Decoding Deceit: 17 Essential Reads on Fraud, Scams, Hoaxes, and Grafters
Classic Tales of Swindlers, False Identities, Hoaxes, and Public DelusionBy John Newman, G. P. Danilevskii, Austin Bidwell, Fydell Edmund Garrett, Bram Stoker, W. H. Inglis, Ernest Belfort Bax, F. Colburn Adams, Alexandre Dumas, Horatio Jr. Alger, Edward Stratemeyer, Julia K. Duncan, L. Frank Baum, Clarence Young
Length104h 23m
About this audiobook
Decoding Deceit gathers seventeen searching narratives of fraud, imposture, confidence games, hoaxes, and moral evasion, revealing deception as both a social practice and a literary engine. Ranging from sensation fiction and adventure romance to didactic tales, crime-inflected narratives, and popular juvenile fiction, the volume traces how disguise, speculation, forged authority, and institutional corruption animate plots across the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Its standout scenarios of swindlers, counterfeit identities, and compromised trust show that fraud is never merely private: it tests the values by which communities judge credibility, class, and character. The collection's contributors represent a broad transatlantic field of popular and canonical writing, including novelists associated with Gothic suspense, historical romance, reform-minded social criticism, boys' adventure, and early modern fantasy. Figures such as Alexandre Dumas, Bram Stoker, L. Frank Baum, Horatio Alger Jr., and Edward Stratemeyer appear alongside lesser-known chroniclers of financial misconduct and public deception. Together, these voices illuminate an era shaped by mass print culture, expanding markets, urban anonymity, and anxieties over mobility and respectability. Recommended for students and general readers alike, this anthology offers an unusually rich comparative encounter with the many languages of deceit. Its varied forms invite close attention to narrative credibility, ethical judgment, and the cultural history of confidence, making it valuable both as an introduction to popular literary traditions and as a sustained dialogue about trust.
Audiobook details
GenreTrue Crime, General Fiction
Length104 hrs 23 mins
Narrated byListen with 1,000+ voices
FormateBook with Audio
Publish dateMar 4, 2025
LanguageEnglish
Table of contents
1Famous Impostors
2Famous Impostors
3PREFACE
4I. PRETENDERS
5FAMOUS IMPOSTORS
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6II. PRACTITIONERS OF MAGIC
7III. THE WANDERING JEW
8IV. JOHN LAW THE MISSISSIPPI SCHEME AND ITS ANTECEDENTS
9V. WITCHCRAFT AND CLAIRVOYANCE
10VI. ARTHUR ORTON (The Tichborne Claimant.)
11VII. WOMEN AS MEN
12VIII. HOAXES, ETC.
13IX. THE CHEVALIER D’EON
14X. THE BISLEY BOY
15Quacks and Grafters
16PREFACE.
17CHAPTER IV.
18PART TWO OSTEOPATHY
19CHAPTER X.
20"White man bery unsartin"
21"White man bery unsartin"
22THE WASHERS AND THE SCRUBBERS—THE MEN WHO ROBBED THEM.
23Footnote
24Frank Hunter's Peril
25CHAPTER I. FRANK AND BEN.
26CHAPTER II. MR. CRAVEN'S COURTSHIP.
27CHAPTER III. UNWELCOME NEWS.
28CHAPTER IV. MR. CRAVEN'S FOUR-LEGGED ENEMY.
29CHAPTER V. MR. CRAVEN'S RETURN.
30CHAPTER VI. THE DIFFICULTY OF KILLING A DOG.
31CHAPTER VII. MISS O'GRADY'S VICTORY.
32CHAPTER VIII. FRANK IS OBSTINATE.
33CHAPTER IX. A STRANGER APPEARS ON THE SCENE.
34CHAPTER X. A CONSPIRACY AGAINST FRANK.
35CHAPTER XI. TRAPPED.
36CHAPTER XII. TWO BOY FRIENDS.
37CHAPTER XIII. JONATHAN TARBOX, OF SQUASHBORO'.
38CHAPTER XIV. THE LONDON CLERK.
39CHAPTER XV. MR. TARBOX IS OBSTINATE.
40CHAPTER XVI. AN ADVENTURE IN LONDON.
41CHAPTER XVII. COLONEL SHARPLEY'S RUSE.
42CHAPTER XVIII. MR. TARBOX AT THE PARIS EXPOSITION.
43CHAPTER XIX. FRANK ASSERTS HIS RIGHTS.
44CHAPTER XX. FRANK LEAVES PARIS.
45CHAPTER XXI. THE HOTEL DU GLACIER.
46CHAPTER XXII. OVER THE BRINK.
47CHAPTER XXIII. GIVING THE ALARM.
48CHAPTER XXIV. SHARPLEY DISSEMBLES.
49CHAPTER XXV. A USELESS SEARCH.
50CHAPTER XXVI. MR. TARBOX ON THE TRAIL.
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