by Guuy Boothby (Author), Colin Heston (Introduction)

In this combined edition, readers are presented with two quintessential examples of the late Victorian "shocker" from the pen of Guy Boothby, a writer who defined the era’s taste for fast-paced, sensational mystery. The first novel in this volume, The Mystery of the Clasped Hands, originally published in 1901 by F.V. White & Co., serves as a dark exploration of the macabre and the forensic. The story begins with a truly visceral hook: a wedding gift that contains the severed, preserved hands of a woman. It is a classic example of the Victorian obsession with reputation and the legal system, as the protagonist, Godfrey Tring, finds himself trapped in a web of circumstantial evidence. Boothby expertly depicts how quickly a gentleman’s life can be dismantled by a single accusation, making the legal system itself a source of mounting dread. This work highlights Boothby's skill in using sensational artifacts to drive a plot that forces the reader to question whether innocence alone is enough to survive a vengeful conspiracy.
Published just a year later in 1902, The Childerbridge Mystery shifts the focus toward the "sins of the father" trope and the intersection of colonial wealth and domestic stability. When wealthy Australian squatter William Standerton returns to England to establish himself at Childerbridge Manor, he brings with him a fortune that carries the shadow of his past. The mystery is not merely a puzzle of logic but a psychological examination of how the "New World" of the colonies—often viewed by Victorians as a place of lawless opportunity—inevitably catches up with the refined "Old World" of the English gentry. Boothby uses the tranquil setting of a country estate to highlight the tension between a man’s desire for a respectable future and the inescapable reach of his history.
Bound together, these two novels illustrate the common threads of Boothby’s literary legacy: the fragility of social identity, the weight of previous associations, and a relentless narrative pace that bridges the gap between 19th-century Gothic horror and the structured detective fiction of the 20th century. Whether dealing with a grisly forensic artifact or a haunted family legacy, Boothby provided his audience with a perfect blend of the familiar and the shocking. This edition serves as a testament to a writer who, though often overlooked today, once stood as a master of the mystery genre, capturing the collective anxieties of a world on the brink of change.

By Arthur Train. Introduction by Graeme R. Newman

The transition of the American legal system from the rough-and-tumble nineteenth century into the more structured, investigative era of the early twentieth century is nowhere more vividly captured than in Arthur Train’s True Stories of Crime from the District Attorney’s Office. As an Assistant District Attorney for New York County during a period of rapid urbanization and social upheaval, Train occupied a unique vantage point that allowed him to witness the collision of old-world criminal archetypes with the emerging complexities of modern life. This collection of narratives serves as a clinical yet deeply compelling autopsy of the era’s most notorious legal battles, offering readers a rare glimpse into the machinery of justice at a time when forensic science was in its infancy and the power of the prosecutor’s office was expanding into new, uncharted territories.

Train’s work is particularly significant for its early exploration of what would eventually be termed white-collar crime. While the public imagination of 1908 was often captured by tales of blunt violence and physical daring, Train directs his focus toward the "super-criminal"—the manipulative mastermind who utilized the administrative and financial structures of the city as their primary tools of exploitation. Through these accounts, we see the emergence of a new kind of threat that required a equally sophisticated response from the legal establishment. Train describes a landscape where economic desperation and social isolation were the primary drivers of criminal behavior, yet he also highlights the systemic vulnerabilities that allowed institutional fraud to flourish. By documenting these cases, he provides a foundation for the study of victimology, illustrating how the legal system often struggled to keep pace with the evolving ingenuity of those who sought to undermine it.

Beyond their historical and legal value, these stories possess a narrative vitality that reflects the tension between the sensationalism of early tabloid journalism and the rigorous demands of the courtroom. Train’s prose is informed by his experiences on the front lines of the District Attorney’s office, where the outcome of a trial often hinged as much on rhetorical flair and personal intuition as it did on physical evidence. In revisiting these cases today, we are invited to consider the persistent challenges of defining and delivering justice within a complex bureaucracy. Train does not shy away from the moral ambiguities of his profession, and his reflections on the nature of guilt and the limitations of the law remain strikingly relevant. This volume stands not only as a record of forgotten crimes but as an enduring meditation on the social fabric of a metropolis in flux, capturing the moment when the modern era of criminal justice truly began.

Read-Me.Org Inc. 2026. 184p.

By S. Carleton. Introduction by Colin Heston.

The 1920 publication of The La Chance Mine Mystery by S. Carleton, the pseudonym for Susan Morrow Jones, represents a pivotal moment in the evolution of the North American thriller. By weaving the Victorian Gothic tradition into the rugged landscape of the Canadian wilderness, Carleton created a narrative that serves as a sophisticated precursor to modern psychological suspense. In contemporary literature, this work remains highly relevant as a masterclass in atmospheric isolation, where the "frozen North" acts not merely as a setting but as a primary antagonist. This technique mirrors modern "Environment as Character" tropes seen in current survivalist fiction, reminding readers that the primitive fear of being trapped in a vast, uncaring wilderness transcends technological advancement and remains a powerful literary hook.

From a criminological perspective, the novel offers a compelling study of frontier anomie. In the absence of formal state policing, the isolated mine becomes a vacuum where white-collar crimes like corporate fraud and title theft inevitably devolve into violence. This lack of social control forces characters into a state of informal justice, predating modern investigative frameworks through "bushcraft forensics." In an era before chemical analysis or DNA, Carleton’s characters rely on environmental reconstruction—analyzing the crust of snowdrifts or the set of a footprint—to determine the timing of a crime. This reliance on natural preservation within a crime scene provides a proto-historical look at how physical environment shapes both criminal opportunity and the subsequent forensic analysis used to untangle it.

The social dynamics of the mine also provide deep insights into early 20th-century victimology. Carleton highlights a hierarchy of vulnerability, focusing on how marginalized laborers and isolated individuals are targeted by those with institutional power. In this setting, victims are often chosen specifically because their disappearances can be conveniently blamed on the harsh climate rather than foul play. This exploration of "invisible victims" and structural exploitation resonates with modern social justice themes regarding labor and corporate overreach. By subverting the "hard-boiled" male tropes of her time, Carleton used her unique perspective as a female author to provide an emotional depth and keen eye for power imbalances that continue to inform the DNA of modern suspense and elevated horror.

Read-Me.Org Inc. New York-Philadelphia-Australia. 2026. 192p.

By ROBERT W. CHAMBERS. Introduction by Colin Heston

When The King in Yellow appeared in 1895, it slipped quietly into a literary world already saturated with decadence, occult enthusiasms, and the fin-de-siècle’s peculiar blend of anxiety and intoxication. Yet Robert W. Chambers’s strange mosaic of tales—united by a fictional forbidden play that unhinges those who read it—swiftly distinguished itself from its contemporaries. In the decades since, this slim volume has grown into one of the foundational works of the American weird tradition, prefiguring H. P. Lovecraft, influencing generations of modern horror writers, and unexpectedly resurfacing in the twenty-first century as a cultural touchstone.

What makes Chambers’s book so unusual is its deliberate blurring of boundaries: between reality and hallucination, sanity and delusion, art and contagion. The collection opens with “The Repairer of Reputations,” a tale set in an imagined New York of 1920—an unsettling mixture of futurism, authoritarian regulation, and manic delusion. It is here that the mysterious “King in Yellow” first exerts his influence. The narrator, a deeply unreliable figure, is convinced of his noble birthright and guided by an enigmatic “repairer” who traffics in scandal and blackmail. The narrative unfolds as a case study in self-deception, political paranoia, and the fragility of identity—yet nothing in the story is easily dismissed as mere fantasy. Reality itself buckles under the weight of the narrator’s convictions.

The Mask, perhaps the most haunting of the early tales, shifts the setting to the Latin Quarter of Paris, where art, science, and obsession converge. The grotesque beauty of Boris Yvain’s alchemical solution—capable of transforming living beings into flawless marble—creates a collision of aesthetics and mortality that typifies Chambers’s most powerful work. The story’s dreamlike quality reflects the decadent movement’s fascination with artificiality, transformation, and the erotic pull of the inanimate. Throughout, the shadow of the forbidden play hovers, never fully seen but always felt.

Other sections—“In the Court of the Dragon,” “The Yellow Sign,” and additional sketches—extend the book’s architecture of dread. Chambers never provides the text of the play itself, only its aftershocks, its “second act” whispered about as a psychic abyss from which there is no return. This structural absence is one of the book’s great innovations: The horror lies not in spectacle but in suggestion, in the void where meaning should be. The King in Yellow, the Pallid Mask, and the Lost City of Carcosa are not fully explained but instead exist as fragments of a mythology the reader assembles intuitively, as though the stories themselves are encoded with an infectious idea.

The power of The King in Yellow endures because it is not simply a collection of supernatural tales—it is a meditation on contagion: of ideas, of aesthetics, of inner instability. Chambers’s fictional play does not merely frighten; it corrodes. It reveals hidden fractures in those who encounter it and amplifies their darkest impulses. In this sense, the book mirrors its age. The 1890s were marked by the collapse of old certainties, the rise of new sciences of the mind, and an artistic fascination with decadence, degeneration, and the beautiful ruin of the self. Chambers captured that atmosphere with uncanny acuity.

Today, amidst digital conspiracies, fractured identities, and a renewed cultural fascination with alternate realities, The King in Yellow feels more relevant than ever. It invites the reader to step into a world where truth is unstable, where art is dangerous, and where the boundaries of perception are mercilessly thin. The book’s whispered mythology has become larger than the text itself, seeding later works, reappearing in unexpected media, and reminding us that the most enduring horrors are those we cannot fully see.

To open these stories is to risk a glimpse of the Yellow Sign—a symbol of beauty, madness, and forbidden knowledge. Chambers offers no assurances. He only extends an invitation to enter Carcosa, where twin suns sink over black waters and where, once the play begins, the mask cannot be removed.

Read-Me.Org Inc. New York-Philadelphia-Australia. 2026 p.209

By E. Phillips Oppenheim. Introduction by Colin Heston.

When E. Phillips Oppenheim published The Golden Beast in 1926, he was already firmly established as the "Prince of Storytellers," a title earned by his uncanny ability to blend high-society glamour with the cold mechanics of crime. This novel, however, stands as a particularly striking waypoint in the history of the genre, moving beyond the simple "whodunnit" to explore the darker, more systemic shadows of the human psyche. For the modern reader, and especially for the student of criminology, the book serves as a fascinating precursor to contemporary theories on the intersection of power, wealth, and deviance.

The narrative significance of the work lies primarily in its early exploration of the "Power Elite" as a distinct criminal class. Long before modern criminology formalized the study of white-collar crime and corporate sociopathy, Oppenheim was illustrating how extreme financial leverage could create a vacuum of accountability. The "Beast" of the title is not merely a man, but a symbol of the socio-economic predator who views the law as an inconvenience to be bypassed rather than a boundary to be respected. This mirrors modern discussions on "moral insanity" in elite spaces, where the perpetrator’s perceived status grants them a psychological immunity to the social contract.

Furthermore, The Golden Beast captures a pivotal moment in forensic evolution. Written during a decade of rapid scientific advancement, the plot reflects the transition from Victorian-era intuition to the more clinical, methodical approach of forensic science. Oppenheim flirts with themes of biological erasure and chemical disposal, tapping into the 1920s anxiety that science, in the wrong hands, could facilitate the "perfect crime." It also ventures into early criminal profiling, as the narrative shifts focus from the physical evidence of the crime to the warped mental architecture of the criminal.

By examining the concept of the "disappearing victim," Oppenheim also prefigures modern victimology. He explores how a sophisticated offender can manipulate social structures to make an individual vanish not just physically, but legally and socially. This focus on the systemic nature of crime—how it is hidden, how it is financed, and how it is rationalized by the perpetrator—makes the novel an enduring piece of literature that remains relevant to our current understanding of the psychology of the super-criminal. It is a cautionary tale of a world where the law is always one step behind the man with the means to reinvent it.

Read-Me.Org Inc. New York-Philadelphia-Australia. 2026. p.255.

By Edgar Wallace. Introduction by Colin Heston

In Silinski – Master Criminal, Wallace constructs the titular character not as a creature of impulse, but as a precursor to the modern white-collar sociopath, defined by what can be termed "organized intellect." Unlike the flamboyant villains of Gothic tradition, Silinski’s power is derived from his mastery of systems—legal, financial, and social. He treats crime as a rigorous administrative discipline, employing a level of detachment that mirrors the very corporate structures he seeks to exploit. This intellectualization of villainy creates a chilling paradox: Silinski is most dangerous when he is at his most rational. Wallace highlights this by contrasting the frantic, reactive energy of the police with Silinski’s own glacial composure. His "mastery" is not merely a matter of successful theft, but of an informational asymmetry where he remains several steps ahead of the law by treating the world as a chessboard of predictable variables. Consequently, the tension of the novel arises not from the "whodunnit" element, but from the terrifying efficiency of a mind that has completely divorced morality from logic.
The conclusion of the narrative solidifies the "super-criminal" archetype not as a mere antagonist, but as a necessary mirror to the evolution of the modern state. By weaving together the threads of bureaucratic mastery and economic manipulation, Wallace posits that the transition of the criminal from the physical to the cerebral reflects a broader societal shift toward abstraction. Silinski represents the dark potential of the burgeoning 20th century: the realization that true power is no longer found in the strength of one's arm, but in the reach of one's influence over the systems that sustain public life. As the novel draws to its close, the resolution of the plot serves as a pyrrhic victory for the law, acknowledging that while one man may be stopped, the systemic vulnerabilities he exposed remain inherent to the fabric of global society. Ultimately, Silinski – Master Criminalstands as a definitive exploration of the modern villain, suggesting that in an age of complexity, the most profound threat to order is the very intelligence required to maintain it.

Read-Me.Org Inc. New York-Philadelphia-Australia. 2026. 188p.

By Walter Besant. Introduction by Colin Heston.

First published in 1893, The Ivory Gate stands among the late novels of Walter Besant, a writer whose career was defined by a sustained engagement with the moral, social, and psychological pressures of modern urban life. Appearing at the close of the Victorian era, the novel reflects both Besant’s long-standing commitment to social realism and his increasing interest in the interior life of the individual—especially the fragile boundary between aspiration and illusion.
The title itself announces the book’s governing metaphor. In classical and medieval literature, the “ivory gate” is the passage through which false dreams pass into waking life, as opposed to the gate of horn, from which true dreams emerge. Besant adapts this image to late-nineteenth-century conditions, using it to explore the seductive power of unrealized hopes, romantic delusions, and social fantasies that shape—and often distort—human conduct. The novel is less concerned with overt villainy than with self-deception: the quiet, persistent capacity of individuals to misread their circumstances and to substitute imagined futures for lived realities.
For modern readers, the novel remains strikingly relevant. Its exploration of illusion, self-fashioning, and the tension between inner fantasy and external reality resonates with contemporary concerns about identity, expectation, and social pressure. While its Victorian idiom and moral framework are firmly rooted in the nineteenth century, its psychological insights anticipate later treatments of self-deception and emotional displacement.
This new edition invites readers to reconsider The Ivory Gate not simply as a period piece, but as a thoughtful and understated meditation on the human tendency to live in dreams of our own making. In tracing the quiet tragedies that arise when those dreams eclipse judgment, Besant offers a work of enduring moral seriousness—one that illuminates both the anxieties of his age and the persistent vulnerabilities of our own.

A READ-ME.ORG CLASSIC REPRINT. New York-Philadelphia-Australia. 2025. 321p.

by J. S. Fletcher. Preface by Colin Heston.

The Ransom for London is one of the last full-length mysteries penned by J. S. Fletcher, the prolific master of British crime fiction whose work helped shape the modern detective novel. First published in 1937—just months before the golden age of classic mystery reached its twilight—this novel stands as a testament to Fletcher’s enduring gifts: intricate plots, bristling suspense, and a keen sense of how crime reveals the hidden tensions of society.

This edition invites readers to rediscover a late gem from a writer whose contributions to the detective genre paved the way for many who followed. With The Ransom for London, Fletcher delivers a fast-moving, atmospheric tale that demonstrates his continuing relevance, his wit, and his unmatched instinct for suspense.

Step into London on the brink—into a story built on riddles, danger, and the high cost of holding a city’s fate in the balance. The ransom has been demanded. Whether the truth is paid in gold or courage is for you to discover.

Read-Me.Org Inc. New York-Philadelphia-Australia. 2025. p.229.