Showing results by author "Buchan John" in All Categories

Reluctantly posing as a pacifist, Richard Hannay infiltrates an anti-war league to capture an unimpeachable German spy. The only instructions he's given are to take up his old identity as a mining engineer from South Africa and pose as a staunch pacifist. As Hannay himself puts it: "To go into Germany as an anti-British Afrikaner was a stoutish adventure, but to lounge about at home talking rot was a very different-sized job."

In The Power-House, Leithen’s quiet life is disrupted when he is pitted against the murderous forces of an international network of anarchists, and its chilling leader. Then, adopting the nom de guerre of “John Macnab,” Leithen and two friends risk their reputations when they take to poaching in the Highlands of Scotland in an effort to recover their zest for life. Finally, in The Dancing Floor, Sir Edward befriends a young man haunted by an annually recurring dream, and a young woman stubbornly determined to atone for the sins of her disreputable family, even at the risk of her own life.

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.

Written by Scottish-Canadian author John Buchan (The Thirty-Nine Steps), The Runagates Club is a collection of twelve short stories focusing on members of the eponymous London dining society.

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.

Richard Hanney is an ordinary man, drawn into mysteries he does not understand, and no one is willing to help him. In these 2 suspense novels written by the father of the modern spy thriller, Hanney must outwit villains in unnerving situations that lay bare the thin veneer separating civilized man from the barbarian.

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.

"Huntingtower" (1922) by John Buchan is a novel about a 55-year-old grocer, Dickson McCunn, who has sold his business and taken early retirement, and is forced to become a reluctant hero. The story revolves around the imprisonment under false pretenses by Bolshevik agents of an exiled Russian noblewoman. The Scottish local community mobilizes to uncover and thwart the conspiracy against her, and to defend the neutrality of Scotland against the Russian revolutionary struggle.

This thrilling anthology contains five action-packed tales of incredible journeys, a murderous treasure hunt, invaders from outer space and international espionage - all read in full by some of the very best voice actors.

John Buchan takes us back to Edwardian Britain on the eve of the First World War in the modern thriller The Thirty-Nine Steps. An inexplicable murder drives the innocent Richard Hannay, on the run from a manhunt that never seems to end, to hide in remote Scottish moorland. Disguise and deception are his only weapons, as he struggles to decode the clues left by the murdered man to prevent the theft of naval secrets by an unfriendly foreign power.

The short stories written during and about World War I are often overshadowed by the excellent verse of the War Poets. Yet the short story is perhaps their equal in other ways. Within these succinct little time capsules of words are captured ideas, attitudes, feelings and life that are expressed in a few minutes just as movingly, imaginatively and tellingly as in any other form. Some of these stories will be familiar, but some may not. From Virginia Woolf to Katharine Mansfield and John Buchan to C. E. Montague, various writing styles try to make sense of this world at war.

This fine collection of intelligent, unabridged short stories about intriguing, interesting and sometimes inspirational men is an audio treat for young and old, male or female. A carefully compiled anthology featuring timeless tales from classic authors including Charles Dickens, F. Scott Fitzgerald and Anton Chekhov, read by a cast of acclaimed and respected actors, including Stephen Fry, Martin Jarvis and Kerry Shale; this compilation will be enjoyed by the whole family.

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....

John Buchan's hero Edward Leithen chances upon a worldwide plan for domination. With his own life (and those of his friends) depending on the outcome of his struggle, he engages in combat with the anarchic brain behind The Power-House. The author, despite being very busy in public service, wrote over 50 books during his life, but his particular talent was for writing fast-moving adventure stories. The Power-House, a good example of this genre, was first published in 1916.

May 1914: Europe is on the brink of war. London is riddled with spies. Richard Hannay has just returned from Rhosesia, and intends to begin a new, quiet, sedentary life. But a shady man named Franklin Scudder calls on him for help. Scudder is a freelance spy who has just uncovered a German plot to murder the Greek Premier, thus forcing Europe into war. He is the only man living to have penetrated into the ring of German spies who call themselves the Black Stone. Scudder tells Hannay all he knows. The next day, Scudder is murdered in Hannay's apartment.

The last of John Buchan’s thrillers and the final appearance of Richard Hannay now in retirement reverie deep in the comfortable Cotswolds.However, he and Sandy [Lord Clanroyden] are roused to action once more to help the son of a recently deceased treasure hunter, called Haraldsen. The heir is receiving threats from Lancelot Troth, a man who believes himself ill treated financially by Haraldsen’s father and seeks revenge and reparation.

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.

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 year after the adventure of The Thirty-Nine Steps, Major Richard Hannay is plucked from the trenches of the Western Front, and sent on a perilous journey through the very heart of the German empire, to Constantinople. There, he and his small band of missionaries must frustrate a plot to ferment an uprising in the Islamic world aimed at dealing a crushing blow to Britain's interests in the East, and winning the war for Germany.

FNH Audio presents an unabridged reading of Greenmantle. Richard Hanney, hero of The Thirty-Nine Steps, returns in this exciting wartime sequel. Once again Hanney steps forward when his country needs him. Pulled out of the front line he finds himself thrown into adventure and mystery behind enemy lines. The mystery of the Greenmantle secret weapon needs to be solved and dealt with before it brings ruin to the Allied cause.