John Buchan

A gripping tale of adventure that has enthralled readers since it was first published, John Buchan's The Thirty-Nine Steps is edited with an introduction and notes by Sir John Keegan in Penguin Classics. Adventurer Richard Hannay has just returned from South Africa and is thoroughly bored with his London life — until a spy is murdered in his flat, just...

The Thirty-Nine Steps follows the thrilling story of Richard Hannay, who finds his return to England from years in South Africa to be dreadfully monotonous. This uneventful existence in London takes a dramatic turn when a murder occurs in his flat. Just days earlier, Hannay had a chance encounter with an American who revealed an assassination plot with the potential...

The Thirty-Nine Steps features Richard Hannay, a restless hero, determined to showcase the integrity of the ordinary man who stands in defence of his country. Buchan's terrific yarn excelled as a Hitchcock movie of the same name and inspired all subsequent spy thrillers, including the much later incarnation of Fleming's suave James Bond. The book plays on fears of invasion...

Twenty new titles in the much-loved and hugely successful Penguin English Library series. The Thirty-Nine Steps 'My guest was lying sprawled on his back. There was a long knife through his heart which skewered him to the floor.' Richard Hannay has just returned to England after years in South Africa and is thoroughly bored with his life in London. But...

To mark the 150th anniversary of Scottish author John Buchan's birth, strange fiction expert James Machin presents a new selection of the writer's best uncanny fiction, including stories from The Runagates Club.Though best known today as the author of The Thirty-Nine Steps, this new volume aims to foreground his contribution to the early weird tale, including some of his most...

In 1925, John Buchan published his second most famous novel, John Macnab. Three high-flying men—a barrister, a cabinet minister, and a banker—are suffering from boredom. They concoct a plan to cure it. They inform three Scottish estates that they will poach from each two stags and a salmon within a given time. They sign collectively as 'John Macnab' and await...

Trolls have escaped from the black lava wastes of Iceland and the dense pine forests of Scandinavia to take on a new life in the collective global imagination. They may not steal goats and eat people quite so much, but they remain disruptive and dangerous, even if their limited imaginations sometimes make them comic and even quite likeable. Emerging from...

One of the greatest adventure stories ever written, freshly repackaged for a new generation of readers and featuring an exclusive introduction from the author’s grandson. ‘This latest edition of the novel has been redesigned, resulting in an authentic looking cloth-bound book ... Exciting and thrilling, this should be read by all.’ – The Sun ‘A handsome new edition’ – The...

The Island of Sheep is the fifth, last, and most unusual of the Hannay books. Having returned once again to a quiet life at Fosse Manor, Hannay's life is shaken a final time when the son of an old acquaintance from Africa asks for his help in finishing a feud that goes back thirty years to a hilltop in Rhodesia....

When Anthony Lammas, Kirk minister and Professor of Logic at St Andrews University, sets off for business in London, little does he realise that he will soon be entangled in a web of conspiracy. But Anthony is no ordinary professor. Set during the Napoleonic Wars, The Free Fishers is classic Buchan—a fast-paced tale of treason and espionage. With an introduction...

Recently returned from South Africa, adventurer Richard Hannay is bored with life. After a chance encounter with an American who informs him of an assassination plot and is then promptly murdered in Hannay's London flat, he becomes the obvious suspect and is forced to go on the run. He heads north to his native Scotland, fleeing the police and his...

The Jacobite army marches into England, and Alistair Maclean, a close confidant of Charles Edward Stewart, embarks on a secret mission to raise support for the cause in the west. He soon begins to suspect that someone close to the Prince is passing information to the Government. Just as he closes in on the traitor, his own life is put...

After distinguished service in the First World War, Richard Hannay settles into peaceful domesticity with his wife Mary and their young son. However, news comes to him of three kidnappings. With no more than a few tantalisingly cryptic lines of verse as clues, he is soon on the trail of Dominick Medina—a charismatic polymath but a man 'utterly and consumedly...

Richard Hannay is tasked to investigate rumours of an uprising in the Muslim world. He embarks on a hair-raising journey through German-occupied Europe to meet up with his old friend Sandy Arbuthnot in Constantinople. There, they must thwart the Germans' plans to use religion to help them win the war. Set during World War I, Greenmantle is a powerful meditation...

Mr. Standfast is the third of five Richard Hannay thrillers. Brigadier-General Richard Hannay is recalled from active service on the Western Front and tasked with a secret mission to catch a dangerous German agent who is at large in Britain. Travelling incognito, he infiltrates a community of conscientious objectors with the aim of ferreting out the spy. During this adventure,...

'For three minutes you will turn your eyes inward into the darkness of the mind which I have taught you to make. Then I will give the sign you will look at the paper. There you will see words written, but only for one second. Bend all your powers to remember them.' What begins as a welcome, if slightly dull,...

Sir Edward Leithen—perhaps the most autobiographical of Buchan's characters—is dying of tuberculosis and has been given a year to live. After this prognosis, Leithen undertakes a profoundly heroic quest from London to the Canadian Northwest, tracking down a missing man who is literally sick at heart. In the course of this epic journey, Leithen finds redemption for himself. Sick Heart...