Showing results by narrator "Cathy Dobson" in All Categories

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.

John Galsworthy (1867 – 1933) was an English playwright and novelist who was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1932. Spindleberries is a haunting short story, describing the increasingly eccentric Alicia, a nature-loving artist, via four memories which are conjured up in her cousin's brain as he contemplates four spindleberries which she has dropped on the path.

Sidney Keyes' great allegorical tale of a race between a newfangled steamroller with a top speed of five miles per hour and a horse-drawn hearse, whose two old nags are accustomed to a stately pace appropriate to the transportation of the dead. The race takes on a wider significance as an allegory of progress and the advent of the age of the machine versus the old thoughtful way of life.

An impoverished French family awaits the prodigal return of their long vanished Uncle Jules from his travels in America. From his letters it would appear that he has made his fortune and when he returns the family hopes their fortunes will change too. A boat trip to Jersey provides the opporunity for a reunion...but nobody could anticipate the twist in events.

When Arthur Holliday arrives at Doncaster during race week, he is unable to find a hotel room free. His search for a bed for the night leads him to a dubious hostelry, The Two Robins, where he is offered a bed in a shared room at a handsome price of five shillings. The landlord assures Arthur that his room-mate is sleeping soundly and will in no way disturb him. A quick examination of the sleeping man confirms that he is indeed very quiet. Too quiet!

When Alfred Parrish meets the charismatic Major in Berlin, he finds himself whisked off on an adventure in St. Petersburg. Unfortunately for him, the Major arranged for his passport to remain with the Russian Embassy in Berlin and be sent on by post. Even more unfortunately, the penalty for travelling in Russia without a passport has recently been increased to ten years hard labour in Siberia. The story is a delightful romp through scrape after scrape as Alfred and the Major dodge arrest and charm the most entrenched of bureacrats.

A seafarer's story of when his ship was sucked into the terrifying maelström... a bottomless whirlpool of gigantic proportions and power... and how he survived to tell the tale.

A fast-paced and engaging narrative about a medical assistant who despairs of finding the funds for his final year of medical school until, while defending himself against the belligerent spouse of a patient, he ends up knocking out the town's best candidate to defeat the local boxing champion, the Croxley Master. Learning that the impending fight carries prize money which would see him through his education, he agrees to step in as the new challenger and see whether he can defeat the Croxley Master.

A quartet of short stories by the British master of the macabre, Hector Hugh Munro, better known under his pseudonym “Saki”. This collection brings together four of his most macabre tales, all of which will surprise the listener with an uncanny twist at the end.

Robert Browning's classic adventure ballad. Three riders set off from Ghent to bring urgent news to Aix. They ride furiously through the night and the next day. Only one completes the journey and saves the fate of the town.

Kipling’s classic tale taken from the Just So Stories. The stickly prickly hedgehog and the slow solid tortoise devise an exercise regime which will enable them to avoid becoming lunch for the painted jaguar. The effects surprise everyone, especially the painted jaguar.

Katherine Mansfield (1888-1923) was a prominent modernist writer of short fiction and a close associate of D. H. Lawrence and Virginia Woolf. 'A Suburban Fairy Tale' is a disturbing story set in an English family at the end of the First World War. While the parents are revelling in the end of rationing and enjoying the availability of all kinds of food which had been rationed, their young son is aware of the hungry birds chirruping in the garden. But are they actually birds? Or could they be hungry little boys like himself?

A newly qualified doctor receives a call from his first patient - a mysterious woman who is deeply distressed and who is covered in a thick black veil. She tells him a confusing story about a dying man who she wishes the doctor to visit the following day, although she assures the doctor that the patient will certainly be dead by then. The young doctor agrees that he will make the visit at nine on the next morning...and finds himself on the strangest professional call of his entire life.

New Zealand-born Katherine Mansfield (1888-1923) was a prominent modernist writer of short fiction and a close associate of D. H. Lawrence and Virginia Woolf. 'The Woman at the Store' is a sinister tale about a woman living at a remote farm and general store in New Zealand with her small daughter and sheepdog...and a dark secret....

'The Red-Haired Girl' is a ghost story about an eerie and ominous servant-girl who stalks the house watching its inhabitants malevolently.

When Alice joins her husband, whom due to the war she has barely seen since their marriage two years earlier, on his yacht for a belated honeymoon, she discovers that a boat is far from an ideal location to get to know one's spouse. For a start, there is no privacy anywhere. The crew can hear everything. Secondly, life about ship is run by men and operates on male terms. Alice sets out to establish herself as mistress of both her husband and his ship.

Mary Postgate is a horrifying story, and like much of Kipling's work it can be interpreted in different ways. It was written as propaganda in 1915 during World War I against the background of German atrocities and massacres in France, and just after German aircraft had engaged in bombing raids on English towns. Mary Postgate was intended to inspire English readers with just such cold-blooded courage and ruthlessness as Mary herself displays.

Charlotte Riddell (1832-1906), who wrote as Mrs J. H. Riddel, was one of the most popular and influential writers of the Victorian period. 'A Strange Christmas Game' is a brilliantly constructed ghost story with a strange twist at the end.

James Hume Nisbet (1849-1923) was born in Scotland but moved to Australia as a young man and spent seven years travelling there before he returned to Scotland. He turned to literature in middle age and wrote a large number of mystery and adventure stories, which were published in England. 'The Old Portrait' is a supernatural mystery about an artist who acquires an old and very sinister painting.

A rich anthology of classic tales of ghosts and the supernatural written by women. 'The Operation' by Violet Hunt; 'On the Northern Ice' by Elia W. Peattie; 'Afterward' by Edith Wharton; T'he Missing Model' by Lettice Galbraith; 'The Cold Embrace' by Mary E. Braddon; 'Room Number Ten' by Bessie Kyffin-Taylor; 'Pomegranate Seed' by Edith Wharton; 'Mrs. Raeburn's Waxwork' by Eleanor Smith; 'The Mystery of the Semi-Detached' by Edith Nesbit.