Prodigals of Monte Carlo

E. Phillips Oppenheim

He might be almost forgotten now, but Mr. Oppenheim wrote an amazing 116 novels, including many bestsellers. Several are set amid the glamour of Monte Carlo, including this 1920s romantic thriller. The novel has an intriguing start, as handsome and charming Sir Hargrave Wendever gets a nasty shock from the doctor. Wealthy, handsome, intelligent, single, with the world at his feet suddenly he finds his world crumbling. What will he do? He decides to do some good with his money in the time he has left, and offers a penniless young woman a free holiday at his villa, with no strings attached. The reader is transported from the grey fogs of London to the sunshine of Monte Carlo, where, along with the hero and some new friends, the real adventures begin.

Recalled by the Double-Four

E. Phillips Oppenheim

Another great spy novel from the british author E. Phillips Oppenheim who achieved worldwide fame with his thrilling novels and short stories concerning international espionage and intrigue. This one is a connected collection of short stories about the leader of a secret society pledged to protect England and their German adversary. This novel is an Oppenheim classic from 1919 about a high society villain: characteristic of Oppenheims typical works, with the characters living in luxury, and a very flowing and exact story. Story is set just prior to WWI and is interesting on several levels. Oppenheim builds on the English mentality before WWI and how many of the English just did not believe in a threat from Germany.

Simple Peter Cradd

E. Phillips Oppenheim

Edward Phillips Oppenheim is considered one of the originators of the thriller genre, his novels also range from spy thrillers to romance, but all have an undertone of intrigue. This novel is one of E. Phillips Oppenheims best works and opens with a fantastic description of the boring life of Mr. Peter Cradd, leather merchant, husband, father, slave to his family, stoic self denier, and all-around put upon man in the bowler hat. He is barely able to pay his bills, has a wife who seems him only as a wallet, and two children whose most favorable opinion of him is disappointment. He answers a letter from a lawyer, and finds out that he has inherited a fortune. What he does with it, where he moves, how he educates himself, and whom he loves form the rest of the story?

Sinners Beware

E. Phillips Oppenheim

This is another collection of interlinked short stories about the good life in Monte Carlo and Beausoleil after the first World War. Ten stories about Peter Hames, the former Inspector on the New York police department that got tossed off the force when he tried to stop an innocent man being railroaded by a corrupt police force. Disillusioned, but after inheriting a million dollars, he moves to France to become a painter. But the detective instincts never left and he gets involved in various adventures. Oppenheim follows three characters through adventures wherein they solve crimes, thwart criminals, and are duped by professionals.

Sir Adam Disappeared

E. Phillips Oppenheim

Scotland Yard unearths the mysterious disappearance of a wealthy, eccentric banker, the reason for a dead man in his bank, and the vanishing of the banks funds. The background shifts from the bank to the club, and the missing millionaires known habits give necessary leads to the unscrambling of the mystery. Oppenheim continues to hold up his end. An enjoyable read! E. Phillips Oppenheim was a British author who wrote nearly 150 novels during his career. He styled himself as the prince of storytellers, and is credited with creating the rogue male genre of adventure thrillers and was one of the earliest writers of spy fiction.

Slanes Long Shots

E. Phillips Oppenheim

A collection of unconnected but all featuring the same protagonist, gentlemen amateur detective Slane. Sir Jasper Slane, wealthy clubman, and amateur detective, is always willing to help his fellow aristocrats in need. With the able assistance of Inspector Stimpson of Scotland Yard, he solves thefts, rescues kidnapped victims, foils blackmailers, and helps to restore fortunes. Because of his upper class morality, Slane is perhaps more diffident than some other Oppenheim heroes, but, in the end, he succumbs to the attractions of women. Much of Oppenheims work possesses a unique escapist charm, featuring protagonists who delight in Epicurean meals, surroundings of intense luxury, and the relaxed pursuit of criminal practice, on either side of the law.

Spiskowcy

E. Phillips Oppenheim

Czy warto narażać własną wolność, by chronić przypadkowo poznaną kobietę? Odpowiedź wydaje się prosta. Ale kiedy przeciwko logicznym argumentom staje kobiecy czar, wszystko się komplikuje. Jak bardzo? Poznaj historię Herberta Raysona, który pewnej nocy wraca do swojego mieszkania i zastaje w nim nieznajomą. Kobieta przeszukuje jego biurko, ale to dopiero początek serii tajemniczych zdarzeń. Autor "Spiskowców" w swoim kraju uważany jest za "księcia storytellingu". Nic dziwnego, bo jego książki czyta się na jednym oddechu. Wciągające historie, szybka akcja i zaskakujący finał to gwarancja dobrze spędzonego wieczoru. Idealny zamiennik dla oczu zmęczonych oglądaniem kolejnego serialu.

Stolen Idols

E. Phillips Oppenheim

A young adventurer steals two complimentary idols of Buddha from a Chinese temple, one of which is supposed to have a debasing and malevolent effect upon its owners. One of the idols represents the Body, and all of the corruption and evil of Mankind, the other represents the Soul, and all that is good. The Ballastons are a spendthrift aristocratic family threatened with the loss of their ancestral home due to large debts. The son steals these idols, ends up with just the naughty one, and in the process crosses swords with Wu Ling, a wily Chinese merchant who later manages to become English. Mr. Oppenheim can be depended upon to give his plots that turn which is as admirable as it is unexpected, and this is one of the best of his many good and exciting books.

The Adventures of Mr. Joseph P. Gray

E. Phillips Oppenheim

Joseph P. Cray is an American manufacturer who has just completed a year serving coffee to the troops in France during World War 1. He is motivated by good will, and also to escape his American second wife who is the head of a temperance organization. With sybaritic glee, he returns to London, dons civilian garb, and enjoys his first cocktail. He is soon joined by his daughter, the beautiful Lady Sara Sittingbourne, who lives in London. Together the two seek adventure in the form of crimes foiled, jewels recovered, spies uncovered, and plots smashed. Edward Phillips Oppenheim was an English novelist, in his lifetime a major and successful writer of genre fiction including thrillers.

The Amazing Judgment

E. Phillips Oppenheim

This is a very early novel by E. Phillips Oppenheim from 1897. The wealthy and bored Lord Hildyard, Marquis of Esholt, is on a yachting tour with a group of friends, including his kept lover, Pauline Owston. When Hildyard spies an apparently uninhabited island, he slips off the ship in search of adventure. In the middle of the night, he hears wonderful violin music and finds a young and beautiful girl, Bertha, playing in the forest. She is accompanied by a cruel and misshapen dwarf. Enchanted, Hildyard stays on the island, where he finds an old college chum, Stanley Owston, the estranged husband of the actress, who is the guardian of the girl, and the owner of the island. The adventures are continuing...

The Amazing Partnership

E. Phillips Oppenheim

E. Phillips Oppenheim wrote most famously of secret agents and duplicitous diplomats, secret treaties and international conspiracies, moonlit Riviera casinos, Swiss hotel suites, perilous yacht trips, and glamorous trans-European express trains. Known in his time as the Prince of Storytellers, Oppenheim, like the brand names of todays best seller lists, offered readers in the first half of the 20th century a steady, predictable, and entertaining supply of pop fiction. The Amazing Partnership is one of E. Phillips Oppenheims most intriguing stories. This story deals with a young man and a young woman who make an informal partnership in criminal investigation.

The Avenger

E. Phillips Oppenheim

Yet another collection of linked short stories from Oppenheim. By chance a young man and woman meet and set up an agency to aid Scotland Yard, but is romance in the air? This story deals with a young man and a young woman who make an informal partnership in criminal investigation. This whodunit murder mysteries collection brings to you some of Oppenheims finest murder mysteries to keep you at your toes: The Evil Shepherd Murder at Monte Carlo, or Wolves Amongst the Honey, The Glenlitten Murder and others. Phillips Oppenheim was an internationally renowned author of mystery and espionage thrillers. His novels and short stories have all the elements of blood-racing adventure and intrigue and are precursors of modern-day spy fictions.

The Battle of Basinghall Street

E. Phillips Oppenheim

The story of a young man, Lord Sandbrook, who takes revenge against the directors of a company he holds responsible for the deaths of his father and mother. The battlefield is Basinghall Street, where the offices of Woolito, Limited, are situated. A textile business is the center of strange machinations suicides, failures, conflagrations, disaster to various directors, finally a raid on the stock, and the president is a ruined man. In this story Mr. Oppenheim takes a vacation from international intrigue in a Monte Carlo setting and devotes himself to describing a big business battle in London. The story is told with the usual Oppenheim flourish, a great deal of action, many details of personality and adventures.

The Betrayal

E. Phillips Oppenheim

Guy Ducaine is a recent graduate of Oxford University. Through a series of unfortunate events he is penniless and starving in the rural town of Brasters. Seeking to make a few shillings, he schedules a lecture on local history. On the same time, Lord Rowchester invites the officer and explorer Colonel Mostyn Ray to the village to speak. Ducaines lecture fails and he returns to his small house and collapses from hunger. Found there by Ray, and Rowchesters lovely daughter, Lady Angela, they revive him and set in motion a complicated, entertaining, and devious plot. With many twists and turns Ducaine eventually works as secretary to a War Preparations Committee which is chronically leaking plans to the enemy and saves the nation!

The Bird of Paradise

E. Phillips Oppenheim

Mr. Hamer Wildburn, a young American, graduate of Harvard is wintering on the Mediterranean coast of France in his newly purchased yacht The Bird of Paradise, and is puzzled by the desire he finds in visitors coming aboard at different times to buy the vessel from him. One night he is awoken at 3 am by the cries of a beautiful, and wearing priceless emeralds, woman swimming alongside. She comes aboard and offers to buy the yacht for twice what he paid. The next day, the foreign minister of France also makes an offer to buy the yacht at an outrageous price. Soon a known terrorist develops a bomb to utterly destroy the boat and all its inhabitants. And so on, and with the material of conspiracies, French politics, love and adventure the story is woven around the yacht.

The Black Box

E. Phillips Oppenheim

The Black Box is a series of loosely connected short stories detailing the adventures of Sanford Quest, worlds greatest criminologist. The story starts off in New York City, travels to England, Egypt, and around the world to San Francisco, then into the wild west of New Mexico. There are two main plot lines which merge into one along with romance mixed in with the ever present danger. Melodramatic, episodic, supernatural. Its all great fun and Oppenheim keeps the action moving along swiftly, as he always did. Wonderful entertainment and highly entertaining. If you havent discovered the joys of Oppenheims mysteries there is a good place to start. Highly recommended!