Earl Derr Biggers: 39 books

From the pen of the creator of the famous Chinese detective, Charlie Chan--a murder mystery in San Francisco and the only clue is a birthday cake with 50 candles.

"Charlie Chan Carries On" -- the 1931 Fox motion picture starring Warner Oland as Chan -- is now considered a "lost" film (the original film materials were destroyed in a vault fire.) Unless a copy surfaces in some remote corner of the world, as happened with "Charlie Chan in Paris," this original screenplay...

Charlie Chan, visiting San Francisco to make a speech, finds himself swept into one of his most puzzling -- and dangerous -- cases! A cult known as the Golden Horde is running a spiritual retreat, helping the disturbed and the depressed find inner peace. Benny Chan, who worked for the Golden Horde, is...

Allan, Lord Harrowby, son and heir of James Nelson Harrowby, came to Lloyds of London with a most unusual request for insurance. He knew that Lloyds took out policies on unusual risks. And what he wanted was insurance of a most unusual kind...love insurance. What follows is a comic novel of improbable dimensions, by the world-famous creator of Chinese detective Charlie Chan!

OUTSIDE a gilt-lettered door on the seventeenth floor of a New York office building, a tall young man in a fur-lined coat stood shivering. Why did he shiver in that coat? He shivered because he was fussed, poor chap. Because he was rattled, from the soles of his custom-made boots to the apex...

A World War I spy story. It's the start of World War I—Britain has just gone to war against the Germans—and several Americans are stranded in the little British colony of Gibraltar—desperate to get onto a ship back home. But suspicion is rife in the air—there are spies everywhere: not all are as they seem—and there are rumours of a German plot. Going home won't be an easy matter.

London that historic summer was almost unbearably hot. It seems, looking back, as though the big baking city in those days was meant to serve as an anteroom of torture— an inadequate bit of preparation for the hell that was soon to break in the guise of the Great War. About the soda-water bar in the...

The basic plot of this book is built around the reputation the Lloyds of London insurance firm had for ensuring all manner of unlikely propositions. Lord Harrowby is advised to marry a wealthy heiress. Luckily he meets Cynthia. She is rich, beautiful and willing to marry him. But, since he comes from...

In una calda mattina di luglio la bella e ricca attrice hollywoodiana Shelah Fane sbarca alle Hawaii al seguito di una troupe cinematografica per le ultime riprese di un colossal sui Mari del Sud. Quella stessa sera la donna organizza un ricevimento nel suo villino sulla spiaggia, ma poco prima dell’inizio...

“I HAD two trunks—two, où est l’autre?” The grinning customs guard lifted his shoulders to his ears and spread out his palms. “Mais, mamselle—” “Don’t you ‘mais’ me, sir! I had two trunks—deux troncs—when I got aboard that wabbly old boat at Dover this morning, and...

A zany, laugh-out-loud romantic comedy of improbable proportions, from the creator of Charlie Chan Working for an American branch of Lloyds' insurers, Owen Jephson is used to underwriting unusual things—weight loss in actors, inconvenient rain at garden parties, twins in the family—nonetheless...