'I saw him taking a different shape before my eyes. His loose draperies all fell off him, and, as they were in the very act of falling, there issued ... a monstrous creature of the beetle type'

Eminent politician Paul Lessingham is the toast of Westminster, but when 'the Beetle' arrives from Egypt to hunt him down, the dark and gruesome secret that haunts him is dragged into the light. Bent on revenge for a crime committed against the disciples of an Egyptian goddess, the Beetle terrorizes its victims and will stop at nothing until it has satisfaction.

The Penguin English Library - collectable general readers' editions of the best fiction in English, from the eighteenth century to the end of the Second World War.

Richard Marsh (1857-1915) was the pseudonym of the British author born Richard Bernard Heldman. He is best known for his supernatural thriller The Beetle: A Mystery, published in the same year as Bram Stoker's Dracula and initially even more popular. Heldman was educated at Eton and Oxford University. Several of the prolific Marsh's novels were published posthumously.