Long before Charlie's Angels, Jessica Fletcher, Miss Marple, and even Judith Lee, there was Ethel Boston, the first female consulting detective in America, a former associate of Nick Carter, trained by famous detective William Hopkins. Miss Boston was the prototype of the New Woman, who believed and fought for sexual and legal equality with men. She was educated, athletic and vigorous, and avoided marriage as it interfered with her self-fulfillment and independence. Miss Boston not only achieved equality, she surpassed it. Created by Antonin Reschal (1874-1935), Miss Boston's adventures and those of her sidekick, Chief Inspector Sokes, ran through 20 installments published in Paris in 1908-09. This book collects eleven of her exploits, including the adventure in which she helps Dr. Watson catch Sherlock Holmes' murderer, and the saga of her battle against the One Hundred Thousand Arms Gang.

Daughter of a detective, Ethel King takes up her father's career in order to avenge his death, as well as that of her fiance, both brought down the same day by an assassin's bullet. King, like Miss Boston and Therese Arnaud, is an extraordinary woman, well ahead of her time. Although she practices a masculine profession, she is seductive and charming, moves comfortably in high society, and dresses elegantly. These characteristics hide her incisiveness, daring, strength, and accuracy with a gun. She solves cases involving murders, kidnappings, forgeries and extortions. She brings the guilty to justice, earns a satisfactory living and leads a comfortable life in Garden Street, Philadelphia. There were only two women sleuths in French popular literature before the mid-20th century. The first, Miss Boston, was created by Antonin Reschal and appeared in 1908-1909. Jean Petithuguenin (1878-1939) wrote the second, Ethel King, shortly thereafter (1911-1914). This professor at the Faculty of Sciences was the official translator of the Nick Carter series. Ethel King ran for more than 100 bi-weekly issues in France, then was continued in Germany by other authors.

Therese Arnaud, a.k.a. Agent C.25, is a member of the French Deuxieme Bureau secret service tasked with fighting enemy spies operating in WWI France. She is a thoroughly modern woman: independent, intelligent, sure of herself and of her calling. She deploys and controls her own network of sub-agents and poses as Mademoiselle Janine Felerat in Parisian high society. Therese Arnaud, the creation of mystery writer Pierre Yrondy, is one of the few long-standing female characters in popular French literature. Her adventures were published in 65 magazines in 1934-36, and reprinted in 1946. The eight episodes translated in this collection include Therese's epic battle against German spies Karl Himmelfeld, Mademoiselle Doktor, and the notorious Mata Hari.

The years preceding the Civil War were appallingly difficult for Native Americans. White man wanted their land. In spite of a Supreme Court ruling that treaties signed with The Five Nations were legal and binding, President Andrew Jackson ordered that the Indian lands be taken from them, and the Indians removed-or killed. Andrew Jackson considered Indians to be savages, yet their culture was as civilized, if not more so, than the White man who wanted them removed. Servants on Horses is the story of one family's struggle to survive and come to terms with the annihilation of their culture and the assimilation of generations into White man's culture.

After a fight in a seedy bar leaves three men dead, the police arrest a man who claims to be a circus performer. But a young detective named Lecoq suspects the man isn't who he claims to be, and that there is more at stake than meets the eye... Written in 1869, Monsieur Lecoq is not only a thrilling battle of wits between sleuth and suspect, but also the dramatic tale of three powerful families trapped in a web of political intrigue and murder during the troubled times that followed the fall of Napoleon and the restoration of the French Monarchy. Emile Gaboriau, Paul Fval's former secretary, penned here a masterpiece, a novel that is both the suspenseful story of the French Sret detective's first case, but also a moving tragedy of greed and revenge. Nina Cooper holds a Ph. D. in contemporary French literature from the University of Texas at Austin. She has done work on the plays of Gabriel Marcel and Jean-Paul Sartre, as well as on the short stories of Julien Green. This book also includes a biography of Lecoq by popular literature scholar Rick Lai.