Showing results by author "John Buchan" in All Categories

In seventeenth-century Scotland, religious struggles run rampant. Here, Young David Sempill, a moderate Presbyterian minister, pleas with his sect to have compassion for the remnants of King Montrose’s defeated army, who are being harried and slaughtered by religious extremists. But as pre-Christian nature worship and its accompanying black magicks seep forth from Melanudrigill Wood, Sempill himself disappears.

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.

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.

The second of Richard Hannays’ adventures takes him from the trenches of the First World War on a mission of vital importance to the British campaign in the East. In an attempt to manipulate their Turkish allies the Germans have created a religious figurehead, a prophet of a new order to unify the disparate tribes of Asia and crush the allied offensive.

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, Buchan's hero in this 1915 thriller, stumbles across a dark plot to attack England by the German Reich (of World War I vintage) but has to flee when his discovery becomes known. He then engages in several hot pursuits and narrow, if theatrical, escapes, but all's well that ends well.

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.

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.

Dickson McCunn, a respectable, newly retired grocer of romantic heart, plans a modest walking holiday in the hills of south-west Scotland. He meets a young English poet and, contrary to his better sense, finds himself in the thick of a plot involving the kidnapping of a Russian princess, who is held prisoner in the rambling mansion, Huntingtower.

A gripping collection of over 50 of the greatest short stories written by great British writers. 1."The Missing Years" by Barry Pain, 2. "His Brother's Keeper" by W. W. Jacobs, 3. "A Madman's Manuscript" by Charles Dickens, 4. "The House of Cobwebs" by Barry Pain, 5. "Old Fags" by Stacy Aumonier, 6. "A Long-Ago Affair" by John Galsworthy, 7. "August Heat" by W. F. Harvey, 8. "The Dabblers" by W. F. Harvey, 9. "Rose Rose" by Barry Pain

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.

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.

Joined by Peter Pienaar, the old Boer Scout; John S. Blenkiron, the American determined to fight the Kaiser; and Sandy Arbuthnot, adventurer Richard Hannay travels across war-torn Europe in search of the grotesque Stumm and the evil beauty of Hilda von Einem. This espionage novel set during the First World War features thrilling disguises, despicable plots, and some of the most devious spies in literature.

A creepy anthology of 25 of the most hauntingly scary ghost stories ever written. 1.Afterward by Edith Wharton 2. Bagnell Terrace by E. F. Benson 3.His Brother’s Keeper by W. W. Jacobs 4.A Coincidence by A. J. Alan 5.The Confession of Charles Linkworth by E. F. Benson 6.The Death Mask by H. D. Everett 7.The Room in the Tower by E. F. Benson 8.The Furnished Room by O. Henry 9.The Thing in the Hall by E. F. Benson 10.The Eyes by Edith Wharton 11. The Wind in the Portico by John Buchan.

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.

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."

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.

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.

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.

Listed in the BBC's 100 Novels That Shaped Our World, Mr. Standfast is the third of Buchan's thrilling, fast-paced World War I adventure novels, following The Thirty-Nine Steps, and Greenmantle, in which Brigadier-General Richard Hannay is reluctantly plucked from the trenches of the Western Front, to undertake a vital secret mission against a German spy ring operating among pacifist elements in England.