“But when nothing spiritual remains, what is left to man but the worship of vanity? Lord Vanity rules our present world.”Richard Morandi (also known as Richard Hammond) is the illegitimate son of an English lord who lives in Venice with his ballerina mother. He makes his living as an actor and musician, but when he stabs a Venetian of greater rank in self-defense – an act considered both cowardly and unmannerly – he is condemned to life as a galley slave and is severed from all he ...

A young Frenchman and a young Englishwoman are caught in the wild plots and counterplots surrounding the Bourbon conspiracy against Francis I in 16th century France. Complete with rich pageantry, a jealousy-maddened king, an evil nobleman, Sire Francois the Sorcerer, wolf hounds and mad gallops across the French countryside, master story teller and scholar, Samuel Shellabarger has once again created an adventure and suspense story that never falters.Shellabarger's style of writing ...

The last gift given Lady Blanche from her beloved father as a token of his love was a silver girdle – “wrought with figures men and beasts” – to be worn by one who knows lonely sorrow and the pain of toil, but also granting the strength to endure and the right of lordship. Lady Blanche dons the silver girdle after discovering that her new husband, Count Raoul de Roche-Bernard, has not been true to his vows and has betrayed her. Though unhappy in her marriage, when the Count leaves for the ...

A Study in Fading Chivalry by a Professor of History at Princeton University.Pierre Bayard belonged to a generation of men so fully absorbed in the sport of war that decades of their lives were often spent in battle following the whims of kings whom they believed acted on their behalf in an evil world. Their ideals were few and clear: duty, the service of honor, and the responsibility of noblesse―nothing more.In the long history of mounted warfare, Chevalier Bayard, a homme...

Maryland fried chicken and cream gravy, asparagus on toast, telephone peas, hearts of lettuce with French dressing, cream cheese balls, and meringue with whipped cream, all freshly prepared by Mrs. Lee, the new manager of the Montenera Inn - an old tavern with native stone and grumbly walls and an evil reputation. Needless to say, the indomitable Mrs. Lee is not interested in nonsense of that sort.Recently widowed, Mrs. Lee and her spunky daughter, Ann, and young son, Buck, are cou...

In underworld parlance, the period between midnight and four in the morning.“A little blarney is the lubricant of life.”Patrick Connelly, a rookie cop with an irreverent attitude and a swell Irish brogue, gets a tough assignment to get the goods on a big dope ring in spite of a doubting chief who believes he's giving the case to an ignoramus with no self-control. Connelly's orders land him on the estate of Bertrand Trenis, where he finds himself surrounded by a slew of susp...

Jacklin Baron, an artist of great talent, temperament, and beauty, marries an older man of character and refinement never suspecting that the real love of her life, restless and hungry as the sea, would appear on a trip to Paris and awaken her heart, challenging the path she's chosen and changing her life forever. Published in 1929, this early romance written by renown biographer and novelist, Samuel Shellabarger, is dark and sinuous, gradually capturing the attention of the reader as the ...

For five generations, dating from 1753, the ancestral home of the Tolbecken family had grown and the land had dwindled; the house had become a mansion and the land a town block. By the end of the 19th century, not only the land, but the fortune of the Tolbecken family was diminishing, and, fiber by fiber, the roots were snapping, as the tree that supported their old life began toppling toward the earth.The patriarch of the family, Judge Rufus Tolbecken, has pinned a great deal of h...

Lord Chesterfield was an immortal of his age, synonymous with the art of gracious living and representative of his world at its best in point of culture, international relations, and the social arts. Yet, today's literary world knows him through an extraordinary collection of letters to his illegitimate son―letters of admonition, encouragement and advice, often two thousand words long, revolving around the love and ambitions Chesterfield held for the boy himself as well as letters to those...

Change the title of this book to Indiana Joan and the Desert Lion and you will have a better idea about the hijinks awaiting the reader in this strictly old-fashioned, but thoroughly engaging and light-headed romantic adventure set in the Arabian desert. The heroine, Eolia (not Joan) is a gorgeous, cigarette-smoking, adventure-loving, straight-talking daredevil, who neatly dodges marriage to a Methodist minister back home in Kansas (not Indiana) by accepting an invitation to travel to Bagd...

Dr. Miles Le Breton is called to the remote mountain home of the Dinsmore family in order to look into the mysterious attempts on the life of an old college friend. As the car lurches over the treacherous road leading to the Dinsmore residence, the fall breeze turns into a cold winter wind and Dr. Le Breton begins to feel a hostile and malevolent presence about to engulf him.Dr. Le Breton's well-liked and good-tempered friend, Fred Morrison is a guest at the Dinsmore home and is en...

"Well, well, it's very mystifying. But then, murders ought to be like that, oughtn't they?"The reefs, lonely, vast, and menacing, made a thunderous sound as the surf rose and fell ― a cry that mounted “ shriek upon shriek, as of some tortured devil, lifting and quavering and dying away.” “That's them,” residents of Clearport would say. “Hear 'em? The Five Sisters.”Retired sea captain George M. Gleasing named his three daughters after the reefs and then proceeded to raise th...