A Bid for Fortune

The novel that launched Guy Boothby’s hugely popular Dr. Nikola series, this 1895 thriller pits an ordinary young Englishman against one of Victorian fiction’s first great criminal masterminds. Nikola is a cold, brilliant occultist bent on recovering a mysterious relic, and his vendetta sweeps the story from the streets of London to Australia and the East. Kidnapping, disguise, and hairbreadth escapes follow at a brisk pace, with a romance threaded through the danger. Boothby wrote for readers hungry for exotic adventure, and Nikola became a template for the shadowy supervillains who would haunt popular fiction for decades. It is a fast, atmospheric entertainment from the golden age of the sensational serial. Available here as a free PDF and EPUB edition.