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.

Summer

Edith Wharton

Considered by some to be her finest work, Edith Whartons Summer created a sensation when first published in 1917, as it was one of the first novels to deal honestly with a young womans sexual awakening. Seventeen-year-old Charity Royall is desperate to escape life with her hard-drinking adoptive father. Their isolated village stifles her, and his behavior increasingly disturbs her. When a young city architect Lucius Harney visits for the summer, it offers Charity the chance to break free. But as they embark on an intense affair, will it bring her another kind of trap? Praised for its realism and honesty by such writers as Joseph Conrad and Henry James and compared to Flauberts Madame Bovary, Summer remains as fresh and powerful a novel today as when it was first written.

The Social Gangster

Arthur B. Reeve

The fifth volume in the chronicles of Craig Kennedy, scientific detective, takes up the familiar and successful formula for a new round of adventures. Craig Kennedy continues to amaze with his usual sorts of crimes jewel theft, missing persons, wrongly accused suspects, fixed horse races, arson, murder, and blackmail but he uses scientific procedures to analyze the evidence, sometimes involving fantastical devices. The Social Gangster is the story focused on a mysterious robbery, which gives a glimpse of a greater threat hanging over social life of big city youngsters. But no one seems to be concerned enough with it, until it is too late. It is up to Kennedy and his science to resolve the case and reduce the impact falling on the society.

The Missing Million

Edgar Wallace

When millionaire Rex Walton mysteriously vanishes on the eve of his wedding, a chain of strange, violent events is set in motion. Intrepid Joan Walton assists Inspector Dicker in the search for her brother. The main suspect is notorious criminal The Panda (The Prince of Blackmailers). You quickly find out that Rex has his own connection to the blackmailer. This is a great example of The Golden Age of Detection. It has many more characters than the typical mystery from this era making it difficult, if not impossible, to simply eliminate the Hero Detective, the Heroine Love Interest, and the Obvious Suspect to figure out who the bad guy is. The Missing Million is a mystery novel from the prolific author of detective fiction Edgar Wallace.

Le Vicomte de Bragelonne

Alexandre Dumas pere

Le Vicomte de Bragelonne est le dernier volume de la trilogie des trois mousquetaires. Véritablement cest un des meilleurs, le plus vibrants et le plus émouvants romans de Dumas. L atmosphere est plus sombre que dans le premier volume de la série. Les amis ne sont pas dans le mme camp, els mettent des bâtons dans les roues lun lautre. Mais, aucun des personnages nest vraiment bon, aucun nest totalement mauvais. Chacun lutte pour ses ambitions, et essaie de placer ses pions avec ses qualités et ses défauts.

The Just Men of Cordova

Edgar Wallace

There are crimes for which no punishment is adequate, offences that the written law cannot redress. The three friends, Pioccart, Manfred and Gonsalez, may be enjoying the exotic, Spanish city of Cordova with its heat and Moorish influences, but they are still committed to employing their intellect and cunning to dispense justice. In The Just Men of Cordova, written in 1917, the just men move into the treacherous, aristocratic world of gambling, horse-racing and high finance. It seems that police services, even governments, have no power to control this world, where blackmail, poison and murder are commonplace. The just men, working outside the law, take it upon themselves to clean things up in their own way.

The Human Chase

E. Phillips Oppenheim

The six stories in Part I of this book trace the early career of Peter Benskin. He is a public school graduate with a small private income who joins the police force in London. After an early success he transfers to Scotland Yard where he becomes a detective. He is successful in solving several difficult cases but is hampered at times by his ethical feelings towards criminals who have been coerced or forced to commit crimes. He allows the innocent to escape, while he pursues the truly guilty. Part II of the book, which also consists of six stories, chronicles Benskins pursuit of and ultimate victory over a self-conceited master-criminal known only by the sobriquet Matthew.

The Secret Places of the Heart

Herbert George Wells

H.G. Wells is best remembered as a central figure in the development of the science fiction genre. However, much of his literary output was more conventional in nature, and he published a number of novels dealing with interpersonal relationships and social themes. H.G. Wells was so charmed by Margaret Sanger that he based The Secret Places of the Heart on his time with her. The novel is a thinly-veiled autobiography that depicts an English gentleman, Sir Richard Hardy, who is attempting to sort out his marital problems while he travels the English countryside in the company of a psychiatrist and much brilliant discussion ranging over the past and future topics of world-wide significance. The Secret Places of the Heart was, in many ways, a love letter from Wells to Sanger... Many critics regard The Secret Places of the Heart as a heavily autobiographical account of one of Wells failed love affairs.