Showing results by author "Percival Wren" in All Categories

The three Geste brothers, orphaned early in life, are raised by an aunt. Their raucous youths are filled with the literature of adventure and ritualized horseplay centered around these myths and legends. So when the family's prized Blue Water sapphire turns up missing, each of the young men confesses to being the thief in order to protect the others and one by one they head off to join the French Foreign Legion.

Percival Christopher Wren is best known as a novelist, publishing twenty-eight novels from 1912 to 1941, the most famous of which being Beau Geste (1924). The Geste Novels Part A and The Geste Novels Part B are the first of a multi-volume series, The Collected Novels of P. C. Wren. The Geste Novels Part A and The Geste Novels Part B contain the four novels that feature the Geste brothers and their friends. These novels are the well-known Beau Geste, and the lesser known direct sequels: Beau Sabreur (1926) and Beau Ideal (1927). The fourth novel, Spanish Maine (published in the United States...

Percival Christopher Wren is best known as a novelist, publishing twenty-eight novels from 1912 to 1941, the most famous of which being Beau Geste (1924). Wren also published seven short story collections: Stepsons of France (1917), The Young Stagers (1917), Good Gestes (1929), Flawed Blades (1933), Port o' Missing Men (1934), Rough Shooting (1938), and Odd—But Even So (1941). These short story collections contained a total of 116 stories. There were also two omnibus collections published, Stories of the Foreign Legion (1947) and Dead Men's Boots (1949), containing stories taken from ...

Percival Christopher Wren is best known as a novelist, publishing twenty-eight novels from 1912 to 1941, the most famous of which being Beau Geste (1924). Wren also published seven short story collections: Stepsons of France (1917), The Young Stagers (1917), Good Gestes (1929), Flawed Blades (1933), Port o' Missing Men (1934), Rough Shooting (1938), and Odd—But Even So (1941). These short story collections contained a total of 116 stories. There were also two omnibus collections published, Stories of the Foreign Legion (1947) and Dead Men's Boots (1949), containing stories taken from ...

Volume two of The Collected Novels of P. C. Wren, The Sinbad Novels, contains the four novels featuring the character of Sinclair Noel Brodie Dysart, whose nickname is Sinbad based on the initials of S.N.B.D. Part B contains Fort in the Jungle, the direct sequel to Sinbad the Soldier, and The Disappearance of General Jason, which is not a direct sequel to Fort in the Jungle and only features Sinbad as a minor, though important, character. At the end of Sinbad the Soldier, our hero, had been captured by French authorities and given the choice of prison or joining the French Foreign Legion. ...

Volume Six of The Collected Novels of P. C. Wren, The English Novels, contains four novels with a different setting than that of his other novels. The action takes place almost entirely in England, which is why the title of this omnibus edition is the English novels. Part A contains two novels, Bubble Reputation (1936) and Cardboard Castle (1938) that is set in the English countryside in large country manor houses. Bubble Reputation is the story of Sir Giles (known as Bump) Cortenay, the last descendant of an old English family. Due to difficult economic circumstances, Bump has turned the ...

The Foreign Legion Novels Part B contains the novels Paper Prison, published in 1939, and The Uniform of Glory, published in 1941. Paper Prison is the story of twin fraternal brothers, Mark and Luke Tuyler, and the woman whom they love, Rosanne. Paper Prison is a complex novel, published (and assumed to be written) in the later part of Wren’s life. It is more realistic than most of his more famous novels, with its themes of infidelity, divorce, blackmail, and “killing no murder”. The Uniform of Glory is a humorous novel which has the subtitle of “being the true story of a free ...

Percival Christopher Wren is best known as a novelist, publishing twenty-eight novels from 1912 to 1941, the most famous of which being Beau Geste (1924). Wren also published seven short story collections: Stepsons of France (1917), The Young Stagers (1917), Good Gestes (1929), Flawed Blades (1933), Port o' Missing Men (1934), Rough Shooting (1938), and Odd—But Even So (1941). These short story collections contained a total of 116 stories. There were also two omnibus collections published, Stories of the Foreign Legion (1947) and Dead Men's Boots (1949), containing stories taken from ...

Percival Christopher Wren (1875 - 1941) was an English writer of adventure fiction mostly dealing with colonial soldiering in Africa. He is remembered best for Beau Geste, a much filmed book of 1924, involving the French Foreign Legion in North Africa. 'The Dust That Was Barren' is a strange tale of a peculiar incident in the French Foreign Legion. Commandant Le Sage comes across a legionnaire who has fallen behind his comrades and has laid himself down in the sand, saying he is dying....

The Later India Novels Part B contains two novels, The Man of a Ghost and Worth Wile; the story of Richard Wendover. The novels are typical adventure novels of the “Northwest Frontier” of British India, which were very popular in the early twentieth century in both book and film productions. The Man of a Ghost starts out in East Africa during World War I where Wendover is given a court-martial and a dishonorable discharge when he is found on duty in an apparent drunken state. Wendover and his friend, the Pathan, Shere Khan, wander over Africa and Central Asia, until finally Wendover and...

The Later India Novels Part A contains two novels, Beggars’ Horses, published in America in 1943, after Wren’s death, as The Dark Woman, and Explosion which never saw an American publication. Beggars’ Horses is the story of six British army officers who have a confrontation with an Indian fakir or Holy Man. The six officers are asked what they would “wish” for. One asks for great strength, the others ask to be healthy, to live a long life, for happiness, for great wealth, and for great courage. The rest of the story is how the six men obtain their wishes and how “a dark woman”...

gPercival Christopher Wren is best known as a novelist, publishing twenty-eight novels from 1912 to 1941, the most famous of which being Beau Geste (1924). Wren also published seven short story collections: Stepsons of France (1917), The Young Stagers (1917), Good Gestes (1929), Flawed Blades (1933), Port o' Missing Men (1934), Rough Shooting (1938), and Odd—But Even So (1941). These short story collections contained a total of 116 stories. There were also two omnibus collections published, Stories of the Foreign Legion (1947) and Dead Men's Boots (1949), containing stories taken from ...

Volume Six of The Collected Novels of P. C. Wren, The English Novels, contains four novels with a different setting than that of his other novels. The action takes place almost entirely in England, which is why the title of this omnibus edition is the English novels. Part B contains two novels, The Mammon of Righteousness (1930) and Two Feet From Heaven (1940), that are the most psychological, versus action and adventure, of all of Wren’s novels. The Mammon of Righteousness is the story of Algernon Coxe, a neurotic young man heavily under the influence of his over-domineering mother, ...

Volume two of The Collected Novels of P. C. Wren, The Sinbad Novels, contains the four novels featuring the character of Sinclair Noel Brodie Dysart, whose nickname Sinbad derives from the initials of S.N.B.D. Part A contains Action and Passion and its sequel, Sinbad the Soldier. In Action and Passion, Sinbad was intended to go into the Royal Navy, but instead, after his father’s suicide, has to go into the Merchant Marine. During his first voyage, on the windjammer Valkyrie, Sinbad goes from an apprentice to the captain, during a series of adventures that include a mad captain, multiple ...

Cupid in Africa follows the unlikely journey of Bertram Greene, an intellectual misfit who joins the British Army to impress his father. Thrown into the brutal realities of war in East Africa, he must prove himself in battle. A humorous yet intense military adventure.