Two new eBooks from Gaston Leroux!
Two classic French mysteries have just been added to our line of eBook reissues: Gaston Leroux’s The Phantom of the 
Opera and The Mystery of the Yellow Room. Both books feature brand new introductions by Otto Penzler, and have been professionally proofread and formatted to ensure readability on any device.
The Phantom of the Opera is the novel that inspired the blockbuster musical. When a ghost is seen by stagehands at the Paris Opera House, outsiders dismiss their claims as theatrical superstition. Then people start turning up dead, and the ghost reveals itself to all. But the real twist comes when the phantom becomes infatuated with a beautiful singer. Then terror turns to tragedy, in a love story more powerful than any opera ever staged.
The Mystery of the Yellow Room is a world famous early example of the locked-room mystery. After a murder is attempted in a completely sealed room, the only trace of the assailant is a bloody handprint on the wall. A renowned detective signs onto the case, but his presence doesn't stop reporter and amateur sleuth Joseph Rouletabille from carrying out a personal investigation. The novel follows his procedure step by step, allowing the reader the same clues that the detectives have. The result is a page turner that feels as fresh today as it did over one hundred years ago.
Gaston Leroux (1868-1927) was a French journalist and author. After working as a foreign correspondent and covering the 1905 Russian Revolution, Leroux left the profession to write fiction full time. He also founded a film company that published novels and simultaneously turned them into films. Leroux’s huge contribution to French detective fiction is equivalent to that of Arthur Conan Doyle to the genre in the United Kingdom or that of Edgar Allen Poe in America.
