Books Scanned from the Originals into PDF format
Books are in the public domain. I will take checks or money orders as well.
Contents of Download:
The Three Apples (Arabian Nights, Volume 1) 1901 (In this tale, a fisherman discovers a heavy locked chest along the Tigris river and he sells it to the Abbasid Caliph, Harun al-Rashid, who then has the chest broken open only to find inside it the dead body of a young woman who was cut into pieces.)
Zadig by Voltaire 1910 (Written in 1748 this is one of the earliest examples of detective fiction which features a main character who performs feats of analysis.)
Bel and the Dragon (Jewish Apocryphal story, the world's Oldest Locked Room Mystery)
The Story of Susanna (Jewish Apocryphal story, the world's Oldest Courtroom Drama)
Eumenides by Aeschylus (2500 year old work with a Jury Trial)
The Trail of the Serpent by Mary E Braddon 1861 ("A strong argument can be made that Mary Elizabeth Braddon’s The Trail of the Serpent is a detective story — perhaps the first full-length one." Yahoo FictionMags)
Caleb Williams by William Godwin 1831 (considered by some to be the first crime novel)
Confessions of a Justified Sinner by James Hogg 1824 (part-gothic novel, part-psychological mystery, part-curio, part-metafiction, part-satire, part-case study of totalitarian thought, it can also be thought of as an early example of modern crime fiction)
The Bride of Lammermoor by Sir Walter Scott 1875 (fictional account of an actual murder)
Historical Mysteries by Andrew Lang 1904 (14 Mysteries)
The Works of Gaboriau 1908 (M.Lecoq - The Honor of the Name - The Lerouge Affair - File Number 113 - The Little Old Man of Batignolles)
Tales of Mystery and Imagination by Edgar Allen Poe 1908
The House of Seven Gables by Nathaniel Hawthorne 1894
Bleak House by Charles Dickens 1906
The Captain of the Polestar and other Tales by Arthur Conan Doyle 1912
The Doings of Raffles Haw by Arthur Conan Doyle 1892
Armadale by Wilkie Collins 1897
The Mysteries of Paris, Volume 1 by Eugene Sue 1845
The Mysteries of Paris, Volume 2 by Eugene Sue 1845
The Mysteries of Paris, Volume 3 by Eugene Sue 1845
The Wandering Jew by Eugene Sue 1889 Volume 1
The Wandering Jew by Eugene Sue 1889 Volume 2
The Wandering Jew by Eugene Sue 1889 Volume 3
History of the Thirteen by Honore be Balzac 1896
The Leo Frank Case - The Inside Story of Georgia's Greatest Murder Mystery 1913
The House Opposite - a Mystery (1902) by Elizabeth Kent
The Murder of Edwin Drood Recounted by PT Carden 1920
The mystery in the Drood Family by M Saunders 1914
Mystery of a Hansom Cab by Fergus Hume 1889
The Wrong Box by Robert Louis Stevenson 1911
The New Arabian Nights by Robert Louis Stevenson 1905
Adventures of Sherlock Holmes by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (Illustrated) 1892
The Return of Sherlock Holmes by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (Illustrated) 1905
The Hound of the Baskervilles by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle 1902
His Last Bow - a Reminiscence of Sherlock Holmes by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle 1917
The Chronicles of Martin Hewitt by Arthur Morrison 1896
The Red Triangle, Further chronicles of Martin Hewitt, Investigator by Arthur Morrison 1903
The Hole in the Wall by Arthur Morrison 1903
A Thief in the Night by EW Hornung 1905
The Experiences of Loveday Brooke, Lady Detective by C. L. Pirkis 1894(perhaps the first female sleuth)
Hilda Wade by Grant Allen (completed by Conan Doyle) 1900
Pudd'nhead Wilson by Mark Twain (uses Detective skills)
The Old Man in the Corner by Baronness Orczy 1908
The Mystery of the Green Ray by William Le Queux 1915
The Count's Chauffeur by William Le Queux 1908
The Passenger from Scotland Yard by HF Wood 1888
The Great Tontine by Hawley Smart 1882
The Red Thumb Mark by R. Austin Freeman 1908 (perhaps the first story involving fingerprint evidence)'
John Silence by Algernon Blackwood (psychic detective) 1915
The Triumph of Eugene Valmont by Robert Barr (early Poirot like detection) 1906
The Gentle Grafter by O. Henry 1919
The Beetle by Richard Marsh 1917 (a mix of horror and detective story)
The Childerbridge Mystery by Guy Boothby 1902
The Circular Staircase by Mary Roberts Rinehart 1908
The Man in lower Ten by Mary Roberts Rinehart 1909
In the Fog by Richard Harding Davis 1901
At the Villa Rose by A. E. W. Mason 1910
Arsène Lupin: An Adventure Story by by Maurice Leblanc 1909 (Arsene Lupin was France's Sherlock Holmes)
Arsene Lupin versus Herlock Sholmes (yes, it really is spelled that way in this book) by Maurice Leblanc 1910
The Hollow Needle by Maurice Leblanc (there's even a character in here named "Holmlock Shears) 1910
813 by Maurice Leblanc (Lupin’s greatest case...also in Kindle format)
Uncle Abner: Master of Mysteries by Melville Davidson Post 1918 (kindle format also) (considered by one blogger to be the finest collection of American detective stories since Poe)
Strange Schemes of Randolph Mason by Melville Davidson Post 1896
Terence O'Rourke, Gentleman Adventurer by LJ Vance 1905
The Lone Wolf by LJ Vance 1914 (probably the first gentleman crook)
The Achievements of Luther Trant 1910 (maybe the first psychological detective)
The Insidious Dr. Fu-Manchu by Sax Rohmer 1920
The Silent Bullet (Scientific Sleuth) by Arthur Reeve 1910
The Secret House by Edgar Wallace 1919
The Four Just Men by Edgar Wallace 1920 (the prototype of the modern thriller)
The Lodger by Marie Belloc Lowndes 1914 (A haunting mystery tale that revolves around the Jack the Ripper murders, this novel was the basis for several films)
The Red House Mystery by AA Milne 1922, a famous whodunit by the author of the Winnie the Pooh books.
Six Cent Sam (Mr. Dunton's Invention, Greaves' Disappearance, Raxworthy's Treasure, The John North Mystery, A Model Murder, The Symposium)
Twelve Scots Trials by William Roughead 1913 (The Parson of Spott, The doom of Lady Warriston, Touching one Major Weir, a warlock, The ordeal of Philip Stanfield, The ghost of Sergeant Davies, Katharine Nairn, Keith of Northfield, "The wife o'Denside", Concerning Christina Gilmour, The St. Fergus affair, The Dunecht mystery, The Arran Murder)
The Dark House - A Knot Unravelled by George Manville Fenn 1885
Library of the World's Best Mystery and Detective Stories, Volume 1 by Julian Hawthorne 1908
Library of the World's Best Mystery and Detective Stories, Volume 2 by Julian Hawthorne 1908
Library of the World's Best Mystery and Detective Stories, Volume 3 by Julian Hawthorne 1908
Library of the World's Best Mystery and Detective Stories, Volume 4 by Julian Hawthorne 1908
Library of the World's Best Mystery and Detective Stories, Volume 5 by Julian Hawthorne 1908
Library of the World's Best Mystery and Detective Stories, Volume 6 by Julian Hawthorne 1908 (101 Tales in 6 Volumes)
The Black Cap - New Stories of Murder and Mystery (14 stories)
The Mystery of the Boule Cabinet- a Detective Story by B Stevenson 1912
Masterpieces of Mystery, Volume 1 by Joseph French 1922
Masterpieces of Mystery, Volume 2 by Joseph French 1922
Masterpieces of Mystery, Volume 3 by Joseph French 1922
Masterpieces of Mystery, Volume 4 by Joseph French 1922 (About 36 tales in all)
The Innocence of Father Brown by GKC 1911
The Man Who Was Thursday - A Nightmare by GKC 1908
Trent's Last Case by EC Bentley 1913
A Mediaeval Burglary by TF Tout 1916
Satan Absolved - a Victorian mystery (poem) by WS Blunt 1899
The Great Crime of 1860 by Joseph Whitaker Stapleton (this is now the basis of a new bestseller called the Suspicions of Mr Whicher)
The Leavenworth Case: a Lawyer's Story by Anna Katharine Green 1906
The Filigree Ball, being a full and true account of the solution of the mystery concerning the Jeffrey-Moore Affair by Anna Katharine Green 1903
A Strange Disappearance by Anna Katharine Green 1879
The Woman in the Alcove by Anna Katharine Green 1906
The Amethyst Box by Anna Katharine Green 1905
The Circular Study by Anna Katharine Green 1905
The House of the Whispering Pines by Anna Katharine Green
Room Number 3 and other Mystery Stories by Anna Katharine Green 1913
THE MILL MYSTERY BY ANNA KATHARINE GREEN
The Golden Slipper and other Problems for Violet Strange by Anna Katharine Green 1915
True Stories of Crime from the District Attorney's Office by Arthur Cheney Train 1908
Contents: THE WOMAN IN THE CASE, FIVE HUNDRED MILLION DOLLARS, THE LOST STRADIVARIUS, THE LAST OF THE WIRE-TAPPERS, THE FRANKLIN SYNDICATE, A STUDY IN FINANCE, THE "DUC DE NEVERS", A FINDER OF MISSING HEIRS, A MURDER CONSPIRACY, A FLIGHT INTO TEXAS, A CASE OF CIRCUMSTANTIAL EVIDENCE
Bucholz and the Detectives by Allan Pinkerton 1880
The Maurice Mystery by John Esten Cooke 1885
The Big Bow Mystery by Israel Zangwill 1895 (The Big Bow Mystery was the first locked room murder novel. It has been almost continuously in print since 1891 and has been used as the basis for three commercial films.)
The Hunt Ball Mystery by William Magnay 1918
The Dark House - A Knot Unravelled by George Manville Fenn 1885
The Mystery of the Yellow Room by Gaston Leroux in wordpard and text format
(In 1898, Elisabeth, Empress of Austria-Hungary, was on the quay at Lake Geneva awaiting the steam ferry to Montreux when, without warning or apparent motive, the anarchist Luigi Lucheni plunged a needle file into her heart. Because of the very thin nature of the wound, the Empress did not realise that she had been fatally injured and walked unaided to her cabin, where she collapsed and soon died.[citation needed] It is not known whether she locked the cabin door behind her - which would have created the appearance of a locked room murder. At least one prominent French locked room expert, Roland Lacourbe, believes that this notorious event was the inspiration for Gaston Leroux's The Mystery of the Yellow Room)
Hide and Seek; Or, The Mystery of Mary Grice: A Novel by Wilkie Collins 1898
The mystery of Edwin Drood by Charles Dickens 1870
Famous Mysteries: Curious and Fantastic Riddles of Human Life by John Elfreth Watkins - 1919
(The Strange Case of Marie Lafarge - The most baffling of all French murder mysteries involved the daughter of one of Napoleon's favorite officers, Colonel Cappelle, of the Old Guard. This beautiful girl was also the granddaughter of the famous Duke of Orleans (Philippe Egalite) and of his companion and housekeeper, Mme. de Genlis.)
The Woman in White by Wilkie Collins 1893
(The Woman in White is an epistolary novel written by Wilkie Collins in 1859, serialized in 1859-1860, and first published in book form in 1860. It is considered to be among the first mystery novels and is widely regarded as one of the first (and finest) in the genre of 'sensation novels'.)
The Moonstone by Wilkie Collins 1874 (considered the first detective novel in the English language)
No Name by Wilkie Collins 1893
(The story begins in 1846, at Combe-Raven in West Somersetshire, the country residence of the happy Vanstone family. When Andrew Vanstone is killed suddenly in an accident and his wife follows shortly thereafter, it is revealed that they were not married at the time of their daughters' births, making their daughters "Nobody's Children" in the eyes of English law and robbing them of their inheritance. Andrew Vanstone's elder brother Michael gleefully takes possession of his brother's fortune, leaving his nieces to make their own way in the world. Norah, the elder sister, accepts her misfortune gracefully, but the headstrong Magdalen is determined to have her revenge. Using her dramatic talent and assisted by wily swindler Captain Wragge, Magdalen plots to regain her rightful inheritance.)
The Ghost's Touch by Wilkie Collins (part of "I Say No"; Or, The Love-letter Answered: And Other Stories by Wilkie Collins) 1893
Masterpieces of Mystery by Joseph Lewis French 1920
Mysteries of Police and Crime: A General Survey of Wrongdoing and Its Pursuit by Arthur Griffiths 1899
Twenty-five Years of Detective Life by Jerome Caminada 1895
Fifty Years a Detective by Thomas Furlong 1912
Why Some Men Kill; Or, Murder Mysteries Revealed by George A. Thacher 1919
About the Beetle:
ReplyDeleteThe Beetle (1897) tells the story of a fantastical creature, "born of neither god nor man," with supernatural and hypnotic powers, who stalks British politician Paul Lessingham through fin de siècle London in search of vengeance for the defilement of a sacred tomb in Egypt. In imitation of various popular fiction genres of the late nineteenth century, Marsh unfolds a tale of terror, late imperial fears, and the "return of the repressed," through which the crisis of late imperial Englishness is revealed. This Broadview edition includes a critical introduction and a rich selection of historical documents that situate the novel within the contexts of fin de siècle London, England's interest and involvement in Egypt, the emergence of the New Woman, and contemporary theories of mesmerism and animal magnetism.
"The Beetle has it all: it's at once a ripping gothic yarn, a fin de siècle melodrama, and a document of the fears and obsessions of late imperial culture. Julian Wolfreys' introduction is excellent, bringing lots of fascinating material to bear on the novel and doing so clearly and persuasively. He makes you want to read it." - Jonathan Dollimore, author of Sexual Dissidence and Death, Desire and Loss in Western Culture
"The Beetle is a great read. As Julian Wolfreys' admirably learned, perceptive, and comprehensive introduction, appendices, and notes show, it is also a wonderful assemblage of many motifs from popular culture at the fin de siècle. I enthusiastically recommend this book." - J. Hillis Miller, University of California, Irvine
"For far too long we have had to do without an edition of one of the key best-selling novels of the fin de siècle, Richard Marsh's The Beetle. Broadview has once again come to the rescue with a new edition of this lurid classic that at one time outsold Dracula. Featuring useful appendices and with an extensive introduction by Julian Wolfreys, this edition will be coveted by everyone interested in late Victorian fiction." - Nicholas Daly, Trinity College, Dublin --Nicholas Daly, Trinity College, Dublin
The lamented Sherlock Holmes has bequeathed to us a number of successors, of the majority of whom it may be safely averred that they are unworthy to brush their great exemplar's boots. But in that majority we shall certainly not include the beautiful and accomplished " Loveday Brooke, ladydetective." Though Mr. Pirkis falls short of Mr. Conan Doyle in literary skill, he has almost as keen an eye as that gentleman for the heart of a plot, and he can construct a problem of crime and its detection with a very considerable amount of skill. There are many good stories in " Loveday Brooke," and they are all worked out with that conscientious regard for detail which is even more necessary in detective stories than in others. Some of the "mysteries " unveiled by Loveday Brooke are almost as ingenious and unexpected in their solution as any of those unriddled by Sherlock Holmes, and for those who like stories of this class we can honestly recommend the present volume as one that will well repay a perusal.~ Article in The Speaker 1894
ReplyDeleteSome Inconsistencies of Sherlock Holmes, article in The Bookman 1902
ReplyDeleteA recent number of The Independent some contains a paper on inconsistencies of Sherlock Holmes, in Sherlock which the claim is made Holmes that his creation is a distinct addition to English literature, and that the stories in which he appears are better than the stories by Gaboriau and Poe, with which they have been often compared. The reason for this is found in the fact that the human element enters very decidedly into the Sherlock Holmes cycle, whereas it has little to do with the narratives about M. Lecoq and M. Dupin. Gaboriau's detective stories are, indeed, mere Chinese puzzles. Poe's are mathematical problems, or perhaps we should say problems in chess. Conan Doyle, however, has made us feel an interest in Sherlock Holmes, and in Watson, and in Gregson and Lestrade and Mycroft Holmes as human beings with very distinct and definite characteristics.
There is one little inconsistency in the portraiture of Holmes which we are surprised that no one yet has mentioned. In A Study in Scarlet Watson catalogues Holmes's limitations, and among other things says that his knowledge of literature was nil. "Of contemporary literature, philosophy and politics he appeared to know next to nothing. Upon my quoting Thomas Carlyle, he inquired in the naivest way who he might be and what he had done." This is pretty specific as a statement, and therefore one is naturally surprised to find in the very next book (The Sign of the Four) Sherlock Holmes recommending Watson to study Winwood Reade's Martyrdom of Man (page 26), citing French aphorisms (page 74), quoting Goethe in the original German (page 77). referring to Jean Paul in relation to Carlyle! (page 92), reverting once more to Winwood Reade (page 136), and winding up at last with another bit of Goethe (page 193). Elsewhere he shows a familiarity with George Sand, and in "A Case of Identity" gets in both Horace and Hafiz in a single sentence. Indeed, in the matter of quotations and allusions, we think that the later Sherlock Holmes could run Mr. Mabie pretty hard.
We believe that the interest of the reading public in Sherlock Holmes is increasing rather than diminishing as time goes on. One proof of this is found in the fact that Dr. Doyle has been absolutely forced to write another Holmes story, and that the serial publication of it in the Strand has made the issues of that magazine jump to thirty thousand copies beyond its normal circulation. We are reading The Hound of the Baskervilles ourselves, and it is the first story that we have read in serial form for more than ten years. We should like to publish some guesses here as to how it is going to turn out, but we prudently abstain. The thing indeed is growing so fearfully complex as to seem scarcely to admit of any solution whatever; yet experience has shown that when the explanation does come, it will be so absurdly simple as to make one fairly gasp at not having seen it from the beginning. The Strand, by the way, is publishing the best short stories that we have lately come across. The Christmas number alone contained two gems, and we recommend everybody to buy it and to read "Battery Fifteen" and "The Meeting-place of the Three Friends." The latter contains a theme which, from the time of Count Fathom's adventure down to ten years ago, was unfailing in its interest, but which of late has been lost sight of—the lonely inn where travellers are murdered.