On a cloudless summer day, ghostwriter Phyl Long and educator Virgie Campbell meet as they wait for a private boat to Castaway Island. The attraction between the two is immediate, as is the excitement of a relaxing weekend getting to know each other. But once they arrive on the island, Phyl and Virgie discover things aren’t what they should be. After meeting the other guests, they realize the staff are confused, there’s no Wi-Fi, and the phone coverage is spotty. And there’s no way to leave the island. A charged accusation. A death. Another death, and then another…and another… As their fellow island occupants are murdered one by one, Phyl and Virgie realize their only hope of escaping is to work together to unmask the killer. But how does each know that the other isn’t using their budding romance as cover for a very twisted plan?
Against the backdrop of a grisly Palm Beach murder scene, art gallery owner and private detective Maxie Roberts sets out to catch a killer. Palm Beach art gallery owner Maxie Roberts has just come from an ugly murder scene. Not only has his wealthy socialite client been brutally slain in the boudoir of her Palm Beach mansion, but Maxie suspects the paintings she hired him to appraise are forgeries. When he discovers that the fake paintings were substituted for the real ones, Maxie is determined to find the original art works – and catch himself a forger and a murderer. And with Maxie’s obsessive detective work poised to douse the flames of his relationship with sexy attorney Kathy Kramer, the heroic sleuth is drawn into a high-stakes murder case that threatens not only his fortune, but his very life. With an intimate knowledge of Palm Beach – a town where nothing is as it appears to be – author Robert Mykle styles a suspenseful, fast-moving tale in the style of Roman Polanski’s “Chinatown.”
A wide-ranging and appreciative literary history of the castaway tale from Defoe to the present Ever since Robinson Crusoe washed ashore, the castaway story has survived and prospered, inspiring a multitude of writers of adventure fiction to imitate and adapt its mythic elements. In his brilliant critical study of this popular genre, Christopher Palmer traces the castaway tales' history and changes through periods of settlement, violence, and reconciliation, and across genres and languages. Showing how subsequent authors have parodied or inverted the castaway tale, Palmer concentrates on the period following H. G. Wells's The Island of Dr. Moreau. These much darker visions are seen in later novels including William Golding's Lord of the Flies, J. G. Ballard's Concrete Island, and Iain Banks's The Wasp Factory. In these and other variations, the castaway becomes a cannibal, the castaway's island is relocated to center of London, female castaways mock the traditional masculinity of the original Crusoe, or Friday ceases to be a biddable servant. By the mid-twentieth century, the castaway tale has plunged into violence and madness, only to see it return in young adult novels—such as Scott O'Dell's Island of the Blue Dolphins and Terry Pratchett's Nation—to the buoyancy and optimism of the original. The result is a fascinating series of revisions of violence and pessimism, but also reconciliation.
Leslie Thomas's odyssey is a vivid, personal account of the most fascinating islands at the furthest reaches of the globe: to islands as distant and diverse as Saint-Pierre et Miquelon off Newfoundland and Great Barrier Island off New Zealand, and to places more familiar by name, including Nantucket, Fair Isle, Tahiti, and Capri, this journey voyages to the world's smaller places. Descriptive, evocative and liberally sprinkled with anecdotes, the book weaves together a tapestry of impressions. Beachcombing for local legends, geography, colonial history and maritime lore, Thomas's search for the mystique of these islands gives the reader a unique insight into an extraordinary and beautiful world of islands. 'My World of Islands reads as a paean to a past age... a reminder that the entire world has not yet been reduced to Frejus or Marbella' Times Literary Supplement
This ebook collection has been designed and formatted to the highest digital standards and adjusted for readability on all devices. Edgar Wallace: The Four Just Men The Council of Justice The Just Men of Cordova The Law of the Four Just Men The Nine Bears Angel Esquire The Fourth Plague or Red Hand Grey Timothy or Pallard the Punter The Man who Bought London The Melody of Death A Debt Discharged The Tomb of T'Sin The Secret House The Clue of the Twisted Candle Down under Donovan The Man who Knew The Green Rust Kate Plus Ten The Daffodil Murder Jack O'Judgment The Angel of Terror The Crimson Circle Take-A-Chance Anderson The Valley of Ghosts P.-C. Lee Series Arthur Conan Doyle: Sherlock Holmes Series A Study in Scarlet The Sign of Four The Hound of the Baskervilles The Valley of Fear The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes The Return of Sherlock Holmes His Last Bow Other Mysteries True Crime Stories Wilkie Collins: The Woman in White No Name Armadale The Moonstone The Haunted Hotel The Law and The Lady The Dead Secret Miss or Mrs? R. Austin Freeman: Dr. Thorndyke Series Other Mysteries Agatha Christie: The Mysterious Affair at Styles The Secret Adversary H. C. McNeile: Bulldog Drummond The Black Gang G. K. Chesterton: The Innocence of Father Brown The Wisdom of Father Brown Arthur Morrison: Martin Hewitt Series Dorrington & Hicks Stories Ernest Bramah: Max Carrados Stories Victor L. Whitechurch: The Canon in Residence Thrilling Stories of the Railway Thomas W. Hanshew: Hamilton Cleek Series E. W. Hornung: A. J. Raffles Series Mystery Novels J. S. Fletcher: Mystery Novels Paul Campenhaye – Specialist in Criminology Rober Barr: The Triumph of Eugéne Valmont Jennie Baxter, Journalist The Adventures of Sherlaw Kombs The Adventure of the Second Swag Frank Froest Mystery Novels C. N. Williamson & A. M. Williamson Mystery Novels Isabel Ostander Mystery Novels
The 'BRITISH MYSTERIES Boxed Set: 350+ Thriller Novels, Murder Mysteries & True Crime Stories' is an unparalleled collection showcasing the breadth and diversity of British mystery literature. From the fog-drenched streets of London to the quaint villages of the English countryside, these narratives span a range of literary styles, including classic detective stories, psychological thrillers, and true crime accounts. The anthology is a testament to the genre's evolution, featuring standout pieces that have influenced the mystery genre on a global scale, reflecting the myriad ways in which suspense and intrigue can be articulated through prose. The authors represented in this collection are luminaries of their time, each contributing to the rich tapestry of British literature in their unique way. Figures such as Arthur Conan Doyle and Agatha Christie are household names, whose iconic characters and storytelling techniques have become benchmarks of the genre. The collection also brings to light the works of less widely known authors, whose contributions nonetheless played pivotal roles in shaping the genre's trajectory. Together, these authors works offer insight into the historical and cultural contexts that influenced British mystery literature, spanning the Victorian era, the Golden Age of detective fiction, and beyond. This anthology presents an invaluable opportunity for both aficionados and newcomers to delve into the depths of British mystery literature. Readers will find themselves transported across time and space, encountering a multiplicity of narrative voices and stylistic approaches. The 'BRITISH MYSTERIES Boxed Set' not only serves as an extensive resource for educational exploration but also as a portal to the thrilling, perplexing, and oftentimes shadowy world of mystery. It encourages a dialogue between the classic and the obscure, providing a comprehensive understanding of the genre's foundations and its enduring appeal.
Theorising Literary Islands is a literary and cultural study of both how and why the trope of the island functions within contemporary popular Robinsonade narratives. It traces the development of Western “islomania” – or our obsession with islands – from its origins in Daniel Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe right up to contemporary Robinsonade texts, focusing predominantly on American and European representations of fictionalized Pacific Island topographies in contemporary literature, film, television, and other media. Theorising Literary Islands argues that the ubiquity of island landscapes within the popular imagination belies certain ideological and cultural anxieties, and posits that the emergence of a Western popular culture tradition can largely be traced through the development of the Robinsonade genre, and through early European and American fascination with the Pacific region.
How can the small, isolated island of Bermuda help us to understand the early expansion of English America? First discovered by Europeans in 1505, the island of Bermuda had no indigenous population and no permanent European presence until the early seventeenth century. Settled five years after Virginia and eight years before Plymouth, Bermuda is a foundational site of English colonization. Its history reveals strikingly different paths of potential colonial development as a place where slave-owning puritan tobacco planters raised large families, engaged overseas markets, built ships, created a Christian commonwealth, hanged witches, wrestled to define racial difference, and welcomed godly pirates raiding Spanish America. In Isle of Devils, Isle of Saints, Michael J. Jarvis presents readers with a new narrative social and cultural history of Bermuda. Adopting a holistic, multidisciplinary approach that draws upon thirty years of research and archaeological fieldwork, Jarvis recounts Bermuda's turbulent, dynamic past from the Sea Venture's dramatic 1609 shipwreck through the 1684 dissolution of the Bermuda Company. He argues that the island was the first of England's colonies to produce a successful staple, form a stable community, turn a profit, transplant civic institutions, and harness bound African knowledge and labor. Bermuda was a tabula rasa that fired the imaginations of English thinkers aspiring to create an American utopia. It was also England's first puritan colony, founded as a covenanted Christian commonwealth in 1612 by self-consciously religious settlers who committed themselves to building a moral society. By the 1670s, Bermuda had become England's most densely populated possession and was poised to become an intercolonial maritime hub after freeing itself from its antiquated parent company. The first scholarly monograph in eighty years on this important, neglected colony's first century, Isle of Devils, Isle of Saints is a worthy prequel to In the Eye of All Trade, Jarvis's masterful first book. Revealing the dynamic interplay of race, gender, slavery, and environment at the dawn of English America, Jarvis's work challenges us to rethink how Europeans and Africans became distinctly American within the crucible of colonization.
