A Child of the Jago

Arthur Morrison

A Child of the Jago is London-born journalist Arthur Morrisons best known novel. It was first published in November 1896 and is set in a fictional East End slum known as the Jago, which Morrison based a real district called the Old Nichol. The novel recounts the brief life of Dicky Perrott, who is at heart full of humane instinct but his environment ensures his down fall. The Perrott family, and their friends and enemies, must struggle for their very survival in the harsh environment they live within. Tension and desperation amid the crime and roughness is constant in the overcrowded slums of the East End, with fortune hard to come by and danger ever present. The author, who rejected the label realist, doesnt minimize the violence of the community and A Child of the Jago is an exciting tale indeed.

A Clue in Wax

Fred M. White

Fred M. White gives us the opportunity to plunge into the past of Gladys Brooke. The book begins with the perfect life of Gladys in a small town. Then we come back three years ago, where we find out that she has a brother. And they, too, then lived well, but in another place. The main character begins to notice the strange behavior of her brother. At one point, a calm and perfect life ends.

A Crime of the Under-Seas

Guy Boothby

There is an old saying that one half of the world does not know how the other half lives, but as far as this is true, very few of us really understand. In the East, indeed, it is almost amazing. There are people involved in trade, some of whom are very profitable, about whom the world as a whole has never heard of, and which an ordinary Englishman, in all likelihood, would refuse to believe, even if the most reliable evidence had been provided before him.

A Crime on Canvas

Fred M. White

Frederick Merrick White has written many novels or short stories, many related to London. Modest stories in his spirit. A Clue in Wax is a simple, kind story. The story that even in a dark London place a bright life can occur.

A Daughter of Astrea

E. Phillips Oppenheim

BEHOLD! cried Sabul Ahmid, with an upward sweep of his bare, brown arm, behold the Sacred Temple of the people of Astrea! I stood up in the boat, my portfolio under my arm. High on the mountains side, crowning a thick mass of laurel undergrowth, and flanked by a grove of deep, cool, byana trees, was the building to which my servant was pointing. The material whereof it was fashioned I could not at that distance determine. Only in the broad, tropical sunlight it flashed forth, a glorious and spotless white, as flawless and perfect as the purest marble or alabaster. Little minarets rose from the flat roof; and flowering shrubs, planted along the mountain terrace above, drooped about it, a brilliant scintilla of purple coloring. My fingers began to crave for my pencil. I turned to my guide with beaming face.

A Daughter of Israel

Fred M. White

A Crime on Canvas is a story about a rich Blantyres family, which is one of the richest families in England. A few years later, the influence of Blantyres does not disappear. They are just as influential in their environment. The eldest of the Blantyres family decided to rent out their mansion. However, many bad rumors go about him.

A Debt Discharged

Edgar Wallace

Thomas Maple lives on Crystal Palace Road with his niece Verity. He works for a firm of bank note engravers. However, the dollar bills he shows Wentworth Gold are forgeries perfect except for the missing Treasury sign. When Verity meets her new employer she develops serious misgivings, and arriving back home she can hear a menacing voice. "A Debt Discharged" is a novel about forged dollar bills and a young girls investigations into her suspicious new employer. These were largely adventure narratives with elements of crime or mystery, and usually combined a bombastic sensationalism with hammy violence.

A Detectives Triumphs

Dick Donovan

A Detectives Triumphs (1891) by Dick Donovan eleven intriguing detective short stories including: The Mystery of Surgeon-Major Palmer; The Great Ruby Robbery; The Abduction, etc. Dick Donovan is the pseudonym of British author James Edward Preston Muddock (28 May 1843 23 January 1934) who created a private detective, also named Dick Donovan, in the 1890s. Dick Donovan achieved an international reputation as the master sleuth, and is reputedly responsible for American detectives being known popularly as Dicks.