Kai Lung Beneath the Mulberry Tree

Ernest Bramah

Ernest Brammah Smith is best-known for two series, the Max Carrados books about a blind detective, all of whose Perceptions are enormously enhanced, and a series of tales in which the Chinese Kai Lung tells stories often to stave off some unpleasant fate, like Scheherazade. This collection of eight Kai Lung stories came out in 1940, two years before the authors death. They show the same wit as the earlier ones. The China which Kai Lung inhabits has numerous features of the fantasy Land of Fable, and many of the embedded tales are fantasy; all are told in an ornate manner which ironically, often hilariously, exaggerates the old Chinese tradition of understatement and politesse. The main sequence begins with The Wallet of Kai Lung and ends with Kai Lung Beneath the Mulberry-Tree; of the posthumous collections, Kai Lung Raises His Voice usefully assembles all the remaining series stories.

Kai Lungs Golden Hours

Ernest Bramah

The second volume of amusing Chinese fantasies. A captivating collection thats ripe for rediscovery, Kai Lungs Golden Hours stands as the very best of these beguiling books. As with other Kai Lung novels, the main plot serves primarily as a vehicle for the presentation of the gem-like, aphorism-laden stories told by the protagonist Kai Lung, an itinerant story-teller of ancient China. With the help of beautiful Hwa Mei, who has the attention of evil Ming Shu, Kai tries to regain his freedom by spinning a series of entertaining tales that intrigue his captor. In a unique defense, Kai Lung recites his beguiling tales to the Mandarin, successfully postponing his conviction time after time until he is finally set free. Laced with romance and adventure, spiced with fantasy and the supernatural, these stories will transport readers to a mandarins court in ancient China. Kai Lungs Golden Hours is a frame story or frame novel, that is, the narrative provides a frame for different stories.

Kai Lung Unrolls His Mat

Ernest Bramah

The Kai Lung books are really short-story collections, whose disparate, rambling tales are knitted together by framing narratives featuring the eponymous travelling storyteller. The third in Bramahs Kai Lung series of fantasy novels. Kai Lung Unrolls His Mat, like the others in the series consists of thinly connected stories related by Kai Lung, concerning the adventures of the storyteller and his lady love Hwa-Mei versus the wicked but ever-smooth Mandarin Shan Tien and his despicable accomplice Ming-Shu. Kai Lungs adventures are related with humor and irony, his shrewdness and wisdom conveyed in euphemisms, paradoxes and parables. Bramahs droll writing style went a long way toward making the Kai Lung series so popular. The Kai Lung books are easily Bramahs greatest achievement; theyre as worthy of their somewhat neglected place in the pantheon of British humour as the delightful comic trivia of Wodehouse.

Max Carrados

Ernest Bramah

Delightful collection of mysteries of the first blind detective. In 1914, Ernest Bramah published his first collection of Carrados stories, Max Carrados. Max Carrados is a detective who has developed his own remaining senses to a superior level and who has enlisted the superior observations skills of his butler to fill in for any deficiency of his own. He is a cerebral detective, solving the crimes with facts, information and his advanced senses, which over-compensate for his blindness. Working with his old friend, Louis Carlyle, a private investigator, the wealthy Carrados pursues his talent for detection whenever he pleases without accepting a fee. The stories deal with the theft of an ancient coin, the odd disappearance of a little girl, a ghost fond of running the bath, a scientific approach to murdering a wife, poison mushrooms, devious disguises, an automated card-playing machine and other curious matters. As with some better known sleuths, Mr. Carrados feats amaze, entertain and satisfy.

Max Carrados Mysteries

Ernest Bramah

Max Carrados Mysteries is a collection of Bramahs classic detective tales containing The Secret of Headlam Height, The Mystery of The Vanished Petition Crown and many other stories. Carrados is a cerebral detective, solving the crimes with facts, information and his advanced senses, which over-compensate for his blindness. In The Coin of Dionysius we first meet the suave sleuth Max Carrados to help determine whether an old coin is real or a clever fake. In The Game Played in the Dark, Max Carrados is contacted by the British Museum about a horde of stolen ancient coins. On the lookout for the coins, he is intrigued by the approach of an Italian lady who takes him from the safety of his study to a meeting with some recognisable former adversaries... The stories deal with the theft of an ancient coin, the odd disappearance of a little girl, a ghost fond of running the bath, a scientific approach to murdering a wife, poison mushrooms, devious disguises, an automated card-playing machine and other curious matters.

The Bravo of London

Ernest Bramah

The Bravo of London is a book in the Max Carrados series. Also, Max Carrados will be followed by The eyes of Max Carrados in 1923, The Specimen Case in 1924, Max Carrados Mysteries in 1927, and The Bravo of London in 1934. Max Carrados is a blind detective who uses his remaining senses in such a way that his blindness is often not immediately apparent to others. Working with his old friend, Louis Carlyle, a private investigator, the wealthy Carrados pursues his talent for detection whenever he pleases without accepting a fee. It is the first appearance of the blind sleuth Max Carrados whom, accompanied by his faithful but not always insightful Carlyle, was created as a rival to Sherlock Holmes and quickly found a strong following amongst readers.

The Eyes of Max Carrados

Ernest Bramah

Short mysteries involving the blind detective Carrados. Max Carrados is one of the most unusual detectives in all fiction. He is blind and yet he has developed his other faculties to such an amazing degree that they more than compensate for his lack of sight. The Eyes of Max Carrados opens with a somewhat defensive essay which chronicles astonishing feats of the blind. Carrados himself outdoes them all and perhaps combines a few too many amazing abilities for real conviction. Here is a collection of the best of Max Carrados, a set of stories featuring a series of baffling puzzles to challenge the greatest of detectives. They are written by Ernest Bramah with great wit, style and panache.

The Mirror of Kong Ho

Ernest Bramah

Ernest Bramah was an English author who wrote popular books in many different genres including humor, detective fiction and science fiction. A lively and amusing collection of letters sent from a highly bemused Chinaman sojourning amongst the English barbarians in the first decade of the 19th century to his revered father back home, with a view to coming to grips with their inferior culture, which he singularly fails to do, resulting in much loss of gravity. These are things such as the motor car and the piano; unknown in China at this time. Satirical novel about present-day England, following the time-tested strategy of showing a familiar world through the eyes of a foreigner, thus affording rich opportunity for lampooning both cultures. In a few words, it is a comic novel about a stereotyped Chinaman in London.

The Moon of Much Gladness

Ernest Bramah

This early work by Ernest Bramah Smith was originally published in 1911. The Moon of Much Gladness Related by Kai Lung is the fourth book in the Kai Lung series. The China which Kai Lung inhabits has numerous features of the fantasy Land of Fable, and many of the embedded tales are fantasy; all are told in an ornate manner which ironically, often hilariously, exaggerates the old Chinese tradition of understatement and politesse. Ernest Bramah was born was near Manchester in 1868. He was a poor student, and dropped out of the Manchester Grammar School when sixteen years old to go into the farming business. Bramah found commercial and critical success with his first novel, The Wallet of Kai Lung, but it was his later stories of detective Max Carrados that assured him lasting fame.

The Secret of the League. The Story of a Social War

Ernest Bramah

The secret of the league is a dystopian novel written by Ernest Bramah in 1907. It was first published as What might have been: the story of a social war, but later was republished in 1909 as The secret of the league. The Secret of the League is kind of an underground oddity of a novel. Its a prophetic-warning novel, science fiction before that term was coined, largely sociopolitical but also with some charming technical extrapolations. The story centers around one mans daring and ingenious plan, enacted through a mysterious alliance called the Unity League, to stop the workings of the nations elected government in order to restore some measure of lost freedom and greatness, even at the risk of civil war. Its plot is developed rather patchily, and like most warning novels, was overtaken by real events and didnt come true. The Secret of the League was written, when the growth of the labour movement was beginning to terrify the middle class, who wrongly imagined that they were menaced from below rather than from above.

The Specimen Case

Ernest Bramah

Working name of UK author Ernest Brammah Smith (1868-1942) for all his writing; he is best-known for two series, the Max Carrados books about a blind detective, all of whose Perceptions are enormously enhanced, and a series of tales in which the Chinese Kai Lung tells stories often to stave off some unpleasant fate, like Scheherazade. At the height of his fame, Bramahs mystery tales, featuring the blind detective, appeared alongside Sir Arthur Conan Doyles Sherlock Holmes stories in the Strand Magazine, even occasionally outselling them. This early work by Ernest Bramah was originally published in 1924. A collection of twenty-one short stories which bridge, in the process of their writing, thirty years of life, one featuring Kai Lung and another featuring blind detective Max Carrados. Highly recommended this entertaining reading!

The Wallet of Kai Lung

Ernest Bramah

The Wallet of Kai Lung is a collection of fantasy stories by Ernest Bramah in which the Chinese Kai Lung tells stories often to stave off some unpleasant fate, like Scheherazade. These tales of an unlikely but marvelous China are classic works of fantasy, with each story holding a story-within-a-story. Ernest Bramahs Kai Lung is a storyteller in an imagined China, telling tales of earnest examination candidates, corrupt mandarins, beautiful maidens, alchemical potions, grasping merchants, and assorted other stereotypes from the Western imagination of China. The China which Kai Lung inhabits has numerous features of the fantasy Land of Fable, and many of the embedded tales are fantasy; all are told in an ornate manner which ironically, often hilariously, exaggerates the old Chinese tradition of understatement and politesse.