Showing results by author "Clarence Budington Kelland" in All Categories

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 assistant to her aunt at Miss Cordwainer’s School for Girls from 5-to-10. What she knew about the world was limited to the novels of Jane Austen and such bits of knowledge as the pupils possessed.

When Maggie McTigg's brother Michael went off to fight in World War II, he left his taxicab company in her hands. As the only member of the family with a lick of business sense, he asked her to keep it running while he was gone. Maggie took it as a sacred trust, her own contribution to the war efforts, and resolved that it would still be operating when the conflict was over and he finally returned home—no matter what it took and what she had to do. Just how far will a woman go to keep her soldier brother's heritage alive for him until a war is over?

In one of the first crime novels ever set behind the scenes of big-time television, Clarence Budington Kelland has plotted a thrilling adventure of danger and death which climaxes in a series of fast-moving surprises. Peter Mortain, one of the youngest directors in this very young medium, was beleaguered enough, directing the first episode of the most expensive variety show ever produced. He had a cast whose first appearance on television made them skittish, a thousand technical details to handle, and a star…who was also his boss!

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 old men who served as her cabinet, and worshiped the ground she walked on. Then the Germans had marched in, and she and her four councilors barely escaped with their lives.

Meet Nancy Youngblood, a blithe and vivid heroine of an investigating disposition. When Nancy inherits a minor interest in a factory soon to become vital to the winning of World War II, she sees it as a chance to get closer to Robert Dalhart, who has taken over the factory on his father's death. Nancy has always loved him but because they grew up together on the same block Robert thinks of her as a kid sister. But soon sabotage, murder, and strikes threaten the plant and Robert - who evidence suggests may be the culprit, perhaps as an agent of the German government.

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 Giant hoax.

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 word often chosen by loquacious Sherry Madigan, this time to describe what was going on in the Linen Department at Prothero’s, the colossal metropolitan department store where she worked.

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 Island's first families, a conservative-minded young man who walked the straight and narrow. When they met it was loathing at first sight, definitely not a match made in heaven. But with six people trying to kill them over a dead bootlegger's lost fortune and a pirate's treasure secretly buried 300 years ago, they both needed each other.

Fresh from an East-Coast finishing school, Kirsten set herself a task of fantastic difficulty - managing, quite without experience, a ranch in Arizona. It was the only asset she had left. That, and her hunger for independence, impelled her to make a go of it. Finding that her manager had let the ranch slide, Kirsten discharged him leaving a staff of her maid, a cook, four cowboys and a new arrival: a dirty, ragged, bearded derelict cowpoke named Sundown.

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 egomaniac.

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 suspense. Thus begins one of Clarence Budington Kelland's finest and rarest novels, previously only published as a seven-part serial in the legendary and best-selling magazine of its era, The Saturday Evening Post.

Heart on Her Sleeve is the story of a patriotic American college girl who steps up to run her father’s war plant when he is hospitalized by saboteurs. Not long after the bombing of Pearl Harbor and US entry into the Second World War, the government realized the draft would seriously deplete the country’s entire workforce, including entry-level labor, skilled trades, office staff, and management. The only possible replacement was to be found in the ranks of the nation’s women. But for women to join the workforce, major changes would have to occur.