London: Richards, (1935). Hardcover first edition - The fifth and final collection of Shiel stories issued during his lifetime, stories woven together by a thread of nine men being summoned - by accident - to come and marry a dying girl, an heiress who wishes to use her fortune to support the study of biology. The winner will be the one tells the most extravagant tale in a radio contest. Several of the stories are fantasy and science fiction, including 'The Place of Pain Day.' As one critic noted "Shiel was more than just a writer of sensational tales of magic and mystery. There is an undercurrent of philosophic seriousness. . Like his contemporaries George Bernard Shaw and H. G. Wells, he wrote out of the intellectual fervor of his times when the impact of Darwin's theories and the revolutionary strides being made in the material sciences were shaking to the roots the philosophical and religious underpinnings of the closing nineteenth century. Shiel saw the socialism of Henry George and Herbert Spencer as the answer to the political questions of his time and a curious blend of science and religion as the answer to the moral/philosophical questions. (John D. Squires) 304 pp.