Best Selling Books by Van Wyck Mason

How General Washington and his men spent the winter at Valley Forge. Grades 5-7.

Colonel Hugh North faces cold war foes and intrigue on one of his most deadly missions. The Hugh North series is "high powered...unflagging entertainment!" (The New York Times).

#7 in the Hugh North series.

Someone is plotting the start of World War III. Colonel North sets out to find the mastermind, but United States Intelligence calls him off the case. In spite of the five men mysteriously murdered, the government says there is no proof of the conspiracy. But North knows it is true. And he chooses to pit himself singlehandedly against a vicious ring of spies to prove it! "A Bermuda houseparty loses its gaiety after the ocean races when Col. North is recalled to duty because there seems to be an obtrusion of international throat-cutting (a transfer of submarines), a shifting of gold bars to be delivered, and a to-do in drugs. Dead bodies -- and live and seductive ones too -- are a starter for a race against time which leads to China where major moves by the intrepid Colonel foil a Soviet-Red China combine. At the price a lot for your money with North still in the lead." -- Kirkus Reviews

Eighteen years in the tempestuous career of Henry Morgan, buccaneer and lieutenant governor of Jamaica.

Traces the history and development of Maryland from the first settlers to the signing of the Declaration of Independence more than one hundred years later.

Down Shanghai''s famous Bund swept the red tide of terror -- until Captain North discovered the secret of the four copper coins, of the dying man who whispered, "Carol''s doll," and of the murderer whose goal was an empire!

In the bay of Cienfuegos, a little Cuban town, the naked body of a D.C.I. officer was found floating one night. And the next, Captain North of the Army Intelligence was on his way there -- with orders to find the facts. The wolves of the naval powers were already gathering at Cienfuegos around a cashiered American naval officer who had developed a new and mysterious invention. And beside the agents were the great international criminals always drawn by such an affair. The first intimation of the sinister undercurrents North was facing came on the night train in Cuba -- when a drab-looking German was murdered almost before his eyes, with a glass dagger thrust into the heart. At Cienfuegos the real battle began, with danger lurking in the surrounding jungle, and within the house death striking with silent arrows -- so much quieter than automatics, so much easier to use from a distance than knives...

"Third machine gun gangster dies!" came the newsboy''s cry through the window of Judge Mackaye''s stately residence in Deptford. A group of men were gathered there -- powers in the life of the city, and before sundown two of them lay dead on the broad lawns of Deptford Manor, another was on the point of death, and Captain Hugh North of Army Intelligence was to take control. Murder stalked the quiet New England city -- murder whose roots lay in a strange, bizarre tangle. Murder dogged Judge Mackaye''s footsteps, hounded his lovely daughter. And murder uncovered another, more terrible tragedy before it was finally checked!

Washington—the Potomac—Chesapeake Bay—against the background of a beautiful and gracious city, a sleepy river, a tranquil bay, Captain Hugh North, against the most terrific odds he has ever encountered, fights his greatest battle. Here, in this list of the men and women who crowd these exciting pages, are his allies and his enemies, all participants in the mighty game of life and death. Here are murderers—and friends. Can you tell which they are? Watch them carefully—they have mystery and romance and adventure in store for you.

Captain Hugh North, D.C.I., arrived at Fort Espato (in English, "Fort Terror") with no thought of treasure or tragedy -- but both awaited him there. An American army port superseded the old ruin now, but when the Spanish controlled the Philippines, it had been an ill-fated and much-used fort. Some legendary menace hung over its somber vaults and passages, but when two men vanished into its depths one evening and did not reappear, North saw only a living hand where others saw inexplicable terror. To track the killer who not only murdered but caused his victims to disappear completely baffled even Captain North, until he found the beads with the markings that did not match, and a bit of paper in a dead man''s hand!

MAN FROM G-2 MEETS GIRL FROM MI-2 Lady Angela Forester -- fair, vivacious, voluptuous -- and Colonel Hugh North -- rugged agent from G-2 -- made a handsome couple as they sipped their drinks in a plush London restaurant. The one-time lovers had met accidentally and were now renewing the glorious days of old. But something was different, Hugh kept telling himself. Angela had changed.... It was only after Hugh North set out on his dangerous and delicate mission to Tangier -- with Angela at his side -- that he learned his lovely girlfriend was now an important MI-2 agent! "Quite exciting!" —Chicago Sunday Tribune

When Mr. Wallace was found neatly suspended from a hook in the bathroom ceiling, with a slender chain around his neck and the wastebasket on which he had stood carefully kicked away, there seemed little doubt of it. Especially as there was a note in the dead man''s handwriting saying, "I am worried, tired, and sick of heart. Why go on with this senseless struggle? Disgrace faces me." But -- why was the sheet on which the note was written shorter than all the other sheets on the desk? Where had the three seeds that come from that were found near the body, and why should Wallace, partner in a brokerage house, have chosen the beginning of a merry Long Island house party to have committed suicide? Captain North, late of the American Intelligence Service, saw these things, and they puzzled him. Before that dreadful night was over, death struck again, and the terrified house guests knew that in their midst was a killer -- cold blooded, ruthless, efficent -- and always the three white seeds followed in his wake ... a symbol of death!

Colonel Hugh North’s wildest andmost baffling assignment leads to Zanzibar Intrigue! The Hugh North series is “high powered . . . unflagging entertainment!” (The New York Times).

Captain Hugh North of the Army Intelligence has had a strange career, but no part of it compares to the peril and excitement with the case of the branded spy, and the singular chain of murders that, following it, threaten the peace of the world. From the beautiful girl found dead near an Hawaiian beach, with an inexplicable mark branded on her neck, North finds the threads that lead to the far corners and great capitals -- Paris, Washington, Moscow ... and to criminals whose ruthless daring is matched only by their cunning!

Colonel Hugh North''s latest adventure brings him to the oil fields of Venezuela... The Hugh North series is "high powered...unflagging entertainment!" (The New York Times).

#8 in the Hugh North series. Captain Hugh North of the American Army''s G-2 division is on hand when a peace advocate is attacked and robbed on his way to the Budapest Peace Conference, on the eve of World War II. Only North can figure out the intricate plots going on behind the scenes.

The Reds would give a spire off the Kremlin to lay hands on Dr. Hans Bracht, America''s foremost missile genius. And here he was on a Bangkok-bound plane with only G-2''s Colonel North to guard him. The plane''s passenger list made North sweat: MARY HOLLBERG, a shapely Fraulein who said she was a concert pianist but obviously wasn’t; CHU HOONG, multimillionaire manufacturer of Dragon''s Tooth Elixir; LITA NALINE, an exotic, sloe-eyed film star who developed a sudden affection for Colonel North; BORIS SALENKOV, who resembled Stalin in more ways than his mustache; LEX ROSE, a Hollywood executive and once a card-carrying Commie. Looking at them, Colonel North knew that murder would be the least of his troubles...

Novel concerning the events of the American Revolution.

In Hong Kong, a company has developed a fuel additive that increases mileage markedly. All the world powers want it. But when the formula is stolen from the company safe, only Hugh North can find it—if he lives long enough!

The Union Navy during the Civil War and its fight against the Southern blockade runners.

Mason tells a good story against a convincingly authentic background- that of Baltimore to New Orleans on the verge of the Civil War, and the sympathies here are enlisted with the main characters on the side of the South. The chief value of the book lies in the immensely detailed and little known picture of the efforts of the South to build a navy, efforts which were blocked by bungling self-seekers, incompetent politicians and the struggle for separate commands. Brunton, Scottish shipbuilder, Sam Seymour of the U.S.N. who resigns his commission to serve his native South, his austere elder brother, an engineer, who goes to Richmond to make his contribution, - these three live in the intricate story of the Navy''s birth and death.

The adventures and exploits of the Paddock family of Nantucket during the great days of sperm whaling in the mid-nineteenth century.

Enroute to Jamestown, a group of settlers, including a number of social outcasts, are shipwrecked at Bermuda. Based on a true historical incident.

Adventures of three doctors in the American Revolution.