The Abyss of Wonders
73 pages, $7.00
The Copper Princess
62 pages. $7.00
Captain Trouble
97 pages. $9.00
The Woman of the Pyramid
80 pages. $8.00
The Queen of Sheba
76 pages. $8.00
Judith of Babylon
The Abyss of Wonder is a mystical tale of adventure and growth, of self-knowledge and love. It was reprinted once before in 1950 in a limited edition volume from Polaris Books and is now available again in a low-cost edition from Buccaneer Books.
John McGoff was an ordinary boy growing up in a small town in middle America. Like many young boys John dreamed he had a secret life, different, greater than his own. Unlike other boys, John McGoff had one. Early in life he had formed a close friendship with an old Chinese laundryman, Charlie and an old Russian cobbler, Ivan. They called themselves the Sons of the Blue Wolf, seekers of the unknown and shared tales with young John, of their lives in the old country and of the great mystery that is the Gobi desert. Into that desert once traveled a great shaman, Shan Marakov, who found at its center a fabled lost city, Shamballah, center of all wisdom of the world, oldest city of all, the tomb of Kubla Khna, the home of the fabled Abyss of Wonders. John McGoff, recognizing the similarity of his name, is convinced that he is the heir to Shan Marakov. And so sets off to find Shamballah and claim his inheritance.
The Copper Princess
Captain Trouble
In the thirties Sheehan began writing two series for Thrilling Adventures. One was a Tarzan
clone
call Kwa which some day we hope to add to our list. The other was about an American engineer,
expelled from Russia, then suddenly caught up in the tribal conflicts in Afghanistan where he is
proclaimed the heir to Kubla Khan, the future warlord of the world. In a series of eight novelettes
Sheehan traces the rise of Pelham Rutledge Shattuck from soldier of fortune, a fighting fool, to
the
crown of Kubla Khan. These stories are exciting, well written adventures, fun to read for there
own
sake.
The Woman of the Pyramid
This is more a straight romance than, say, The Copper Princess, which was fundamentally a
science
fiction story with a heavy overlay of romance. Though there is this long digression into a past life,
and
some interesting stuff about ancient Egypt, there's not a lot of action or adventure. It's extremely
readable because Sheehan was always an extremely readable author.
The Queen of Sheba
The Queen of Sheba, despite its title and the lovely
illustration for the story, actually takes place in modern Paris. The American sales representative
for an
bike company is tired of paying bribes to the editor of a sporting newspaper just to get
neutral coverage of his product. There is an altercation in the newsroom where he punches out the
editor. Because of the altercation, the assistant editor pulls him out of
the
building and hearing the American mention a strange old man he'd met that night, takes him to a
fortune-teller, who claims to be able to resurrect the ancient mummy of the Queen of Sheba,
perfectly
preserved in a crystal coffin all these thousands of years. When the fotune-teller learns that the
American's middle name is ‘Hyram', the same name as the ancient queens lover, the fortune-teller
proclaims him the mummy's lover re-born. Whether or not any of this is true, the
American spies a young girl, apparently a prisoner in the fortune-teller's house and vows not only
to
get to know her better but to free her from the place.
There are a lot of different things going on in this story. There's no fantasy, only the hint that there
may
be fantastic elements to the story but the action is brisk, varied and interesting.
The Copper Princess appeared in The All-Story in 1913. It is a charming novel of
love, science, mummies and reincarnation. Dr. Howland an anthropologist at a New York
museum where he becomes convinced that a centuries old, perfectly preserved mummy of an
Incan princess is not dead
but caught in a weird state of suspended animation. He calls on the help of a Russian woman
scientist who has experimented with what they call "electric sleep" Meanwhile they are being
harassed by a Russian Secret Agent who seeks the Russian woman's brother, a revolutionary. The
Secret
Agent raids the museum just as the Princess awakens causing Dr. Howland to flee with her into
the
"wilds" of the Bronks. There he finds himself falling on love with his experiment even as he
wonders if he has given birth to a creature without a soul. This is a great story, a forgotten classic,
that has never been reprinted ever before.
In The Woman of the Pyramid a young Egyptologist feels he is being haunted by a
strange woman who
shows
up at odd moments, gives him an intense glare then disappears. Strangely, she seems to be a
distant
relative to the woman he intends to marry. During a trip to Egypt he becomes obsessed with
stories
about a ghost, the "woman of the Pyramid" who seems to drive those who met her mad. He sets
out to meet her and when he does, finds himself reliving the life of the Royal Chamberlain to the
Pharaoh five thousand years
in
the past. The Woman of the Pyramid turns out to be the widow of Pharaoh, who is looking for a
new husband,
looking
strongly at him, but he is in love with another woman, and so the widow decides that this woman
must
die, as well as the chamberlain for spurning her, and well, everybody in a holocaust inside a
sunken
banquet chamber. Awakening from this strange dream the young man has to end the conflict
between
this possessive ghost and the woman he intends to marry.
Books by Perley Poore Sheehan currently available from Beb Books
The Abyss of Wonder
The Copper Princess
Captain Trouble
The Woman of the Pyramids