Charlie Chan of the Honolulu Police Department makes his second appearance when a Honolulu widow is forced to sell her pearl necklace. She persuades Charlie to convey the necklace to its new owner, a famous businessman. Chan teams up with the son of a prominent jeweler handling the sale.
Earl Derr Biggers · Adventure · 22 ch
Published in 1924, The Three Hostages is the fourth of John Buchan’s novels to feature Richard Hannay. Following the conclusion of the Great War, Hannay has retired from British intelligence. He is coaxed from retirement to aid in the rescue of three prominent hostages held by an international criminal organization bent on controlling the disturbed minds of those affected by the Great War.
John Buchan · Adventure · 24 ch
Pellucidar, the sequel to At the Earth’s Core, was published in 1915. It continues the adventures of David Innes as he returns to the hollow interior of the Earth in search of his friend Perry and his lost love Dian the Beautiful. He takes with him many tools and weapons, intent on bringing civilization to the savage world within, which is populated with dinosaurs and neolithic creatures.
Edgar Rice Burroughs · Sci Fi · 16 ch
In Sylvie and Bruno, the titular characters serve as the connection between the novel’s two settings: Outland, a fictional land in which the children’s father is the Warden, and the real world, Victorian England. After their father is betrayed by their uncle, the family leaves their home and travels to different places to meet interesting and unusual characters. The part of the story set in England is social commentary, with the characters discussing philosophy, religion, morals, and economics.
Lewis Carroll · Fantasy · 26 ch
Higgs has made his fortune with sales of his original travelogue Erewhon. When his wife dies, his long-held desire to return to the country overwhelms him, and even his friends agree that a change of scenery would be a good idea. Soon after his departure he returns back home to England unexpectedly early and deeply unwell, and so it’s down to his son John to piece together what happened during his fleeting visit to Erewhon.
Samuel Butler · Comedy · 29 ch
At the scene of Marat’s death, in an infamous cabaret in the old section of Paris, in an old abandoned château on the outskirts of the city, in a prison in the midst of the September massacres—the Scarlet Pimpernel and his League may be in all of these places, or they may be in none of them. In these eleven stories Chauvelin, Robespierre, and several other officials each make their attempts to catch the Pimpernel as he intervenes on the side of the innocent and helpless. The question in these stories is not really whether they will snare him, but how he will make his escape—and in some cases, whether he’s there at all.
Baroness Orczy · Adventure · 51 ch
Polly Burton, a journalist, sits at the same table as an old man over tea. He has an interest in the sensational local crimes that have left the police baffled. Over the course her visit, the old man explains his crime-solving methods, which are based primarily on reading newspaper accounts, crime scene visits, courtroom observation, and logical deduction.
Baroness Orczy · Adventure · 36 ch
Philo Vance, the snobbish art collector who happens to be the longtime friend of District Attorney John Markham, once more finds himself drawn into a criminal investigation. Margaret Odell, the beautiful and talented theatrical singer nicknamed “The Canary,” has been strangled during the night, and from the very beginning there are signs that nothing in the case is quite what it appears to be. Accompanied once more by Sergeant Heath, the unlikely trio struggle to make sense of the evidence.
S. S. Van Dine · Mystery · 33 ch
Strange envelopes marked with a crimson circle have started to appear across London: a series of blackmailing letters, each directed at prominent figures in society and communicating the threat of punishment if the demands within aren’t met—a promise that has yielded fatal results for those who have ignored those instructions. Despite their best efforts, the police haven’t been able to track down this shadowy cabal of criminals, leaving them without the means to put an end to the terror that has overtaken London and its citizens. The lead investigator in the Crimson Circle case, Chief Inspector Parr, finds an unlikely partner in Derrick Yale, an enigmatic detective with a peculiar gift for deduction, after the Circle claims its latest victim: Mr. James Beardmore, found dead in his estate after failing to pay £100,000.
Edgar Wallace · Mystery · 45 ch
Philo Vance, the snobbish art collector turned amateur detective, finds his curiosity piqued by the shootings of two members of the Greene family household. Initially judged to be a burglary gone wrong, careful examination reveals the murders must have been carefully planned, and the perpetrator remains wholly elusive. As Vance and the New York police struggle to bring order to the Greene mansion, the murder attempts continue relentlessly.
S. S. Van Dine · Mystery · 30 ch
Three young members of the crew of a merchant ship sailing in the South Pacific are the sole survivors of its wreck in a storm. Swept ashore an uninhabited island, their initial efforts to survive soon lead them to a settled life in what seems to be a tropical paradise. However, their enjoyment of their new island home doesn’t dampen their desire to return to England, their homeland.
R. M. Ballantyne · Adventure · 37 ch
Wet Magic was the last novel for children published by E. Nesbit. It was originally serialized in The Strand Magazine in 1912, with a book version published in 1913.
E. Nesbit · Fantasy · 15 ch
On a foggy night a doctor accidentally visits the wrong house and finds a man dying of a gunshot wound. He quickly calls Chief Constable Sir Clinton Driffield for help, and further murders are discovered as the case unfolds. The mystery deepens when advertisements in a secret code appear in the local paper, a witness is blackmailed, and possibly fabricated evidence comes in from an anonymous source.
J. J. Connington · Mystery · 19 ch
Bellarion, a young orphan, leaves the abbey he was raised in to attend university and learn Greek. He quickly learns the dangers of life in fifteenth-century Italy, as he is robbed, caught in a riot, and chased through town by the authorities. He tangles himself in a plot against the local regent, plays one side against the other, and declares his service to the beautiful but uninterested Valeria.
Rafael Sabatini · Adventure · 47 ch
Mr. J. G. Reeder, employed by the Department of Public Prosecutions, has developed a reputation for solving difficult criminal cases using his unique understanding of human nature, which he calls his “criminal mind.” After a notorious bank robber and murderer escapes from prison, Mr. Reeder must match wits with Crazy John Flack, the “cleverest crook in the world,” who previously vowed to kill the famous detective in revenge for his imprisonment.
Edgar Wallace · Adventure · 23 ch
Edith Nesbit was a popular children’s author of the late Victorian and early Edwardian eras in Britain. Though she was writing more than a century ago, her books nevertheless remain popular and are generally still in print. The House of Arden was published in 1908.
E. Nesbit · Fantasy · 14 ch
In Before Adam, an unnamed narrator describes the life of one of his ancestors, who lived during the transition from ape to human being. Written and published in the early 20th Century, the novel presents ideas that were common for the period, like scientific racism and racial memory, and has elements of eugenic thought. This makes the work outdated both scientifically and socially.
Jack London · Adventure · 19 ch
Published in 1919, Mr. Standfast is a thriller set in the latter half of the First World War, and the third of John Buchan’s books to feature Richard Hannay. Richard Hannay is called back from serving in France to take part in a secret mission: searching for a German agent. Hannay disguises himself as a pacifist and travels through England and Scotland to track down the spy at the center of a web of German agents who are leaking information about the war plans.
John Buchan · Adventure · 23 ch
Sir Oliver Tressilian, a retired seafarer, lives in Cornwall with his half-brother Lionel. After Lionel kills the brother of Oliver’s beloved Rosamund, Oliver protects him by letting it be assumed that he himself did the deed. Lionel, becoming paranoid that Oliver will one day expose him, has Oliver kidnapped and sold into slavery.
Rafael Sabatini · Adventure · 35 ch
A Strange Manuscript Found in a Copper Cylinder is perhaps James De Mille’s most popular book; sadly, De Mille didn’t get to see this novel grow in popularity, as it was first serialized posthumously, in Harper’s Weekly. De Mille had written the novel before the “lost world” genre had become saturated, meaning many of the ideas were fresh and original for the time in which it was written. But, since he didn’t succeed in publishing it during his lifetime, by the time the novel was made public other authors like H.
James De Mille · Sci Fi · 33 ch