Jules Lermina (1839-1915), the author of Mysteryville, Panic in Paris and To-Ho and the Gold Destroyers, was one of the most interesting authors of French romans scientifiques in the latter part of the 19th century. This collection includes The Nail (1870), featuring a prodigious detective predating Sherlock Holmes by 20 years, the classic Burn This! (1888), a novella in the vein of Bulwer-Lytton and Talbot Mundy, in which a young Parisian gifted with superhuman mental powers encounters a mysterious Hindu secret society that has inherited the occult science of ancient Atlantis, and the eponymous novella (1893), in which young Conrad Zippelius receives a letter about a mysterious inheritance from a distant relative, one that comes with a secret that could destroy the world!