Showing results by narrator "Harry Shaw" in All Categories

The Continental Detective Agency's Operative is sent on a case to Personville. The locals call their town "Poisonville," and the Op would soon find out why as the bodies start piling up. Dirty cops, gang wars, floozies, bootleggers, and hit men are all in Dashiell Hammett's first full-length novel featuring the Continental Op, the original hard-boiled private detective.

First published in 1897, The Nigger of the Narcissus is the story of a black West Indian, James Wait, who signs aboard the Narcissus, a merchant sailing ship on a journey from Bombay to London. Wait almost immediately becomes ill and bedridden for the remainder of the journey, splitting the crew into factions. It has long been considered one of Joseph Conrad's best and most important works.

They were four of the greatest minds in the Universe: two men, two women, lost in an experimental spaceship billions of parsecs from home. And as they mentally charted the Cosmos to find their way back to earth, their own loves and hates were as startling as the worlds they encountered.

Two planets are about to engage in a nuclear war that will destroy one of them. Millions will perish. Brion Brandd, who lives on neither planet, has been recruited by the Cultural Relationships Foundation to stop the war from happening. He is the only person in the galaxy who can do it, but can he?

Mysterious deaths and disappearances on a doomed ship on its final voyage. Another ship appears out of nowhere, then vanishes. A single survivor of the Mortzestus gives his account of terror and haunting on the high seas in this classic tale by master writer William Hope Hodgson.

Tara of Helium, daughter of John Carter, becomes lost in an unknown area of Mars when her single-seat flier is caught in a rare Martian hurricane. She is first captured by the bizarre and hideous Kaldanes, and then the brutal Manatorians, for whom she is the prize in a tournament of Martian chess, jetan, that is played by live game pieces, and to the death!

Bigger, newer, faster. Demolish and rebuild, then demolish and rebuild again. Smoke, soot, and noise are the badges of prosperity, and growth is for growth's sake.

Ninety-Three is the story of the Marquis de Lantenac, an exiled French nobleman snuck back into France to raise a Royalist army which will make the English invasion possible, Gauvain, Lantenac's great-nephew leading the Republican army to thwart him, and Cimourdain, a former priest and Gauvain's teacher and mentor, tasked to keep Gauvain on the right path. And in the end, who will face the guillotine?

It started as an investigation of a simple insurance claim, but soon the Continental Op is embroiled in murders, narcotics, a religious cult, and a supposed family curse. No one is who they seem, and the bodies continue to pile up.

During an expedition in the Canary Islands, an archeologist discovers a cave containing tablets with unknown writing. When translated, they tell the tale of decline and fall of Atlantis, which for centuries had been the center of the world. The tablets' author, Deucalion, chronicles the usurpation of Atlantis' throne by force, the oppressive rule of Empress Phorenice, the inevitable rebellion and ultimate destruction of Atlantis, the Lost Continent.

The Masters had ruled all space with an unconquerable iron fist. But the Masters were gone. And this new, young race who came now to take their place - could they hope to defeat the ancient Enemy of All?

The absentmindedness. The nonsensical ramblings. The blank stares. Ward Ayers, physically disabled and confined to his Jersey Shore home, can only watch in dismay as his beloved wife Malina slips further and further into dementia. But when Ward catches a glimpse of a strange appendage in place of Malina’s tongue, he fears the woman he’s loved for half a century isn’t succumbing to Alzheimer’s but transforming into something...not quite human.

In the aftermath of World War II, a funeral home mortician by the name of John Cave has a revelation about the nature of death: Death is peace; death is nothing to be feared. This simple concept will evolve into an atheistic religion known as Cavism, which will displace Christianity as the dominant western faith. But Cavism has a dark past, and even more ominous future.

No human had ever landed on the hidden planet of Arisia. A mysterious space barrier turned back both men and ships. Then the word came to Earth; "Go to Arisia!" Samms of the Galactic Patrol went—and came back with the Lens, the strange device that gave its wearer powers no man had ever possessed before. Samms knew the price of that power would be high. But even he had no idea of the ultimate cost, and the weird destiny waiting for the First Lensman.

"Storm" Cloud, the only man who could destroy the ravening nuclear vortices that struck and killed at random. The Vortex Blaster was also the name of Cloud's space-ship, an incredibly advanced arsenal of modern science, in which Cloud and his crew of colorful space castaways hunted the source of the lethal vortices, battled a criminal mastermind, developed unheard-of sciences, and made an ultimate discovery of shattering importance to the destiny of the Universe!

Alan Green, space-wrecked on a populated but backward planet, has survived for two years as a slave with no hope of rescue. Then, one day, news of spacemen landing in a remote city gives him his only chance of ever returning home. All he has to do is escape slavery, travel thousands of miles, free the spacers from prison before they are executed, and get aboard their spaceship.

The American War is ended, and the intrepid artillerists of the Baltimore Gun Club have nothing left to do. So why not build a giant cannon and shoot three men to the moon?

The murder of Arlis Perry inside Stanford Memorial Church flummoxed detectives for nearly 44 years. Then the case ended with a bang. Early on the morning of Oct. 13, 1974, a security guard found the body of 19-year-old Arlis Perry underneath a pew inside the historic church at the heart of Stanford's campus. The deeply religious wife of a Stanford sophomore, Arlis had gone to pray in the sanctuary late the night before.

Under the double moons of Barsoom, an invisible flier sped to the mysterious city of Jahar where Sanoma Tora, the kidnapped princess of Helium, had been taken. Hadron of Hastor was at the controls, hatching a rescue plan that required unusual daring and great ingenuity. For invisibility alone was not a great enough weapon against "The Death." And should Hadron succeed, what fate would await him at the hands of the madman whose very genius had created the means of that rescue?

War and Peace is rightly considered to be one of the most important books ever written. Leo Tolstoy's epic novel chronicles the Napoleonic Wars from the viewpoint of five noble Russian families: Rostov, Bolkonsky, Bezukhov, Drubetskoy and Kuragin. The main story begins in 1805 with Napoleon's impending invasion of Austria, and ends with his disastrous retreat from Moscow in 1813, moving deftly between geopolitics, military strategy, family alliances, religion and philosophy as the men and women of these families try to survive and get ahead.