The Jest of Life

by Arthur Gask

The Jest of Life Arthur Gask Life tells the story of the six-member crew of the International Space Station that is on the cutting edge of one of the most important discoveries in human history: the first evidence of extraterrestrial life on Mars. As the crew begins to conduct research, their methods end up having unintended consequences and the life form proves more intelligent than anyone ever expected.

Hardcover

First published January 1, 1936

About the author

Arthur Cecil Gask was born at St Marylebone, Middlesex (now London), and trained in dentistry, a profession he continued for the next forty years. He married in 1898 and had four children, then divorced his wife and married his children's nanny in 1909. He came to Australia in 1920 with his second wife and their two sons, establishing a practice in Adelaide. The publication of his first novel, The Secret of the Sand Hills (1921), was self-funded, but when the first edition sold out within weeks a London publisher, Herbert Jenkins, republished it, and it soon became a bestseller. Gask went on to write more than thirty crime and detective novels-averaging one a year-with many of them set in and around Adelaide, including The Red Paste Murders (1923), Cloud the Smiter (1926) and The Shadow of Larose (1930).