Showing results by author "John Buchan" in All Categories

John Buchan himself stated that he set out to write a book in the style of the ubiquitous American “Dime Novel”. What he actually succeeded in creating was a relatively unique and new genre for British literature, the Spy Novel. Those thrilling elements of the fleeing innocent man hunted through the wilds by sinister and undefined dark forces have been explored countless times in books and on screen ever since.

The 39 Steps is an adventure novel by the Scottish author John Buchan. It first appeared as a serial in Blackwood's Magazine in August and September 1915 before being published in book form in October that year by William Blackwood and Sons, Edinburgh. It is the first of five novels featuring Richard Hannay, an all-action hero with a stiff upper lip and a miraculous knack for getting himself out of sticky situations.

A third adventure for Sir Edward Leithen, in which Leithen befriends young Vernon Milburne, a man haunted by an annually recurring dream in which some dark and mysterious challenge moves year by year closer. After the war, as the culmination of Vernon’s dream approaches, both men meet – and take an instant dislike to – Miss Koré Arabin, a young Englishwoman who has inherited a remote Greek island from her disreputable father.

The Thirty-Nine Steps begins John Buchan’s series of spy novels featuring adventurer Richard Hannay. Having just returned from South Africa, he finds life dull until a mysterious American tells him about an assassination plot before being murdered in Hannay’s London flat.

Salute to Adventurers takes place in the 1680s. It begins as the hero, Andrew Garvald, on his way to Glasgow, takes a cut across the moors. There he meets Elspeth Blair and a religious fanatic known as Muckle John Gib. Later Andrew encounters Ninian Campbell, coming to Campbell's aid when he is attacked by ruffians in a Glasgow back street. Andrew is sent by his uncle - as his merchant representative - to Virginia, where he initially experiences hostility because of his attempts to reform trading practices.

Three young truants from a church meeting on Sunday make their way to a seashore hideaway, where they observe a huge black man muttering incantations and performing weird rites. When the man discovers the children, he chases them with a knife. In defense, Davy Crawfurd flings a rock at him, and they narrowly escape. Years later, young David Crawfurd goes to South Africa to make his fortune and is caught in the very heart of a great native uprising. Under strange circumstances, he comes face-to-face with its leader, only to recognize the strange blazing eyes of the black man he had encountered as a child on the beach.

Following the conclusion of the Great War, Hannay has retired from British intelligence. He is coaxed from retirement to aid in the rescue of three prominent hostages held by an international criminal organization bent on controlling the disturbed minds of those affected by the Great War. Hannay pretends to succumb to hypnotic mind control and secretly travels to a remote farm in Norway to continue the hostage search.

FNH Audio presents an unabridged reading of Mr Standfast. In this thrilling adventure, Richard Hannay the star of The Thirty-Nine Steps and Greenmantle, returns to continue his personal battle against the enemies of Great Britain during the Great War. The war on the continent is raging. The German hordes are pushing the allies back into their trenches, the line is barely holding, and it's at this moment that Richard find himself pulled out of the lines for special duty.

Here are tales about war-time code breaking, cannibalism, and swashbuckling adventure during the times of Bonnie Prince Charlie. They vie with subtler stories, with a more intimate perspective, about the vagaries of human nature, politics, fishing, and poaching, set against the landscape of the lowland Scottish countryside where the author spent his youth.

Prester John is a thrilling colonial adventure set in South Africa. Young Scotsman David Crawfurd finds himself caught in a revolutionary plot led by the enigmatic John Laputa, who claims to be the heir of the legendary Christian king, Prester John. With daring escapes, hidden treasures, and high-stakes action, this novel is a classic tale of imperial adventure.

After his wartime exploits, Sir Richard Hannay is now married to Mary and determined to remain peacefully in their idyllic Cotswolds home. But when he receives appeals to help recover the kidnapped children of three prominent men, Hannay cannot in good conscience refuse - especially as one of the hostages is a young boy not so many years older than his own son. All he has to go on are the obscure clues contained in a few lines of doggerel verse sent to the families and a tenuous connection to the distinguished Dominick Medina....

FNH Audio presents an unabridged reading of The Thirty-Nine Steps. In May 1914 Richard Hannay finds himself caught up in an international intrigue that has the sole objective of starting a world wide war. Hannay's enemies have committed murder and set Hannay up to take the fall. Now he's on the run from the secretive Black Stone and the police, yet he's the only one who can save England!

Richard Hannay is bored—until his neighbor shows up with a wild story of espionage, an impending war, and a mysterious organization called the 39 Steps. Hours later, the man is dead, and Hannay is the prime suspect. Framed for murder and hunted by both the police and a deadly network of spies, Hannay races across the Scottish countryside, decoding clues, dodging capture, and trying to stop a conspiracy that threatens the fate of Britain itself. Fast-paced, sharp, and endlessly gripping, The 39 Steps is the original man-on-the-run thriller—a template for everything from Hitchcock to Bond.

Hanney, an expatriated Scot, returns from a long stay in South Africa to his flat in London. One night he is buttonholed by an American who appears to know of an anarchist plot to destabilise Europe, and claims to be in fear for his life. Hannay lets the American hide in his flat, and returns later to find that another man has been found shot dead in the same building, apparently a suicide. Four days later Hannay finds the American stabbed to death...

I turned on the light, but there was nobody there. Then I saw something in the corner that made my blood turn cold. Scudder was lying on his back. There was a long knife through his heart, pinning him to the floor.’ Soon Richard Hannay is running for his life across the hills of Scotland. The police are chasing him for a murder he did not do, and another, more dangerous enemy is chasing him as well - the mysterious ’Black Stone’. Who are these people? And why do they want Hannay dead?

Perhaps more than any other book The Thirty-Nine Steps has set the pattern for the story of the chase for a wanted man. And, of the many writers who have attempted this kind of thing since Buchan, only a very few, like Graham Greene, have managed to sustain the tension in the same way. The story's extended chase scene inspired Alfred Hitchcock's movie of the same name.

A brilliant collection of some of the finest old sea stories ever written. 'The Overcrowded Iceberg' by Morley Roberts, 'The Substitute' by W. W. Jacobs, 'Reparation' by J. D. Beresford, 'The Paradise Coal-Boat' by Charles John Cutcliffe Hyne, 'The Registered Packet' by J. S. Fletcher, 'Treasure Trove' by Neil Munro, 'The Vengeance of La Maraye' by J. S. Fletcher, 'The Sea-Raiders' by H. G. Wells, 'No Ships Pass' by Eleanor Smith....

"The Thirty Nine Steps" is an adventure novel by the Scottish author John Buchan. It first appeared as a serial in Blackwood's Magazine in August and September 1915 before being published in book form in October that year by William Blackwood and Sons, Edinburgh. It is the first of five novels featuring Richard Hannay, an all action hero with a stiff upper lip and a miraculous knack for getting himself out of sticky situations.

Diplomacy by other means may, at times, sound heroic. A fight for principles and ideals carried out by young men armed to the teeth and directed by older men in pursuit of their own version of glory for themselves and their Nations. Right will triumph over wrong. But war can be an illusion, stirred up by schemers and opportunists to take something from other nations that may or may not be right. As blood and limb are sacrificed the true cost is seen but often set to one side as the dispute becomes embedded in emotions and reason falls away.

This is the classic adventure of Richard Hannay, who upon being buttonholed at his door by a mysterious stranger called Franklin P. Scudder, finds himself drawn into adventure and international intrigue with Europe on the brink of war, and the fate of England at stake.