The Secret House
T. B. Smith, Assistant Commissioner of Police, suspects that the murder of two foreigners is connected to Montague Fallock, a notorious blackmailer of prominent British citizens.
Edgar Wallace · Adventure · 21 ch
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His Family
Roger Gale, a media-monitoring business owner nearing retirement, observes life in early 20th century New York City through the eyes of his three daughters. The youngest, Laura, is a social butterfly always going to the latest excitements the city can offer. The middle, Edith, is a mother to four children, on whom she dotes.
Ernest Poole · Drama · 44 ch
I Will Repay
The young Vicomte de Marny rashly challenges a French official to a duel, and dies as a result. The Vicomte’s father, the ancient Duc de Marny, insists that his daughter, Juliette, swear an oath before God to seek revenge on the man who killed her brother. Years later, as the French Revolution rages, Juliette insinuates herself into the official’s household, and quickly discovers a way to anonymously accuse him before the National Convention.
Baroness Orczy · Adventure · 32 ch
The Mystery of Orcival
A murder is discovered. The authorities quickly arrest an obvious suspect. A detective spends hours at the scene in disguise before making himself known, and proceeds to minutely examine the evidence with the assistance of a doctor, among others, before proclaiming the answer lies in a completely different direction.
Émile Gaboriau · Mystery · 34 ch
Blue Hand
Jim Steele, a clerk for a prominent London attorney, has the distasteful task of assisting a notorious client, Digby Groat, who stands to inherit the Jonathan Danton fortune. Danton’s infant daughter and closest heir, Dorothy, was thought to have died in a boating accident twenty years ago. Adding to the mystery, Dorothy’s mother, Lady Mary Danton, also disappeared around the same time.
Edgar Wallace · Adventure · 49 ch
Such Is Life
Such Is Life is an Australian novel written by Joseph Furphy under a pseudonym of “Tom Collins” and published in 1903. It purports to be a series of diary entries by the author, selected at approximately one-month intervals during late 1883 and early 1884. “Tom Collins” travels rural New South Wales and Victoria, interacting and talking at length with a variety of characters including the drivers of bullock-teams, itinerant swagmen, boundary riders, and squatters (the owners of large rural properties).
Joseph Furphy · Drama · 30 ch
Behind That Curtain
Behind That Curtain, published in 1928, finds Charlie Chan in San Francisco preparing to return to Honolulu after a working holiday. He meets a Sir Frederic Bruce from Scotland Yard, who is following the trail of a woman who disappeared fifteen years before. The two attend a dinner party together—where Sir Frederic is murdered.
Earl Derr Biggers · Adventure · 22 ch
The Mucker
Billy Byrne, a rough and unpolished young man, finds himself entangled in a series of unexpected events that lead him from the urban jungle of early 20th century Chicago to the high seas and, eventually, to revolutionary Mexico. When he and a wealthy heiress named Barbara Harding become shipwrecked on a remote island, the harsh realities of survival force Billy to reevaluate his values and confront his own identity. He undergoes a profound transformation, discovering hidden depths of courage, compassion, and integrity within himself.
Edgar Rice Burroughs · Adventure · 36 ch
The Marrow of Tradition
Following the events of the Wilmington Massacre of 1898 and the sensationalist news reports and novels that framed the events as a race riot incited by members of the black community, The Marrow of Tradition was written as a critical response to these harmful reports and provided a perspective that had otherwise been ignored. Developed out of the stories and accounts provided by members of the black community in Wilmington and from his own experience growing up and living in North Carolina, the novel is a probable accounting of the events leading up to and surrounding the Wilmington massacre. On a hot and sultry night, Major Carteret sits anxiously beside his wife, Olivia, as she enters early labor.
Charles W. Chesnutt · Drama · 38 ch
The Melody of Death
Gilbert Standerton learns that he has been disinherited by his cantankerous uncle, and is forced to find a way to provide for his newly wedded high-society wife. After quitting his appointment at the Foreign Office, he develops a new interest in the stock market, and takes an avid interest in the antics of a gang of safe-cracking burglars. His wife becomes concerned as he frequently begins staying out late at night, and shows an unusual interest in a particular musical melody despite having lost interest in all of his other music interests.
Edgar Wallace · Adventure · 17 ch
The Laughing Cavalier
A young woman in 17th century Holland inadvertently overhears the details of a plot to kill a political figure. The principal figures in the plot, one of whom is her brother and another her former lover, hire an insolent English mercenary to kidnap her to get her out of the way until their deeds are done. From there very little goes according to plan.
Baroness Orczy · Adventure · 48 ch
Mystery at Lynden Sands
Chief Constable Sir Clinton Driffield’s holiday on the coast is interrupted when he’s asked to assist with the investigation of a murder on a nearby country estate. As Sir Clinton, his friend Wendover, and the local police work to uncover who’s behind the murder, they encounter an expanding web of clues, characters with possible motives, questions related to the large inheritance involving the estate, and additional misdeeds. Working against time and the tides, Sir Clinton and his team must piece together an increasingly complex puzzle of clues, potential suspects, and crimes.
J. J. Connington · Mystery · 17 ch
The Claverings
Harry Clavering is an able, ambitious, and attractive young man, son of a country vicar and cousin to a baronet. His love for the baronet’s beautiful sister-in-law is at first reciprocated, but then rebuffed as her own ambitions incline her towards marrying a wealthy but personally repellent earl. Harry licks his wounds, and seeks to make his own fortune by training for a career as a civil engineer.
Anthony Trollope · Drama · 49 ch
Pierre and Jean
The sons of the Roland family, Pierre and Jean, return home in the lull between the completion of their studies and the start of their professional careers, bringing the Roland family back together again, in a way. This peace, though, is broken when the younger brother Jean is left a life-changing inheritance by Maréchel, an old family friend—and Pierre is left with nothing. Despite the happiness in the rest of the family, unanswered questions start gnawing at Pierre.
Guy de Maupassant · Drama · 9 ch
The Charing Cross Mystery
The Charing Cross Mystery follows a young lawyer, Hetherwick, who happens to be on a train alongside a former police inspector who dies suddenly in front of him. The other man in the carriage runs off at the next stop and vanishes. Hetherwick takes it upon himself to investigate what turns out to be a murder.
J. S. Fletcher · Mystery · 27 ch
The Pit
Laura Dearborn says she’ll never marry. Living with her sister and aunt in turn-of-the-century Chicago, she’s content with her comfortable, studious life. But with three suitors eager to win her love, Laura must decide between the disparate futures each could provide her—and as speculators struggle for control of the market in the wheat pits of the Chicago Board of Trade, each of those futures hangs in the balance.
Frank Norris · Drama · 13 ch
Kate Plus 10
Scotland Yard Inspector Michael Pretherston has been called to attend a case of missing jewelry at Lord Flanborough’s home. While investigating, Inspector Pretherston comes across a familiar face—and an intriguing mystery to challenge his skills and intellect: a woman by the name of Katharine Westhanger. Kate has been a person of interest in various capers across Europe despite her innocent looks and charming personality.
Edgar Wallace · Mystery · 20 ch
The House Without Windows
A young girl named Eepersip lives with her parents in a cottage, but she feels trapped within its confines, so she leaves home to live a freer life in the wild. After leaving her parents’ home, she establishes a life for herself outdoors, rejecting both the society of adults and the comforts of civilization. Initially, she is happy to live in a meadow near her family’s home, but over time she is tempted to seek out new natural environments to live in.
Barbara Newhall Follett · Drama · 5 ch
Mary, Mary
Sixteen-year-old Mary Makebelieve shares a small room with her mother, a charwoman, in the tenements of early twentieth-century Dublin. While Mrs. Makebelieve is at work cleaning the houses of the wealthy, Mary wanders around the city and its parks absorbed in daydreams. Her encounter with a policeman who appears to signal romantic interest in her is the beginning of Mary’s coming-of-age story, which combines elements of folk- or fairytale with a complex vision of human psychology and the relations between various social groups: mothers and daughters, men and women, the rich and the poor, the young and the old.
James Stephens · Drama · 36 ch
The Rise of Silas Lapham
Silas Lapham’s long-lasting paint, made with minerals found on his family’s farm in Vermont, has helped make him a millionaire—as has hard work, ambition, and tough business sense. Now that he’s reached late middle age, he’s a success. A newspaper is writing him up in its “Solid Men of Boston” series, his family goes to seaside resorts in the summer, the scion of the aristocratic Covey family has joined his firm, his daughters have made inroads into 1880s society, and he’s even having a lavish house built in the newly fashionable Back Bay.
William Dean Howells · Drama · 27 ch