Showing results by narrator "Cathy Dobson" in All Categories

O. Henry was the pen name of William Sydney Porter (1862-1910), an American writer. O. Henry's short stories are loved for their wit, wordplay, warm characterization, and surprise endings. The Ransom of Red Chief is a tale of a kidnapping. A couple of desperados abduct the 10-year-old son of the richest man in a village in the Deep South. But the pair soon discover that they have taken on far more than they had bargained for.

Fedor Sologub (1863-1927) was a mystic, a realist and a writer of novels and outstanding short stories in the Dostoyevsky school. "The Hoop" is very representative of his evocative work. It tells the story of an old man who is captivated by the sight of a young child playing with a hoop. The image embeds itself in his psyche and from it, right at the end of his life, he finally learns how to live in the moment.

Six of Wilkie Collins' best short stories: "The Dead Hand", "The Devil's Spectacles", "Major Namby", "Nine O'Clock", "A Terribly Strange Bed", and "My Black Mirror".

Marie Corelli (1855 - 1924) was an eccentric British novelist who enjoyed great literary success from the publication of her first novel in 1886 until World War I. Corelli's novels sold more copies than the combined sales of popular contemporaries, including Arthur Conan Doyle, H. G. Wells, and Rudyard Kipling and she was the most widely read popular author of her day. Her fans included Winston Churchill, Mark Twain and the British Royal Family.

Joseph Rudyard Kipling (1865-1936) was an English journalist, short-story writer, poet, and novelist. 'Wireless' is a multilayered story set in a chemist's shop, where the nephew of the business' owner occupies a back room where he is experimenting with Marconi's new radio technology. The chemist's assistant, lovesick and also sick with tuberculosis, is staying in the shop overnight. The narrator is visiting, officially to observe the radio experiments...but he discovers that another set of signals are being received in the chemist's shop.

Twenty classic tales featuring doctors, patients, feverish imaginations, sick minds and unwell bodies, including 'Under the Knife' by H. G. Wells, 'Room Number Ten' by Bessie Kyffin-Taylor, 'Story of the Vanishing Patient' by Elia J. Peattie, 'The District Doctor' by Ivan Turgenev, 'Dead of Night' by W. F. Harvey, 'Cool Air' by H. P. Lovecraft, 'The Operation' by Violet Hunt, 'The Greatest Good of the Greatest Number' by Gertrude Atherton and more.

Lady Eleanor Furneaux Smith (1902-1945) was an English author, journalist and film critic. Many of her books, including her extensive oeuvre of ghost stories, involve a circus or gypsy setting, based on her own research and her (unsubstantiated) belief that she had a Romany great grandmother. Satan's Circus is a creepy tale of a circus run by a sinister and manipulative couple, Carl and Lya Brandt. When a new circus hand, Anatole, joins the troupe in North Africa, he is assigned to work with the menagerie.

An unsettling anthology of short stories featuring crazed characters, from the mildly eccentric to the criminally insane. 1. "The Tell-tale Heart" by Edgar Allan Poe 2. "The Green Light" by Barry Pain 3. "A Madman’s Manuscript" by Charles Dickens 4. "His Brother’s Keeper" by W. W. Jacobs 5. "The Dream" by A. J. Alan 6. "Query" by Seamark 7. "Old Fags" by Stacy Aumonier 8. "The Mad Veteran of Fort Ratonneau" by Ludwig Achim von Arnhem 9. "The Mines of Falun" by E. T. A. Hoffmann

E. T. A. Hoffmann (1776 – 1822), was a German Romantic author of fantasy and horror as well as a jurist, composer, music critic, draftsman and caricaturist. His stories were highly influential during the 19th century, and he is one of the major authors of the Romantic movement."The Mines of Falun" tells the story of Elis Fröbom, a sailor, who returns from the East Indies to Gotherburg in Sweden, only to discover that his mother has died and he is alone in the world.

The small minded and prudish sister of an English clergyman travels on her own to a hotel in Bordeaux. When she closes the door of her room after returning from a bath, she finds a man asleep on the bed. She realises then she is in the wrong room, but the door handle has come off in her hand, and she can’t get out. Then she discovers the man is dead. To be found in a strange man’s bedroom in the night is bad enough, but to be found in a dead man’s bedroom was even worse.

When William Froyle, ostler at the Queen's Arms at Moorthorne, learns that his betrothed has betrayed him, he determines to hang himself in the inn's coach house. His first, unsuccessful attempt, is witnessed by Daft Jimmy, the village idiot. Daft Jimmy offers to help with the process of fixing the noose and takes a great deal of interest and delight in the proceedings. As events unfold, it becomes less clear who is the fool and who is the wise man.

Guy de Maupassant's poignant love story of a doomed fascination between a hedonistic French artist and an eccentric English spinster. Miss Harriet is a mysterious and odd middle-aged lady who has taken up residence in an obscure corner of the French countryside, where she communes with nature and reads odd religious tracts. When a happy-go-lucky young French adventurer and artist comes to stay, Miss Harriet falls in love with him.

Following an apocalyptic storm at sea, a sailor finds himself one of only two survivors on board his badly damaged ship. As the vessel floats helplessly southward, he begins to write down a narrative of the strange events which ensue. Their ship collides with a ghostly ship from mythology...and our sailor tries to learn the secrets of its eerie crew. Realizing that he cannot be saved, he resolves to cast his narrative into the sea in a bottle at the point when his death is imminent.

When Henri Deplis comes into a small inheritance and celebrates his new found wealth by getting an elaborate tattoo, he little realizes what a series of catastrophic events will ensue. The tattoo is recognized as a masterpiece of modern art and given to the city of Bergamo. This is the start of a series of restrictions on Henri Deplis’ lifestyle which gradually but inevitably lead to his downfall.

Maurice Baring (1874-1945) was an English short story writer, novelist, and travel writer and war correspondent during the First World War. The Shadow of a Midnight is a ghost story with a twist. Two students on a walking tour in Germany stay in an interesting old inn which had formerly been a convent. One of them has a strange dream, which turns out perhaps not to have been a dream after all....

A bumper collection of classic ghost stories and strange supernatural tales.

Peter Christen Asbjørnsen (1812-1885) was a Norwegian writer, scholar and collector of traditional folktales. 'An Old Fashioned Christmas Eve' describes a young Norwegian soldier recovering from an illness who finds himself stranded on Christmas Eve with a family who sit around the fire telling a series of quite extraordinary folktales and ghost stories.

A fast-paced and varied collection of captivating short stories ranging from action thrillers to poignant tear-jerkers to the downright weird, including: "Jerry Bundler" by W. W. Jacobs, "The Umbrella Mender" by Beatrice Harraden, "Green Ink" by J. S. Fletcher, "Why Herbert Killed His Mother" by Winifred Holtby, "The Red Mark" by Israel Zangwill, "The White Kid Glove" by J. S. Fletcher, "Sophy Mason Comes Back" by E. M. Delafield, plus many more.

A gripping collection of 30 minute stories by some of the greatest storytellers in the English language....

Edgar Allan Poe (1809-1849) was an American poet, critic and writer of fiction and is particularly well known for his morbid and supernatural stories. 'Never Bet the Devil Your Head' is a tale which reveals Poe's sense of humour - a gruesome and fantastic humour. It is a witty take on the Faust theme - an antihero inadvertently enters into a terrible wager with the devil.