Set in the early 1500s in Renaissance Italy this novel is the story of Andrea Orsini, a peasant boy who rises far and becomes a secret agent for Cesare Borgia, who entrusts him with the most delicate political, military and romantic missions, Orson Welles was cast as Borgia, Tyronne Power as Orsini in the film version.

A new edition of the mid-20th century popular classic of a Spanish nobleman who accompanies Cortez to conquer Mexico.

“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...

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...

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...

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...

"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...

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...

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 t...

Judge Matthew Frole is a hated figurehead, a zealot of the code, intolerant, and feared.  When he's paralyzed from an unknown poison and eventually dies, his wife and children are all suspects  – of a heinous crime. Inspector Norse, first introduced to readers in Door of Death, returns with his expert knowledge and mental acumen to face a mare's nest of issues: the murder of Judge Frole, his deviant family, mistaken identities, and a growing voodoo culture―savage, element...