To every man, joy and grief before night.~Old Norse proverbCount and Countess Falke of Falkenborg are deeply in debt and are about to lose the ancient but respectably shabby family castle when they meet Patricia Morier, a wealthy American heiress, who feels a tingle along her veins when she first sets eyes on the passionate and masterful Count and instantly falls in love. Since the Count doesn't resist their mutual attraction too energetically, Patricia promptly buys the dilapidate...

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...

Peter Court is summoned to Dunbar Manor (the stuff in the house is worth millions) at the request of the lady of the house, Nina Galliard, who submitted to an affair with an unscrupulous Italian society man in a moment of rattle-brained, life-thirsty longing to experience what was missing in her marriage, and now finds herself being blackmailed.Nina Galliard's husband is 20 years her senior, and is so stuffy, conceited, rigid, humorless, controlling, and hypocritical (to name a few...

Occupants of Greyhouse are slowly and irrevocably being overtaken by an invading current that cannot be expelled. A force that causes a heightening of every mental and sensual power with a corresponding dwindling of all moral scruples. Scary.Dr. Richard Ames is unaware of this danger when he accepts an invitation to visit Greyhouse in order to observe Celia Ballion, it's mistress, who appears to be going crackers. Is it the house that is driving her mad or her husband, Francis Ball...

“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 slav...

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 w...

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, Cheva...

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 ...

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...

"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 daughter...

 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...