Children of the Wind

M.P. Shiel

M.P. Shiel is a British writer of West Indian descent. He is remembered mostly for supernatural and scientific romances, published as serials, novels, and as short stories. Children of the Wind adventure set in South Central Africa. A lost race novel. An English scientist learns that the White Queen of the Wa-Ngwanyas is his own cousin and heiress to a fortune of which she is being kept in ignorance. There are tribal warfare including biological warfare, lesbianism, and vibrant plotting a full-blooded story done in Shiel s fabulously refreshing style written after a ten-year hiatus. Highly recommended!

Prince Zaleski

M.P. Shiel

Prince Zaleski (1895) represents Shiels contribution to the mystery genre, and is his answer to Sherlock Holmes. This is a set of three short detective mysteries but the stories are clever and even wonderfully creepy at times which can only be solved by Prince Zaleski the worlds greatest historian! It includes the following mysteries: The Race of Orven, The Stone of the Edmundsbury Monks, The S.S.. Prince Zaleski is an eccentric gentleman detective who suffers from ennui but might sometimes be induced to take an absorbing interest in questions that had proved themselves too profound, or too intricate, for ordinary solution. Those who like mystery/detective fiction and weird fiction with fin-de-siecle British Decadence will enjoy this blend of the genres.

Shapes in the Fire. Being a Mid-Winters Nights Entertainment in Two Parts and an Interlude

M.P. Shiel

M.P. Shiel, who wrote science fiction, mystery, and other genre fiction from the 1890s through 1930s, first established himself as a member of a Decadent movement in England. He was influenced by the Decadent movement lastingly than most of his contemporaries, in part because the tenets of Decadence resonated with his own personal history and racial views. As the movement faded, Shiel built on the underlying logic of Decadence to create adventure novels involving race-based conflict. Shiels racism is disturbing but complex, ultimately leading toward a vision of union between Self and Other. Shiels developing views are evident in five of his works from 1895-1901. Shapes in the Fire: Being a Mid-Winter-Nights Entertainment in Two Parts and an Interlude is one of these works that highly recommended for reading!

The Evil That Men Do

M.P. Shiel

The Evil That Men Do is a classic story of horror and unbelievable cruelty by British writer Matthew Phipps Shiel. This novel of mystery about Hartwell from birth, does he inherit his fathers traits? Do great men have great sons and how much does ones own lifes experiences cause variance to this question? To the ordinary reader there will seem very little in point of morality to choose between Robert Hartwell and the villainous millionaire whom a strange facial resemblance enables him to impersonate. Mr. Shiel does not, and probably does not aspire to, draw pictures of everyday life as it is. But there is always something ingenious in his situations, and in this book, at any rate, he has contrived to avoid the developments which disfigured at least one of his earlier novels.

The Last Miracle

M.P. Shiel

This volume contains Matthew Phipps Shiels 1906 novel, The Last Miracle. It is original, nicely written, and with good character studies that is recommended for fans of supernatural and science fiction, and is a must-have for collectors of Shiels work. The Last Miracle (1906) very loose thematic sequence of apocalyptic tales concerns a plot to discredit Christianity with fake miraculous visions created by gigantic hologram-like devices and the terrible crucifixions which are part of that plot. Matthew Phipps Shiel (1865 1947) also known as M. P. Shiel was a seminal British writer best remembered for his supernatural and scientific romances.

The Lord of the Sea

M.P. Shiel

The story is of Richard Hogarth, a man of lofty spirit who on discovering a cache of giant diamonds inside a fallen meteor undertakes a bold project to re-shape the human condition on a global scale. He builds huge steel forts with his wealth, places diamonds at the cross-roads of the earths oceans to control all sea-traffic for tribute to benefit the citizens of his mammoth iron islands. The Lord of the Sea (1901) develops a network of mid-19th-century motifs incredible coincidences, swapped babies, hidden identities, chance-found incredible wealth, documents in a trunk, festering revenges, elaborate prison escapes, frustrated romance, Napoleonic megalomania yet, though written to an aesthetic outdated for its time, in embodies that aesthetic with enormous elan and vitality.

The Lost Viol

M.P. Shiel

Romantic mystery novel first published in New York by Clode in 1905. Matthew Phipps Shiel (18651947) was a prolific British writer of West Indian descent. Shiel was more than just a writer of sensational tales of magic and mystery. There is an undercurrent of philosophic seriousness running beneath the finely textured prose of all his fiction. Like his contemporaries George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950) and H. G. Wells (1866-1946), Shiel wrote out of the intellectual fervor of his times when the impact of Darwins theories and the revolutionary strides being made in the material sciences were shaking to the roots the philosophical and religious underpinnings of the closing nineteenth century.

The Man-Stealers

M.P. Shiel

In The Man-Stealers we have the French plot to kidnap the Duke of Wellington to avenge Napoleons imprisonment. Matthew Phipps Shiel (18651947) was a prolific British writer of West Indian descent. His legal surname remained Shiell though he adopted the shorter version as a de facto pen name. He is remembered mostly for supernatural and scientific romances. His work was published as serials, novels, and as short stories. The Purple Cloud (1901; 1929) remains his most famous and often reprinted novel. If you havent discovered the joys of Shiel s mysteries there is a good place to start.