Shy and reserved Ethel May Dell was a British author who appears to have been a born writer. Writing stories from an early age, Ethel eventually published more than thirty novels, and hundreds of short stories. Although always popular with readers, Ethel's writing was critically slammed -- for she wrote stories of romantic suspense, usually featuring a young woman in terrible peril, and often set in exotic locales, particularly India. The Swindler and Other Stories is a collection of stories that originally appeared in The Red Magazine. The title story was also made into a film in 1919. "The Swindler" is the tale of romance and gambling intrigue on a transatlantic voyage.

Author Biography

Ethel M. Dell (1881 - 1939) was a British writer of over 30 popular romance novels and several short stories from 1911 to 1939. Ethel Dell worked on a novel for several years, but it was rejected by eight publishers. Finally the publisher T. Fisher Unwin bought the book for their First Novel Library, a series which introduced a writer's first book. This book, entitled The Way of an Eagle, was published in 1911 and by 1915 it had gone through thirty printings. Her debut novel is very characteristic of Ethel M. Dell's novels. There is a very feminine woman, an alpha male, a setting in India, passion galore liberally mixed with some surprisingly shocking violence and religious sentiments sprinkled throughout. While readers adored Ethel M. Dell's novels, critics hated them with a passion; but she did not care what the critics thought. She considered herself a good storyteller - nothing more and nothing less. She continued to write novels for a number of years. She made quite a lot of money, from 20,000 to 30,000 a year, but remained quiet and almost pathologically shy.