Showing results by narrator "Cathy Dobson" in All Categories

Alphonse Daudet (1840-1897) was one of France's finest writers of short stories. 'The Pope's Mule' is the amusing story of an animal which waited patiently for seven years to repay a man who mistreated her.

'The Brazen Serpent' is an unusual crime story in that it is told from the perspective of the criminal. Danby, a young engineer and hobby metalsmith has just escaped from prison and is in search of a way to make a living while on the run. His friend Parmenter, a collector of antiquities and owner of a rare and valuable medallion which is his most prized possession, offers him a position running an antiques business he has just acquired.

A Keen Sense of Rumour is a tongue-in-cheek love story with strong elements of a bedroom farce. Kenneth Harvey, a notorious philanderer and proficient golfer is on holiday with a group of friends. His roving eye is drawn to a pretty girl who is staying at the same hotel. After a day of golf, Kenneth leaves the billiard room to have an early night - though his friends think it more likely that this is a pretext for some amorous adventure and take it upon themselves to catch him out.

Arthur Jermyn is the story of a baronet with an interest in anthropology who sets out to solve the mystery of what his great, great, great grandfather discovered in the Congo many years earlier. The family stories were very peculiar and the old ancestor had gone mad and been locked up in an asylum...but when on an expedition to the Congo Arthur Jermyn finally met someone claiming to be able to solve the mystery, he anticipated great things.

The Yellow Drawing Room is a story told through the eyes of an archetypical Victorian gentleman. He has met and fallen under the spell of the beautiful Vanora Haydon. Vanora has been given permission to decorate and furnish a drawing room and has chosen to do so in brilliant yellow. She has created her own room, reflective of her own personality and individuality - something which the conservative narrator cannot cope with.

Ten classic short stories from the quills of great bird-loving authors.

'Mr. Tallent's Ghost' is an amusing tale about an eccentric writer who likes to read his appalling and tedious novels aloud to his relatives...or indeed anyone who will listen. He persuades a lawyer to draw up a will devoting his entire fortune to funding the publication of his writing. Shortly after this, news of Mr. Tallent's death arrives. The disinherited relations dispute the will vigorously, and soon after this, the ghost of Mr. Tallent begins to haunt the relatives and the executor.

Lady Bessie Kyffin-Taylor was an English writer famous for her outstanding supernatural stories, which were published in a single volume in 1920, just two years before her death. The Twins is one of Kyffin-Taylor's most famous novelettes. It tells the bizarre tale of identical twin brothers. One brother is hell-bent on evil and constantly contrives to ensure his twin is blamed for his ill-doing.

Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton (1857-1946) was a prominent and prolific American author of novels, short stories, essays, and articles for magazines and newspapers on such issues as feminism, politics and war.

Elia Wilkinson Peattie (1862-1935) was a prolific American author, journalist and critic. Although she left school at 14, she was enormously talented, and by her 20s she was well established as a writer of short stories. 'A Child of the Rain' is an eerie, poignant, supernatural tale about a strange, destitute child who appears spectrally on a late-night streetcar.

Edmée Elizabeth Monica Dashwood, née de la Pasture (1890-1943), was a prolific English author who wrote under the pseudonym E. M. Delafield. She is best known for her largely autobiographical Diary of a Provincial Lady, which took the form of a journal of the life of an upper-middle class Englishwoman living mostly in a Devon village of the 1930s. In 'Squirrel in a Cage', she tells the story of the ending of a relationship between two lovers.

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.

Fedor Sologub (1863-1927) was a Russian mystic and realist and one of the great novelists and short story writers of the Dostoyevsky school. A favourite theme of his was reincarnation, which he uses very powerfully in his story "A Soothing Dream", which describes the last weeks of a dying boy's life.

Gilbert Keith Chesterton (1874-1936) was an English writer best known for his fictional priest-detective, Father Brown.This collection features five of Chesterton's most intriguing cases:The Shadow of the SharkThe Hammer of GodThe Invisible ManThe Queer FeetThe Blue Cross

Hugh and Margaret Grainger have rented a lovely old house near an excellent golf course. At the bottom of the garden is a strange, well-kept, but untenented thatched cottage. A visitor to the Graingers has a strange and overwhelming presentiment on passing the cottage that the house is actually not empty. Indeed, on several occasions he seems to see a light in the cottage. And one evening he thinks he sees a figure entering the house. But every attempt to investigate confirms that the cottage is abandoned.

Edward Frederic Benson (1867 - 1940) was an English novelist, biographer, memoirist, archaeologist and short story writer, best known as the true master of the gothic occult story. Gavon's Eve is a terrifying story of mysterious occult devil worship and witchcraft which pervades a remote rural district in Great Britain.

William Le Queux (1864 - 1927) was an Anglo-French journalist and writer, diplomat, traveller, flying buff and wireless pioneer who broadcast music from his own station long before radio was generally available. He was phenomenally successful as a novelist and short story writer, and many of his tales are based on his own exploits, albeit vastly exaggerated.

Edward Frederic Benson (1867 – 1940) was an English novelist, biographer, memoirist, archaeologist and short story writer, best known for his masterly and uncanny ghost stories. One of the most famous of these is The Bus Conductor. It is a deceptively simple tale of a mysterious apparition which comes into view on an ordinary London street under most peculiar circumstances. The chilling catchphrase spoken by the mysterious figure: "Just room for one inside, Sir" takes on an altogether sinister meaning.

At the deathbed of Ursula, the eldest of three sisters, the dying women declares that she will return from the dead when the time comes to accompany each of her younger siblings into the afterlife. The two survivors and their old housekeeper, now live on in fear of encountering Ursula's ghost, and strange happenings in the house bring this terror to an unholy climax.

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".