Showing results by narrator "Cathy Dobson" in All Categories

A king has three sons and is determined that one shall be his heir - but which? He orders them to marry and decrees that the one who picks the best wife shall be the next king. The youngest finds himself marrying a frog, against his better judgement. But when it turns out that the frog is extraordinarily gifted in such skills as carpet weaving and baking, he looks like winning the contest to be king. His frog princess is indeed a real princess under a magic spell.

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 and Other Stories was first published in 1921 and includes 'The Tiredness of Rosabel', 'How Pearl Button Was Kidnapped', 'The Journey to Bruges', 'A Truthful Adventure', 'New Dresses', 'The Woman at the Store', 'Ole Underwood', 'The Little Girl', 'Millie', 'Pension', 'Séguin', 'Violet', 'Bains Turcs', 'Something Childish but Very Natural', 'An Indiscreet Journey', 'Spring Pictures', 'Late at Night' and more.

Nothing on earth is so terrifying as the prospect of waking up to discover you have been buried alive. A sufferer of catalepsy, who has a morbid fear of such a fate, takes every possible precaution. He designs himself a coffin which can be opened from the inside, which is padded, equipt with a bell for attracting attention, placed in an easily opened vault which contains food and water. Imagine then, his horror when he wakes up to find himself in a wooden box, reeking of damp earth and with none of his precautions in place. Poe at his most terrifying!

Mrs. Sangrail is determined to offload her wayward son Clovis onto Lady Bastable for six days while she takes a trip to Scotland. Is desperation she resorts to cunning bribery, but Clovis has other ideas and devises an ingenious scheme to thwart his mother’s plans. Another piece of genius humour writing by Hector Hugh Munro, peppered with his humorous observations on British Edwardian society.

Mary Shelley's classic gothic horror novel. The scientific young genius, Frankenstein, discovers a method for creating life in inanimate objects and sets about a project to build a human in his laboratory. He is successful in his aim, but in so doing, unleashes on the world a creature whose physical deformities make him repulsive to everyone who sets eyes on him.

When the Momeby family’s baby goes missing, their neighbour Miss Gilpet undertakes to find the child. Her immediate success turns out to be less of a miracle and more of an embarrassment for all.

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.

When master chef Monsieur Aristide Saucourt presents his signature dish to diners at the Grand Sybaris Hotel, he anticipates they will acknowledge this as the pinnacle of his career. But the moment does not go as planned and ends in a fatal tragedy involving hot soup.

A creepy collection of 50 classic ghost, horror and mystery stories which will keep you up all night. 1. "The Well" by W. W. Jacobs; 2. "This Is All" by Barry Pain; 3. "The Beast with Five Fingers" by W. F .Harvey; 4. "The Reticence of Lady Anne" by Saki; 5. "The End of a Show" by Barry Pain; 6. "The Dabblers" by W. F. Harvey; 7. "The Room in the Tower" by E. F. Benson; 8. "August Heat" by W. F. Harvey; 9. "The Idiot" by Arnold Bennett; 10. "The Cask of Amontillado" by Edgar Allan Poe...and many more.

A gripping collection of the very best classic mystery and adventure stories. 1. "Rose Rose" by Barry Pain 2. "The Perfect Crime" by Seamark 3. "The Well" by W. W. Jacobs 4. "The Tea-Leaf" by Edgar Jepson and Robert Eustace 5. "The Step" by E. F. Benson 6. "The Queer Feet" by G. K. Chesterton 7. "The Beast with Five Fingers" by W. F. Harvey 8. "The Enemy" by Hugh Walpole 9. "An Impromptu Dance" by A. J. Alan 10. "The Red-Headed League" by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle 11. "The Wedding Guest" by Guy Boothby

When the retiring young bank clerk Smith ducks into the British Museum one day to avoid the rain, he finds himself confronted with the bust of an Egyptian lady so beautiful that he becomes infatuated with her. His obsession leads him to read extensively on the subject of Egyptology, learn to read hieroglyphics, and gradually become an established Egyptologist. Every winter he travels to Egypt and undertakes archeological work. Then, in the third year, he makes an astounding discovery which changes the course of his life forever.

Edgar Alfred Jepson (1863-1938) was an English author best known for his adventure and detective fiction. He also wrote supernatural and fantasy stories. 'The Battersea Flat Mystery' is the true story of a particularly unusual unsolved murder in the Battersea area of London. A man is found shot on the stairs outside the empty flat below the one where his ex-mistress lives and where his son is visiting for supper. A mysterious stranger is seen running from the scene.

Another collection of great classic novellas by superb storytellers, including Robert E. Howard, E. T. A. Hoffman, Edith Wharton, Bessie Kyffin-Taylor, F. Marion Crawford and more....

Ambrose Gwinnett Bierce (1842-circa 1914) was an American author, journalist, short story writer and satirist who disappeared in 1913 under mysterious circumstances and was never seen again. "The Moonlit Road" is a brilliant and eerie ghost story which recounts a terrible murder of a woman from three different viewpoints.

'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.

Neap-Tide Madness is the strange story of Sir Jaspar Slane's visits to the Dormy House in Norfolk. One foggy evening Slane glimpses the figure of a man emerge from the mist carrying a hunting rifle. The figure raises his gun and shoots at Slane from close quarters, narrowly misses him and vanishes again into the mist. When he makes it back to the Dormy House, Slane learns that the loose madman is the mysterious Mark Rennett - a fishman and hunter who lives in a ramshackle cottage on the marshes with his extraordinarily beautiful wife.

Sir Hugh Seymour Walpole (1884-1941) was a New Zealand-born English novelist, famous for his skill at scene setting and vivid plots. He was a best-selling author in the 1920s and 1930s and remains popular to this day. 'The Beard' is the touching and insightful tale of a narcissistic and pompous father who is struggling to raise his pubescent son, who is enraged at and embarrassed by his father, yet the codependency between the two still exercises a magnetic pull.

Herbert George Wells (1866 - 1946) was a prolific English writer of short stories and novels, who is best remembered as the father of science fiction. 'The Flying Man' is a strange adventure story. A young lieutenant explains how it is that a remote tribe of natives believe him to have supernatural powers - including the ability to fly. And a very remarkable story it is!

Sir Henry Rider Haggard (1856 - 1925), known as H. Rider Haggard, was an English writer of adventure stories, often set in exotic locations, especially Africa, and a pioneer of the Lost World literary genre. Only a Dream is a ghost story about the strange experience of a widower about to remarry, who is visited on the eve of his wedding by the ghastly apparition of his dead first wife.

William Wymark Jacobs (1863-1943) was an English author of short stories and novels. His most popular works in the early part of the last century were his humorous tales set around the docks of Wapping and in the taproom of the infamous Cauliflower tavern. Many of his stories were written in a cockney vernacular and were keenly observant of character. 'The White Cat' is a humorous tale of a disputed inheritance, a clever old rogue and a suspiciously mislaid white cat.