Clarence Budington Kelland

Only a few months earlier, the young woman now known as Jane Smith had lived a life of luxury and privilege as the ruler of a small Balkan kingdom. She lived a life of glittering balls, the finest furnishings, the most handsome men, the most exquisite of foods. Her only friends were four bearded...

The Cardiff Giant Affair is set in 1869 Syracuse and features a happy mélange of medicine shows, con games, "brawling canawlers", high society, and murder, with two highly spirited women and incidental glimpses of P. T. Barnum. All this is interwoven with the splendid true story of the Cardiff...

Columbine Pepper Drugget's background wasn't one that equipped a young woman to manage a motel worth a million dollars, or cope with rude guests, jewel thieves, an unscrupulous competitor - or even the attentions of a brassy but oddly attractive lawyer. She had spent her life so far as an...

When Kirsten South’s once-wealthy father suddenly passed away, she found he had gone broke, leaving her nothing but a profitless ranch. Fresh from an East-Coast finishing school, Kirsten set herself a task of fantastic difficulty - managing, quite without experience, a ranch in Arizona. It...

A Zany - Yet Sensible - Heroine Sleuths Her Way Into Danger and Romance Stolen Goods is mystery, comedy, and romance, and spotlights more of the signature geek characters at which Clarence Budington Kelland so thoroughly excelled - because it takes one to know one. “Shenanigans!” - the...

Archibald Cloyd was an ubergeek and as pedantic as it is possible to be. Hollywood hired him at thousands of dollars a week as the technical director on a movie about Napoleon. Wilson Page, Archibald's secretary, figured he didn't deserve anything better than being nursemaid to a strutting...

Buried pirate treasure and a wisecracking heroine lead to romance, adventure, and murder in Prohibition-era Long Island! Wisecracking Jane Teach had pirate blood, a take-charge attitude, and a penchant for sticking her nose in the wrong places. Sober-minded Bill Popple was from one of Long...

What happens when a Korean War vet recovering from serious injuries wins a ghost town in a contest, meets a hard-riding, gun-toting cowgirl, and is threatened by three dangerous people all within a few days? Answer: cock-eyed characters, pixilated dialogue, zany romance, and heart-stopping...