Thriller Fiction
A voyage of exploration and discovery in Central Africa
London, Sampson Low, Marston, Low, & Searle, 1874.
Second UK edition. 8vo. Advertisements dated October 1873. Original green pictorial cloth decorated in gilt and black, gilt edges.
The first of Verne's Voyages extraordinaires (Cinq semaines en ballon, 1863), and the book that made his name: Dr Samuel Fergusson, his manservant Joe and the hunter Dick Kennedy cross Africa by hydrogen balloon, from Zanzibar towards Senegal, passing Lake Victoria, Lake Chad and Timbuktu, in a journey that takes in the search for the source of the Nile. An instant success in France, it made Verne financially independent and led to a long-term contract with his publisher Hetzel.
Thriller Fiction
or The Pearl of the Pacific
London, Sampson Low, Marston, 1896.
First UK edition. 8vo. Original green pictorial cloth decorated in gilt, blue, black & white, gilt edges.
Verne's L'Île à hélice (1895): a French string quartet travelling to San Diego is diverted to Standard Island, a vast artificial island cruising the Pacific for the wealthiest, whose rival Larboardite and Starboardite factions fall into dangerous dispute. This first English edition (W. J. Gordon, with 80 illustrations) was heavily cut and altered, passages critical of Americans and the British being removed; the full text was not translated until 2015.
Thriller Fiction
Diary of J.R. Kazallon, Passenger... Translated from the French by Ellen Frewer
London, Sampson Low, Marstonm Low, & Searle, 1875.
First UK edition. 8vo. Original green cloth decorated in gilt and black, gilt edges.
Verne's shipwreck novel, told as the diary of the passenger J. R. Kazallon: the British ship Chancellor, sailing from Charleston with eight passengers, catches fire and founders, leaving the survivors on a raft to face storms, starvation, mutiny and cannibalism. Spoiler alert - only eleven of the 28 aboard survive.
Thriller Fiction
London, W.H. Allen, 1983.
First edition, first impression. 8vo. Original boards. Dust-jacket.
Peter James's financial thriller: London stockbroker Peter Rocq is lured into using insider information for easy money, and ends up facing very dangerous men. James (b. 1948) wrote spy and financial thrillers before the supernatural novels and the Brighton-based Roy Grace series, which has sold about 21 million copies and became the ITV drama Grace; he received the CWA Diamond Dagger in 2016.
Thriller Fiction
London, Hodder & Stoughton, n.d..
8vo. Original orange cloth. Dust-jacket, priced 3/6.
The third Bulldog Drummond novel (1924). Drummond's enemy Carl Peterson is hired by a diamond syndicate to stop Professor Goodman's method of making artificial diamonds, but plans to seize the secret himself; Drummond is drawn in because his friend Algy Longworth is engaged to the professor's daughter. "Sapper" was H. C. McNeile (1888–1937), creator of Drummond.
![Sapper, Ask for Ronald Standish, second edition [1936]](https://lycanthiabooks.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/10/88706-300x300.jpg)
![Sapper, Ask for Ronald Standish, second edition [1936] - second image](https://lycanthiabooks.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/10/88706_2-300x300.jpg)
Thriller Fiction
London, Hodder & Stoughton, n.d..
Second edition. 8vo. Original cloth. Dust-jacket, priced 3/6.
Sapper's collection of stories featuring Ronald Standish, a Secret Service agent, first published in 1936; this is the second edition. "Sapper" was H. C. McNeile (1888–1937), a Royal Engineers officer awarded the Military Cross, who took his pen-name from Royal Engineers slang and created Bulldog Drummond.
Thriller Fiction
A Bulldog Drummond Novel
London, Hodder & Stoughton, 1937.
First edition, first impression. 8vo. Original cloth. Dust-jacket, priced 7/6.
The tenth and last Bulldog Drummond novel by Sapper, published in the year of his death. Drummond, the demobilised officer turned gentleman-adventurer, first appeared in 1920 and became hugely popular in novels, stage, film and radio; after McNeile's death the series was continued by Gerard Fairlie. "Sapper" was H. C. McNeile (1888–1937), a Royal Engineers officer awarded the Military Cross.
Thriller Fiction
London, Hodder & Stoughton, 1933.
First edition, first impression. 8vo. Original cloth. Dust-jacket.
The first collection of Sapper's stories featuring Ronald Standish, a Secret Service agent. "Sapper" was H. C. McNeile (1888–1937), a Royal Engineers officer awarded the Military Cross, who took his pen-name from Royal Engineers slang and created Bulldog Drummond, the gentleman vigilante of novels, stage, film and radio.
![Sapper, Shorty Bill, n.d. [c.1926]](https://lycanthiabooks.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/10/88702-300x300.jpg)
![Sapper, Shorty Bill, n.d. [c.1926] - second image](https://lycanthiabooks.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/10/88702_2-300x300.jpg)
Thriller Fiction
London, Hodder & Stoughton, n.d..
8vo. Original red cloth. Dust-jacket, priced 3/6.
A Sapper volume, a collection of short stories and published in 1927, the year of John Walters.
Thriller Fiction
From The Lieutenant and Others, The Human Torch and No Man's Land
London, Hodder & Stoughton, 1927.
First edition. 8vo. Original cloth. Dust-jacket, priced 3/6.
First edition of fifteen of Sapper's First World War tales, gathered from his earlier collections The Lieutenant and Others, The Human Touch and No Man's Land. In "The Awakening of John Walters", a dim, easygoing soldier, captured in a night raid, turns the tables on his captors and carries a German officer back to his own lines. "Sapper" was H. C. McNeile (1888–1937), Royal Engineers officer and creator of Bulldog Drummond.
Thriller Fiction
London, Hodder & Stoughton, [1930s].
Early edition. 8vo. Original cloth. Dust-jacket, priced 3/6.
The fourth Bulldog Drummond novel (1926); this is a later Hodder printing. Drummond's enemy Carl Peterson obtains the secret of Robin Gaunt's new chemical weapon and plans a series of spectacular crimes; the book ends in Peterson's death. "Sapper" was H. C. McNeile (1888–1937), whose gentleman-adventurer Drummond, introduced in 1920, spawned many films and sequels by Gerard Fairlie.
Thriller Fiction
London, Hodder & Stoughton, [1930s].
Early edition. 8vo. Original cloth. Dust-jacket, priced 3/6.
The fifth Bulldog Drummond novel, first published in 1928; this is a later H&S printing. With Carl Peterson dead, his mistress Irma Peterson vows revenge on Drummond and kidnaps his wife, Phyllis. The title alludes to Kipling.
Thriller Fiction
London, Wishart & Co., 1927.
First edition, first impression. 8vo. Original cloth. Dust-jacket, priced 7s6d.
The author's first book, a novel of intrigue set, according to the jacket, "against the brightly coloured background of one of the small Central European capitals". The jacket describes it as a story in which "intrigue of a kind not usually the subject of romance" drives the action, and in which the hero must decide whether "the most valuable loyalty [is] formal, or of the heart". Alec John Charles Brown (1900–62) is perhaps best known as a translator from Russian and Serbian, his translations including Pasternak's Safe Conduct. The SF Encyclopedia notes that The Honest Bounder "grappled with interbellum Europe from a left perspective"; his later fiction included the science-fiction novel Angelo's Moon (1955).
Thriller Fiction
London, Chatto & Windus, 1931.
First UK edition, first impression. 8vo. Original cloth. Dust-jacket.
A first novel of love and loyalty among oil prospectors in the Venezuelan jungle. Susan, the only woman in a community of men, stays loyal to her husband Walt, the engineering boss, as he goes blind, while his best friend Ken fights his own love for her. "Thomas Rourke", the pseudonym of Daniel Joseph Clinton, a mining engineer who had lived for years in South and Central America, later wrote biographies of Simón Bolívar and of the Venezuelan dictator Juan Vicente Gómez. Filmed by Paramount in 1932, directed by Richard Wallace, with Tallulah Bankhead, Charles Bickford and Paul Lukas. First UK edition, following the Farrar & Rinehart edition of the same year.
Thriller Fiction
London, The Ace Publishing Co., [1938].
First edition. 8vo. Original brown cloth. Dust-jacket, price-clipped.
A "Flying Beetle" adventure. Britain has opened an air route to Japan across the Arctic, with aerodromes and fuel depots along the way, but aircraft on it are disappearing, and at least one is found riddled with bullets. The frontispiece and jacket are by Howard Leigh (c. 1909–1942), one of the leading aviation artists of the 1930s, best remembered as illustrator of the earliest Biggles books by W. E. Johns, who guided his early career.
Thriller Fiction
The Story of a Great Conspiracy
London, Geoffrey Bles, 1924.
First edition, first impression. 8vo. Original cloth.
A non-series thriller turning on a great conspiracy, published in the United States as The White Menace - a title which points plainly enough at the drug traffic that is its subject. This is Street's first book under the Rhode name, preceding the appearance of Dr Priestley by a year, and thus the beginning of a career that would run to something in the region of a 140 detective novels. Street (1884–1964) held the MC and OBE, served as an artillery officer and MI7 propagandist during the First World War and afterwards as Information Officer for Dublin Castle.
Thriller Fiction
London, Hurst & Blackett, 1956.
First edition, first impression. Signed by the author on title-page. 8vo. Original boards. Dust-jacket.
MacArthur settled in Rhodesia in 1947, engaging in tree-farming as well as writing, and in all wrote over 40 books between 1945 and 1981 - travel books, adventure stories for boys and murder stories, some under the pseudonym David Wilson. Simba Bwana draws on his intimate knowledge of East and Central Africa, gained through numerous safaris following his settlement in Rhodesia, and on his earlier wartime travel writing.
Thriller Fiction
London, Macmillan, 1956.
First edition, first impression. 8vo. Original boards. Dust-jacket, priced 12s6d.
An attractively jacketed edition of this romantic thriller set in wartime Marseilles in 1943. A 1957 British film of the same name was made from the novel, directed by Hugo Fregonese and starring Stephen Boyd and James Robertson Justice. The biographical context of Croft-Cooke's life adds another dimension: he had been imprisoned in 1953 for homosexual offences and, on release, moved abroad; after his release from prison in 1954, Croft-Cooke lived until 1968 in Morocco, fearing continued persecution in Britain for homosexuality. Seven Thunders was written during this self-imposed exile.
Thriller Fiction
a novel
Indianapolis & New York, Bobbs-Merrill Company, 1935.
First edition, first printing. 8vo. Original cloth. Dust-jacket.
An American novelist and former diplomat, Chamberlain's early diplomatic postings in Africa gave him direct experience of the continent, and Two on Safari draws on this background, following a romantic adventure narrative in an African setting.
Thriller Fiction
London, Sampson Low, Marston & Company, 1897.
First UK edition. 8vo. Original pictorial cloth.
A comic adventure novel in which two young men seek a wealthy man to adopt them so they can marry his ward and niece respectively. First published in French in 1896.
Thriller Fiction
London, Sampson Low, Marston & Company, 1900.
First UK edition. 8vo. Original pictorial cloth.
An adventure novel based on the board game 'The Game of the Goose'. "In 1897, the first Baedecker guidebook for the U.S. was published, and Verne used this as the source for his descriptions of the modes of transport, timetables, and geographic descriptions of the numerous places the twelve participants were required to visit in order to claim the prize." (Wikipedia)
Thriller Fiction
London, The Modern Publishing Company, n.d. [1920].
Third edition. 8vo. Original cloth. Dust-jacket, priced 6/-.
One of only two (alongside Dinevah the Beautiful) non-supernatural novels O'Donnell published, making it something of an anomaly in his canon. Rare thus in a jacket.
Thriller Fiction
London, Hammond, Hammond, 1955.
First edition, first impression. 8vo. Original boards, publisher's 'File Copy' label to lower board. Dust-jacket.
Thriller Fiction
McAllister (Robert) and Floyd Miller. The Kind of a Guy I am
London, Hammond, Hammond, 1959.First UK edition, first impression. 8vo. Original boards. Dust-jacket.
Thriller Fiction
London, Hammond, Hammond, 1953.
First edition, first impression. 8vo. Original boards. Dust-jacket.
Thriller Fiction
London, Macdonald, 1950.
First edition, first impression. 8vo. Original cloth. Dust-jacket.
Thriller Fiction
London, Macdonald, 1946.
First edition, first impression. 8vo. Original cloth. Dust-jacket.
Thriller Fiction
London, Eyre & Spottiswoode, 1935.
First edition. 8vo. Original cloth. Dust-jacket.
Thriller Fiction
London, Macdonald, 1963.
First edition, first impression. 8vo. Original boards. Dust-jacket.
Thriller Fiction
London, Macdonald, 1944.
First edition, first impression. 8vo. Original cloth. Dust-jacket.
Thriller Fiction
London, Hammond, Hammond, 1950.First UK edition, first impression. 8vo. Original cloth. Dust-jacket.
Thriller Fiction
London, Hammond, Hammond, 1957.First UK edition, first impression. 8vo. Original boards. Dust-jacket.
Thriller Fiction
London, Macdonald, 1947.
First edition, first impression. 8vo. Original cloth. Dust-jacket.
Thriller Fiction
London, Macdonald, 1954.
First edition, first impression. 8vo. Original cloth. Dust-jacket.
Thriller Fiction
London, Hammond, Hammond, 1961.
First edition, first impression. 8vo. Original boards. Dust-jacket.
Thriller Fiction
London, Hammond, Hammond, 1953.
First UK edition, first impression. 8vo. Original boards. Dust-jacket.
London, Geoffrey Bles, 1957.
First edition. 8vo. Original red boards lettered in lime green. Dust-jacket.
A near fine first edition of one of the later titles by the Australian Goyder sisters.
London, Geoffrey Bles, 1951.
First edition. 8vo. Original red boards. Dust-jacket.
Very good first edition of this murder mystery by the Australian Goyder sisters.
London, Hammond, Hammond, 1953.
First edition, first impression. 8vo. Original boards. Dust-jacket.
Thriller Fiction
London, Hammond, Hammond, 1958.
First edition, first impression. 8vo. Original boards. Dust-jacket.
Thriller Fiction
London, Macdonald, 1965.
First edition, first impression. 8vo. Original boards. Dust-jacket.
Thriller Fiction
London, Hammond, Hammond, 1956.
First edition, first impression. 8vo. Original boards. Dust-jacket.