thee,/ Save Me, save only Me?”). The psychologist Carl Jung, in a letter to the author, called the 1911 novel “a psychological masterpiece.” Hergesheimer on this novel: “So excellent is the versatility of Hugh Walpole that this writer of dignified and realistic and always beautiful pictures of life has among his books one with all the tension and strange plot of a Poe masterpiece… What happened is so filled with suspense that, very real and human though it is, the plot comes to have all the unexpectedness of the cleverest detective story…. Suspense--color of life--love--fear--triumph--they all mingle in an atmosphere as effective as the Cornish sea.” - Summary by David Wales
Genre(s): Crime & Mystery Fiction, Literary Fiction, Published 1900 onward
Language: English
5. Dope
Sax Rohmer (1883 - 1959)
A minor lord is killed and a rich socialite is missing, and they are both tied to the enigmatic Kazmah the Dream Reader, who has also disappeared. New Scotland Yard Chief Inspector Red Kerry scours post-WWI London looking for clues, encountering rich Bohemians, theatre people, landed gentry, sailors, and, stereotypically, sinister Chinese people and sneaky Jews. The story is based on the history of Billie Carleton, a young English actress whose scandalous lifestyle ended with her death from a drug overdose in 1918. (Note that this work contains dated material and attitudes which may be offensive to listeners.) - Summary by TriciaG
Genre(s): Crime & Mystery Fiction
6. Money to Burn, An Adventure Story
Reginald Wright Kauffman (1877 - 1959)
From the dedication: "On a train by day, or abed by night, you will read "Money to Burn" and immediately forget it--which is as it should be, for then you can profitably reread it a year hence--but I'm certain it will entertain you while you are reading it. If it gives you the realization of good fights on strange islands in tropic seas, if it stirs you with the sense of its hairbreadth escapes, if its mystery "keeps you guessing" and inveigles you past your proper railroad station, or runs up the house electric light bill by holding you tight until morning, then it is the sort of book that I have planned it to be..." - Summary by Steven Seitel
Genre(s): Action & Adventure Fiction, Crime & Mystery Fiction
Language: English
7. The Amethyst Cross
Fergus Hume (1859 - 1932)
Things look bleak for Lesbia Hales. Her father does not let her marry the man she loves. Her mother is dead. She has to keep secrets in order to promote what she wants for herself. One day, her lover, George Walker, is injured in her home and someone stole the expensive amethyst cross. Who could have done that and why? - Summary by Stav Nisser.
Genre(s): Crime & Mystery Fiction, Romance
Language: English
8. The Nebuly Coat
John Meade Falkner (1858 - 1932)
Westray, a young architect, is sent to the town of Cullerne to oversee repairs to the tower of the minster there. He lodges in the town in the house of a gentlewoman who has seen better days. A fellow lodger is Sharnall, the church organist, who is convinced that there is some mystery surrounding the nearby house of Blandamer where a new lord has recently inherited the title. The plot thickens when Sharnall dies suddenly.
Genre(s): Crime & Mystery Fiction
9. The Motor Pirate
George Sidney Paternoster (1866 - 1925)
Of course every one has heard of the Motor Pirate. No one indeed could help doing so unless he or she, as the case may be, happened to be in some part of the world where newspapers never penetrate; since for months his doings were the theme of every gossip in the country, and his exploits have filled columns of every newspaper from the moment of his first appearance until the day when the reign of terror he had inaugurated upon the roads ended as suddenly and as sensationally as it had begun. Who the owner of the pirate car was? Whence he came? Whither he went? These are questions which have exercised minds innumerable; but though there have been nearly as many theories propounded as there were brains at work propounding them, so far no informed account of the man or his methods has been made public. - Summary from The Book
Genre(s): Crime & Mystery Fiction, Fantastic Fiction