Showing results for "Rupert" in Classics

Anthony Hope was constrained to return to the fictional land of Ruritania by an appreciative public who wanted more swashbuckling and derring-do from the hero Rudolph and more Machiavellian moustache twirling from the suave villain Rupert. The author came up with a literary construction which ensured he would never again have to visit fictional Ruritania - but nothing he subsequently wrote appealed as much as the two Zenda stories.

Charismatic and roguish, gentleman thief Arsène Lupin returns once again in a quest to locate the ‘Hollow Needle’, a centuries-old legend said to contain the gold and precious jewels belonging to generations of French aristocracy. Isidore Beautrelet, a precocious young detective, is hot on Lupin’s heels as he attempts to crack the mystery of the Hollow Needle and swindle its fortune. Despite Lupin’s cunning tricks and disguises, Beautrelet gets closer and closer to the truth in what becomes a thrilling battle of intellect and wit.

The fabulous second instalment of stories featuring the mischievous gentleman thief, Arsène Lupin, in a battle of wits against none other than Herlock Sholmes, a parody of Arthur Conan Doyle’s iconic character. Split into two narratives, ‘The Blonde Lady’ and ‘The Jewish Tramp’, Arsène Lupin vs. Herlock Sholmes sees the charming yet pesky Lupin pull off daring heists and the thieving of precious items, only to mysteriously disappear. Herlock Sholmes, brought to France to catch our infamous protagonist, is hot on Lupin’s tail.

First published in 1924, Beau Geste tells the story of a stolen sapphire and three brothers, who consequently join the Foreign Legion. Michael "Beau" Geste, as his nickname suggests, represents honor and bravery in the midst of deceit and treachery. An action-packed adventure, much of the plot is set in French North Africa, where the Geste brothers have to contend with both a mutiny in their ranks and the attacks of the Touaregs.

With a horse between his thighs and a weapon in his grip, the dashing Brigadier Etienne Gerard, Colonel of the Hussars of Conflans, gallops through the Napoleonic campaigns on secret missions for his beloved Emperor and his country. He encounters danger and hair-breadth escapes but never loses his bravado, his eye for a pretty girl, his boastfulness, or his enormous vanity. Gerard is Conan Doyle’s most lovable character.

Set in 1914, Woman of Mystery centres around the world of Paul Delroze. On the evening before the Second World War, a painful memory rears its ugly head: his father, a decorated veteran who served in the Franco-Prussian War, being brutally murdered at the hands of an unidentified German woman, as Paul and his father were taking an innocent stroll through the French countryside when he was a child. At his core, Paul always knew the day when the two nations – Germany and France – would fight again, and once he heard the call for battle, he was determined to take revenge once and for all.

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.