author
Eustace Hale Ball
1881–1931
A prolific early 20th-century storyteller, he moved easily between popular fiction and the fast-growing world of silent film. His work ranges from mystery and crime novels to screenwriting and directing, giving it a lively, cinematic feel.
2 Audiobooks
The Voice on the Wire
by Eustace Hale Ball
Traffic in Souls: A Novel of Crime and Its Cure
by Eustace Hale Ball
About the author
Born in 1881 and dying in 1931, Eustace Hale Ball was an American writer whose career crossed several forms of storytelling. He is remembered for novels including The Voice on the Wire, Traffic in Souls: A Novel of Crime and Its Cure, Bubbles from Gotham's Pierian Spring, and The Gaucho.
Ball also worked in the young film industry as a screenwriter and director of short films. That mix of page and screen makes him a good example of a writer from the silent-era years, when popular fiction and motion pictures were closely connected.
Though he is not as widely known today as some of his contemporaries, his work still offers a glimpse of early modern entertainment in America: brisk plots, genre storytelling, and a strong sense of dramatic momentum.