Max Barwyn

Private Investigator Philip Marlowe is hired by wealthy General Sternwood regarding a matter involving his youngest daughter Carmen. Before the complex case is over, Marlowe sees murder, blackmail, deception, and what might be love.

A wax sculptor opens a new museum years after he is severely injured during a fire that destroyed his original collection. The disappearance of both people and corpses coincides with this grand reopening and leads a reporter to start investigating.

Guests at a posh Berlin hotel struggle through worry, scandal, and heartache.

When the government opens up the Oklahoma territory for settlement, restless Yancey Cravat claims a plot of the free land for himself and moves his family there from Wichita. A newspaperman, lawyer, and just about everything else, Cravat soon becomes a leading citizen of the boom town of Osage. Once the town is established, however, he begins to feel confined once again, and heads for the Cherokee Strip, leaving his family behind. During this and other absences, his wife Sabra must learn to take care of herself and soon becomes prominent in her own right.

In 1911, minor stage comic, Vernon Castle meets the stage-struck Irene Foote. A few misadventures later, they marry and then abandon comedy to attempt a dancing career together. While they're performing in Paris, an agent sees them rehearse and starts them on their brilliant career as the world's foremost ballroom dancers. However, at the height of their fame, World War I begins.

After a tumultuous first marriage, Millie Blake learns to love her newfound independence and drags her feet on the possibility of remarriage. The years pass, and now Millie's daughter garners the attentions of men - men who once devoted their time to her mother.

A woman runs away with her music teacher in order to escape an arranged marriage, but they struggle to make ends meet.

Bar entertainer Zara is a discontented alcoholic who is pursued by many men but lives with novelist Carl Salter. One day, Tony shows up on Salter's estate claiming that Zara is actually Maria, the wife of his close friend Bruno, claiming that her memory was destroyed during World War I. Zara doesn't remember but leaves with Tony to Salter's dismay. Bruno, now an officer in the Italian Army, tries to coax Maria's memory back on his large estate. No one is really sure if Zara is Maria, and when Salter shows up with a mental case from Trieste that he claims is the real Maria, everyone on Bruno's estate is desperately searching for the truth.

The Austrian Secret Service sends its most seductive agent to spy on the Russians.

Mr. Morris, the owner of a large metropolitan department store, gives jobs to paroled ex-convicts in an effort to help them reform and go straight. Among his 'employed-prison-graduates' are Helen Roberts and Joe Dennis, working as sales clerks. Joe is in love with Helen and asks her to marry him, but she is forbidden to marry as she is still on parole, but she says yes and they are married. In spite of their poverty-level life, their marriage is a happy one until Joe discovers she has lied about her past, in order to marry him. Disillusioned, he leaves, goes back to his old gang and plans to rob the department store.

Josephine Spiggins is thinking of marrying John Spear, the stuffed-shirt son of a department store owner. When John's free-spirit brother Tony returns from touring the South Seas in his boat, the "Vagabond Lady," Jo is attracted to him instead.

Shy, destitute Peter Porter meets equally impoverished Nancy Crane at a Florida beach. Inspired by Peter's belief that a person can acquire wealth simply by creating an aura of success, the outgoing Nancy convinces Peter to join her in impersonating a confident and eccentric wealthy couple. The experiment works, and the couple secure a stunning wardrobe and a lavish room at a resort. Peter panics, however, when he gets a fantastic job offer.

After her father dies, Lily moves to the city to live with her strict aunt. During the day Lily works in her aunt's bookstore, and at night she sneaks across the street to model for Richard, a sculptor with whom she falls in love. A patron of Richard's, Baron von Merzbach, develops an interest in Lily that may not be with the best of intentions.

When several women are found mutilated and murdered, the Paris police are baffled as to who the killer may be. All evidence points to Dupin, but soon it becomes apparent that it is someone (or something) stronger and deadlier than a human.

A young lady leaves her brutal husband and meets another man on board a ship.

Jim Wyngate, an English aristocrat, comes to the American West under a cloud of suspicion for embezzlement actually committed by his cousin Lord Henry. In Wyoming, Wyngate runs afoul of cattle rustler Cash Hawkins by rescuing the Indian girl Naturich from Hawkins. Wyngate marries Naturich, but then learns that his cousin Lord Henry has been killed and has cleared his name before dying. As Wyngate has long loved Lady Diana, Lord Henry's wife, he is perplexed at his situation. But fate takes a hand and resolves matters as Wyngate could not have predicted.

While in Shanghai reporting on the Sino-Japanese war, Chris Hunter, a shrewd news reporter, meets pilot Alma Harding. She does not trust him, but he manages to hire her as his assistant. During an adventurous expedition through the jungles of South America, her opinion of him begins to change.

An ex-convict tries to connect with the daughter who doesn't even know he exists.

Casino operator Johnny Lamb hires down-on-her-luck socialite Lucille Sutton as his casino hostess, in order to help her and to improve casino income. But Lamb's pals fear he may follow Lucille onto the straight-and-narrow path, which would not be good for business. So they hire Gert Malloy and Dictionary McKinney, a pair of con-artists, to manipulate Johnny back off the path of righteousness.

Rafael Sabatini's story of the swashbuckling era and of Bardeleys, the handsome courtier who could win any woman he set his mind to...and was not above boasting about it to all who would listen.