Houdini in Fiction
Discover the best books featuring Houdini in fiction, from thrilling mysteries and juvenile adventures to graphic novels. Explore titles by Daniel Stashower, Tom Lalicki, and more in this curated list of escape artist tales, Sherlock Holmes crossovers, and supernatural stories.
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The Dime Museum Murders
by Daniel Stashower
In turn-of-the-century New York, young Harry Houdini is called upon to investigate the murder of a toy store baron. Houdini and Dash, escape brothers extraordinaire, are faced with a challenging mystery involving the locked library where the victim's body was found.
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The Floating Lady Murder
by Daniel Stashower
When the beautiful young assistant of a world-famous magician is murdered on stage during a performance, a young Harry Houdini joins forces with his wife, Bess, and brother, Dash, to unravel the crime. By the author of The Dime Museum Murders. Original.
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The Houdini Specter
by Daniel Stashower
In 1898, the Great Houdini's confidence is matched only by the indifference of the paying public. Now the master escape artist has the chance to make a name for himself by exposing the tricks of medium Lucius Craig, darling of New York's gullible society. When a seance conducted by Craig turns deadly, it's up to Harry to expose a murderer's lethal tricks.
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Death Defying Acts
by Greg Cox
When Houdini offers a large reward to anyone who can tell him his dead mother's final words, poor widow Mary McGregor and her daughter take him up on his offer, but their attempt to con him out of the money does not go as planned.
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Kid Houdini and the Silver Dollar Misfits
by Dwight L. MacPherson
Young Harry Houdini runs away from home only to find himself a prisoner of Professor Murat's circus, where Harry and his new circus friends form their headquarters for their unique detective agency.
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Sherlock Holmes and the Houdini Birthright
by Val Andrews
"Here's another Sherlock Holmes pastiche from the fertile pen of Val Andrews. Again two areas of mystery are linked: the exploits of Sherlock Holmes and the secrets of master escapologist, Harry Houdini. Doctor Watson's collaborator, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, finds himself drawn into the world of the fake psychics and Houdini is anxious for Holmes to unmask the perpetrators who prey on the innocent believers." "Once he has been torn away from his bee-keeping activities, Holmes's investigations lead him to some surprising locations including a Ruritanian castle. Sherlockians, historians and magic buffs will all be intrigued and delighted with this classic detective story which links fact and a little fiction to suggest what may have happened to Houdini after his death." "Again .... the game is afoot."--BOOK JACKET.Title Summary field provided by Blackwell North America, Inc. All Rights Reserved
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The Man from Beyond: A Novel
by Gabriel Brownstein
Sir Arthur Conan Doyle arrives in New York on a spiritualist crusade, defending the powers of the mysterious medium Margery. His good friend Harry Houdini is a skeptic, and when Doyle claims Margery's powers are superior to Houdini's, the magician goes on the attack.
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The Arcanum
by Thomas Wheeler
It is 1919 and the Great War has come to a close. But in the shadows of the world’s major cities, the killing has just begun. In this perilous time, as the division between order and chaos grows increasingly slim, a select group of visionaries have taken it upon themselves to ensure the safety of humanity. They are known as the Arcanum. In London’s stormy Hyde Park, Konstantin Duvall, the Arcanum’s founder, has been killed in a suspicious accident. Dismayed, the group’s longest-lived member, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, determines to avenge Duvall’s death—and uncover the secret left in his wake. For the dead man possessed the world’s most powerful—now missing—artifact: the Book of Enoch, the chronicle of God’s mistakes, within whose pages lie the seeds for the end of everything. From the scene of the crime, Conan Doyle embarks on a path that leads him to the sleazy underworld of New York City’s Bowery and a series of deceptively disparate—but decidedly connected—murders. And as he calls upon the scattered members of the Arcanum for aid, he also finds himself embroiled in a story of war as old as time itself. Not of a struggle between countries, but between darkness and light. Peopled with the twentieth century’s most famous—and infamous—figures, here is an extraordinary tale in which the stakes go beyond the realm of humankind—into the divine.
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Houdini
by Jeff Phillips
"... a love story cloaked in adventure, locked in a maze of infinite twists. Inside its pages, Harry Houdini -- self-proclaimed world's greatest mystery man -- makes the ultimate escape: breaking out of the afterlife to return to earth to prevent the grisly murder of his wife, Bess."--Cover, p. 4.
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Nevermore
by William Hjortsberg
While a killer recreates grisly scenes from the pages of Edgar Allen Poe in 1920s New York, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle is haunted by Poe's ghost, and Harry Houdini falls in love with a beautiful clairvoyant
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What Rough Beast
by H. R. Knight
Unlikely partners Harry Houdini and Sir Arthur Conan Doyle must track down a horrific demon that has been unleashed upon London.
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Ragtime
by E. L. Doctorow
Doctorow's big bestseller, made into a major movie and now repackaged, was first published in mass market paper by Bantam.
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The Tomorrow Connection
by T. Ernesto Bethancourt
Two musicians, finding themselves stranded in 1906, enlist Harry Houdini to help them find a gate to the future and travel across the country on the vaudeville circuit, to arrive in San Francisco just in time for the great earthquake.
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Houdini and the Seance Murders
by Christopher C. Farran
"Harry Houdini and Arthur Conan Doyle, together in Italy, must join forces to solve a murder that happened before their own eyes during a seance. Can the master of escape and the master of detection put aside their egos long enough to solve these bizarre murders?"--P. [4] of cover.
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The Sunken Treasure
by Marian J. A. Jackson
Houdini, bound in chains and submerged in water, could defy nature and hold his breath long enough to escape. Not so an ordinary seaman. The unfortunate fellow had seen too much while laying in provisions aboard The Seascape, the Tibaults’ luxury yacht. Those intent upon preserving their secret did not hesitate to silence him with a blow to the head and, binding his ankles with chains not unlike those used by the great escape artist, toss him overboard. Submerged in the Caribbean, he regained consciousness. But he panicked. Feeling the weight upon his legs, he gasped for air. His death was deemed an accident—no reason to delay departure—Malcolm Tibault had money enough to bribe the officials and compensate the family—so as Miss Abigail Patience Danforth, and Houdini, board The Seascape in Panama to sail to New Orleans they are unaware of the drowning. But when Malcolm Tibault himself dies, and his body is committed to the deep before it can be examined for poison, it is Miss Danforth who suspects the worst and captures the murderer.
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The Road to Madness
by H.P. Lovecraft
One of the most influential practitioners of American horror, H.P. Lovecraft inspired the work of Stephen King, Anne Rice, and Clive Barker. As he perfected his mastery of the macabre, his works developed from seminal fragments into acknowledged masterpieces of terror. This volume traces his chilling career and includes: IMPRISONED WITH THE PHARAOHS--Houdini seeks to reveal the demons that inhabit the Egyptian night. AT THE MOUNTAINS OF MADNESS--An unsuspecting expedition uncovers a city of untold terror, buried beneath an Antarctic wasteland. Plus, for the first time in any Del Rey edition: HERBERT WEST: REANIMATOR--Mad experiments yield hideous results in this, the inspiration for the cult film Re-Animator. COOL AIR--An icy apartment hides secrets no man dares unlock. THE TERRIBLE OLD MAN--The intruders seek a fortune but find only death! AND TWENTY-FOUR MORE BLOOD-CHILLING TALES
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Sherlock Holmes and Harry Houdini in the Adventure of the Pandora Plague
by Lee A. Matthias
No summary available.
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Other Worlds
by Barbara Michaels
Those present include Harry Houdini, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, psychoanalyst Nandor Fodor, and a writer who rivals them all with her sleuthing talent. These masters of mystery are about to put their minds to a pair of ghoulish stories--of families beset by poltergeistly pranks and bewitched by inexplicable horrors. Gripping puzzles, yes, but the terror of these tales is all too vicious and all too real. In the hollows of Tennessee, a family is threatened by a dire spirit whose warnings of despair and death come frighteningly true.... In a small Connecticut town, a newly married widow and her children move into her second husband's home to find their lives possessed by an unimaginable demon.... Were these villains phantom spirits or evildoers of flesh and blood? Dare to find out in this masterful delight from Barbara Michaels--a tale as frightening by daylight as it is by darkness."
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Believe
by William Shatner
Two extraordinary men--Harry Houdini, a master of illusion who regarded his cr aft as the clever workings of the mind, and Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, beloved writer and firm believer in the occult--engage in a battle of wits to determine if there is life after death. Well-known actor William Shatner is the bestselling author of Teklords and Tekwar. Tobias penned Voice of the Planet.
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Escapade
by Walter Satterthwait
Hired to guard Harry Houdini from a rival magician's death threats, Phil Beaumont finds his hands full at a stately country home where Sir Arthur Conan Doyle is among the guests and the host is found murdered. Reprint. K.
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Danger in the Dark
by Tom Lalicki
Harry Houdini – the world’s greatest escape artist – is in need of a new hat. That is what brings him to Bennett & Son, Gentlemen’s Hatters of Fifth Avenue, where young Nathaniel G. Makeworthy Fuller is working for the summer. A surprising friendship develops between the world-famous daredevil and the boy clerk, and it comes in the nick of time. A suspicious stranger has recently wheedled his way into the confidences of Nate’s wealthy great-aunt, with whom the boy and his widowed mother live. Now their house is filled with spooky late-night gatherings, the purpose of which is kept secret from Nate. Houdini is just the man to tackle this tangled mystery – and help Nate and his family escape the grasp of an interloper more cunning and dangerous than Nate could have imagined. A truly captivating historical adventure, Danger in the Dark launches the Houdini & Nate Mystery series with fast-paced plotting and a colorful blend of fact and fiction. Danger in the Dark is a 2007 Bank Street - Best Children's Book of the Year.
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Shots at Sea
by Tom Lalicki
On board the "Lusitania," young Nate Fuller hopes to sharpen his detective skills with some help from his mentor, Harry Houdini. Everything seems set for a smooth journey to England--until someone attempts to assassinate former president Teddy Roosevelt.
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Frame-up on the Bowery
by Tom Lalicki
Thirteen-year-old Nate, aided by his newly discovered cousin and the famous magician Harry Houdini, catches the Fifth Avenue Slasher, solves a string of burglaries, and stops a notorious gang leader.
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Houdini's Shadow
by Leo Brent Robillard
The reader first meets young Jake O'Sullivan, the protagonist, in 1912 Montreal, where his father is a washed-up boxer in hock to a small-time Jewish mobster. Jake has had a lifelong obsession with the escape artist, Houdini, after seeing the famous magician perform one of his stunts. Flash forward to 1929 when Jake is now a young man performing dangerous stunts himself, one of which includes stealing a mobster's moll. Lulu is gorgeous but fickle and causes Jake no end of problems, requiring other sorts of tricky escapes. The dark underside of Montreal during this period is deftly rendered, with its steamy jazz clubs, zinc bars and "a Negress blowing through an alto saxophone." Eventually, Jake takes on a smuggling job with a nervous little Frenchman that goes horribly wrong, and Jake and Lulu are soon running from the law as well as the lawless. When things settle down, Jake manages to pull off a nifty combination escape stunt and bank job. Here the story goes slightly off the rails, with the appearance of girl named Bobby and a journey to New Orleans, but, altogether this is a well-crafted novel, especially in its period details.
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Electric Flesh
by Christophe Claro
Convinced that he is the illegitimate grandchild of Harry Houdini, unemployed electric chair executioner Howard Hordinary is tormented by multiple perversities throughout his attempt to restore his status, an endeavor marked by carnies, scientists, and his would-be progenitor's obsessive life. Original.
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What Rough Beast
by Harry R. Squires
It's 1903. Harry Houdini, the great escape artist, seeks the help of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, creator of Sherlock Holmes, to discredit Maximillian Cairo, an infamous occultist and the most debauched man in London. But the two men get more than they bargained for when they interrupt a magic ritual. That night, they set something loose - something no one can face and stay sane. Something that runs amok, spreading death and madness throughout an unsuspecting Edwardian London. Both men are tortured by self-doubt for the first time in their lives. Have their logical minds been tainted by this brush with frenzy? Their sole hope to understand what is happening to them lies with the only witness to the first murder. But the man refuses to reveal what he's seen, even to save his life. All Houdini's talents and all Conan Doyle's powers of deduction combined may not be enough to save them from what they have unleashed on the world.