Showing results by narrator "Cathy Dobson" in All Categories

The much loved chronicler and observer of all that is unusual, John Timbs describes a selection of the oddest sights and anecdotes of the 18th and 19th centuries.

Six outstanding tales of suspense and adventure by the master storyteller. Markheim, The Bottle Imp, The Body Snatcher, The Suicide Club - Story of the Young Man with the Cream Tarts, The Suicide Club – The Story of the Physician and the Saratoga Trunk, The Suicide Club – The Adventure of the Hansom Cabs.

The Reverend Father Gaucher's Elixir is set in a dilapidated monastery in Provence. The order has fallen on hard times and the future of the entire monastery is in jeopardy. But the order's simpleton cow-herd, Brother Gaucher, has an unexpected idea. His old Auntie Bégon had in her later years invented a marvellous herbal elixir. By producing, bottling, and selling this, Brother Gaucher believes the order can become as rich as the Trappists and the monks of Chartreuse.

Bithia Mary Croker (1848-1920) was an Irish-born novelist and a notable writer of ghost stories; most of her work concerns life and society in British India. This collection contains six of B. M. Croker's best ghost stories, including four of her iconic tales set in British India: 'Number Ninety', 'To Let', 'The Former Passengers', 'If You See Her Face', 'The Khitmatgar', 'The Dâk Bungalow at Dakor'.

Robert Ervin Howard (January 22, 1906-June 11, 1936) was an American author renowned for his weird tales and horror fiction. The Fearsome Touch of Death is the story of a man who is holding an overnight vigil with a stranger's corpse in a remote house. In the dark of the remote house, he begins to see and hear strange sounds and visions. Or is he imagining things? Could there actually be something behind him in the dark? Is the dead man still on the bed, or is he up and moving around the room?

On 28 May, 1828, a boy of around 16 appeared in the Bavarian city of Nuremburg holding a letter in his hand. The lad was unable to speak, apart from three odd phrases which he repeated parrot-like, one of which was: "Want to be a soldier, as father was." The letter, addressed to the captain of the local infantry regiment, told a bizarre story. It appeared that the boy had been kept shut up in isolation in the dark for his entire life, had never learned to speak and knew nothing of the world.

Anatole France (1844 - 1924) was a leading French poet and writer who was awarded the Nobel Prize for literature in 1921. "In the Reign of Terror" is a short story describing a daring spur of the moment escape by an aristocratic woman, when the mob appears at her door, seeking a neighbour who they wish to drag off to the guillotine.

It is 1813 in Northern Spain. The crew of a British warship is attempting to make contact with the local resistance fighters who are battling the French. They send a brave crewman, known as Cuba Tom, to try to make contact with the local chief of the Guerrillos, but he fails to return. So a young naval officer, Edgar Byrne, sets off to try to trace him. The trail leads him to a strange inn which is run by two very sinister old women...

A terrifying collection of classic Victorian short stories about ghosts, werewolves and vampires. The Wolf Book by Henry Chapman Mercer. Number Ninety by B. M. Croker. Ken's Mystery by Julian Hawthorne. The Piano Next Door by Elia W. Peattie. The White Wolf of the Hartz Mountains by Frederick Marryat. The Horla by Guy de Maupassant. Absolute Evil by Julian Hawthorne. Mrs. Amworth by E. F. Benson.

Joseph Rudyard Kipling (1865-1936) was an English journalist, short-story writer, poet and novelist. The Village That Voted the Earth Was Flat is one of Kipling's rare humorous stories. A group of friends out for a motor jaunt find themselves up on a trumped up speeding charge exacerbated by some outrageously insulting sarcasm from a country town magistrate. The group pit their ample wits and resources to exact their extraordinary revenge....

'Dream Life and Real Life' is a haunting short story about a little orphan girl in servitude to a cruel Boer family. One night, following a beating, she runs away and hides in a cave. But there she overhears three men plotting to rob and burn down the Boer's farm and kill the family. What should she do? Warn them, or let them burn to death?

When Vi and Amos go diving for the first time in the West Indies, they hope to explore the recent wreck of a smuggling ship. Once underwater, Vi struggles to remember who the man up on the surface, pumping air down to their diving suits, reminds her of. Suddenly she realizes. He is Nana's son! Nana, the housekeeper who Amos sacked for stealing. And Nana's son had vowed to get even with them. Vi searches frantically among the coral for Amos and struggles to make him understand what has happened.

"Twenty-Six Men and a Girl" is a short story written by the Russian writer Maxim Gorky in 1899, and is one of his most famous. It is a pioneering tale of social realism (the story predates Soviet socialist realism), and is a lament of lost ideals. Twenty-six men slave away in a cellar, making kringles, looked down on by all around them, including the bread bakers. Their only joy in their lives is the 16-year-old Tanya, who visits them every morning to collect kringles.

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".

A glorious collection of some of the finest British short stories ever written. The Dog – Arnold Bennet, Not On The Passenger List – Barry Pain, The Old Man’s Tale About The Queer Client – Charles Dickens, The Half Brothers – Elizabeth Gaskell, The Veiled Portrait – James McGovan, Markheim – Robert Louis Stevenson, The Bottle Imp – Robert Louis Stevenson, The Adventures Of The Kind Mr. Smith – William J. Locke, The Man Of Mystery – Barry Pain, The Brazilian Cat – Sir. Arthur Conan Doyle.

Katherine Mansfield (1888-1923) was a prominent modernist writer of short fiction and a close associate of D. H. Lawrence and Virginia Woolf. 'The Little Girl' is the story of a child with a strict, overbearing Victorian father. When her mother is ill and her father has to look after the little girl alone, she gets to know a different, softer, kinder side of him.

Herbert George Wells (1866-1946) was a prolific English writer of science fiction stories and novels and is frequently credited as being the father of science fiction. The Red Room is the account of the terrifying nocturnal experiences of a young man who volunteers to spend a night in the haunted red room at Lorraine Castle.

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 ghost story. "The Cat" is an odd story about a young man who suffers a severe shock reaction to the unexpected ending of his engagement. Initially he is thrown into a deep depression which lasts several months, but then all of a sudden something snaps in his brain and he undergoes a phenomenal transformation.

Sabine Baring-Gould (1834-1924) was a British writer, clergyman and member of the landed gentry, having inherited an estate of 3,000 acres. While a young curate, he met and fell in love with a beautiful 16-year-old mill worker. He paid for her education and married her, and they subsequently had 15 children. Their relationship formed the inspiration for George Bernard Shaw's play Pygmalion, which was turned into the musical My Fair Lady.

'Dr. Crippen, Lover and Poisoner' is Le Queux's account of the case of the famous poisoner Hawley Harvey Crippen, whom Le Queux claimed to have met personally on several occasions. Crippen, to escape the bondage of an unhappy marriage, and because he had fallen in love with another woman, Ethel Le Neve, murdered and dissected his wife and escaped with his lover in disguise, sparking a transatlantic hue and cry.