Books by Richard Marsh

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Excerpt: "It was about as miserable an afternoon as one could wish to see. May is the poet''s month, but there was nothing of poetry about it then. True, it was early in the month, but February never boasted weather of more unmitigated misery. At half-past two it was so dark in the schoolroom of Mecklemburg House that one could with difficulty see to read. Outside a cold drizzling rain was falling, a shrieking east wind was rattling the windows in their frames, and a sullen haze was hiding the leaden sky. As unsatisfactory a specimen of the English spring as one could very well desire."

Eager to make a great fortune and marry the love of his life, Cyril Paxton invests all of his money in the stock market and loses it all in a final disastrous speculation. A ruined man, Cyril decides to emigrate, but on the train to Southampton, due to a luggage mix-up, he switches bags with certain Mr. Lawrence, and gets in possession of the stolen Duchess of Datchet''s diamonds. He is exhilarated by the change of luck, but he''ll soon find himself pursued by both the robbers and the police.

'The Beetle' tells the story of a fantastical creature, "born of neither god nor man," with supernatural and hypnotic powers, who stalks British politician Paul Lessingham through fin de siecle London in search of vengeance for the defilement of a sacred tomb in Egypt. Marsh's novel is of a piece with other sensational turn-of-the-century fictions such as Stoker's Dracula, George du Maurier's Trilby, and Sax Rohmer's Fu Manchu novels. Like Dracula and many of the sensation novels pioneered by Wilkie Collins and others in the 1860s, The Beetle is narrated from the perspectives of multiple characters, a technique used in many late nineteenth-century novels (those of Wilkie Collins and Stoker, for example) to create suspense. Richard Marsh was the pseudonym of the British author born Richard Bernard Heldmann

It changes its shape at will. It compels others to do its bidding. It inspires terror in all who look on it Eminent politician Paul Lessingham is the toast of Westminster, but when The Beetle arrives from Egypt to hunt him down, the dark and gruesome secret that haunts him is dragged into the light. Bent on revenge for a crime committed against the disciples of Isis, the Beetle terrorizes its victims and will stop at nothing until it has satisfaction. Six people s worlds are turned upside down by murder, mesmerism and human sacrifice as they struggle to save their sanity and above all, their lives.