Showing results by narrator "Cathy Dobson" in All Categories

Maurice Baring (1874-1945) was an English short story writer, children's writer, novelist, travel writer and war correspondent during the First World War. The Blue Rose is a fairy tale about a Chinese princess who is as clever as she is beautiful. When her father sets out to find her a husband, she determines to make her own choice. The Emperor declares that whoever can find and bring his daughter a blue rose shall wed her. But the wise princess is able to debunk all the blue roses proffered and at the same time works out a way to favour her own lover.

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. 'A Tough Tussle' is a weird and horrible ghost story about a soldier in the Civil War who finds himself stationed on sentry duty, alone in a wood at night, next to the corpse of an enemy soldier. While he waits and watches, the body appears to change position....

A rich and varied anthology of inventive classic tales by some of the world's top storytellers. 'A Deal in Ostriches' by H. G. Wells, 'The Scarecrow' by G. Ranger Wormser, 'Only a Dream' by H. Rider Haggard, 'The Magic Shop' by H. G. Wells, 'The Business of Madame Jahn' by Vincent O'Sullivan, 'The Old Portrait' by Hume Nisbet, 'The Yellow Globe' by Alexander W. Drake, 'The Last Trump' by Hugh Walpole, 'The White Cat' by W. W. Jacobs.

James Wilbraham Waite is living in a bedsit in Praxton Street, London, and feels trapped. Trapped by his life, his job...and particularly by the depressing room he rents. He sees it as his personal hell. His only escape is through reading books and imagining adventures. When he unexpectedly inherits a substantial sum of money from an uncle in Canada, he resolves to take off and live his dream.... He wants to experience life in the desert.

The Welsh Triads (Trioedd Ynys Prydein, 'Triads of the Island of Britain') are a group medieval manuscripts which preserve fragments of Welsh folklore, mythology and traditional history in the form of wise sayings. The triads are terse statements of three related facts - probably to make them easier to remember. The oldest triads predate Christianity, their origins lost in the dark ages. Yet they show clearly that far from being barbarians, our ancient forefathers lived according to an advanced level of philosophy and ethics.

The Blind Man, the Deaf Man and the Donkey is a strange but compelling tale of two codependent friends who nonetheless mistrust each other. They find a donkey and a large container...and then when sheltering from a storm in what they mistake for a temple, they find a Rakshas' (terrifying monster with elephant tusks) treasure. While attempting to trick the Rakshas and steal the treasure, the two are still also intent on swindling each other...then karma deals a strange twist to the tale.

The Stonecutter is a fairy tale Lang collected in Japan. A stonecutter sees how rich people live when he is delivering a gravestone one day. From that day on he is dissatisfied with his own lot and wishes to be rich. His wish is granted by the spirit that lives in the mountain...but the stonecutter is still not satisfied with his life and makes further wishes, each taking him a little further on his quest for happiness.

'The Man Who Missed the Bus' is a creepy horror story about a lonely and eccentric man who finds himself unable to see other human faces. Worse still, gradually he also loses the ability to see his own reflection in the mirror. But this is only the beginning of the horror story. Far worse is to come....

Gilbert Keith Chesterton (1874-1936) was an English writer best known for his fictional priest-detective, Father Brown. In The Purple Wig, an investigative journalist, Frances Finn, sets out to discover the strange secret of the dukes of Exmoor and the legend of their mysterious hereditary deformed ear. When Finn meets the current duke, he is wearing a hideous purple wig, which apparently he never takes off in the presence of anybody.

When local musical prodigy, Gilbert Swann, is selected to play the violoncello with the visiting London orchestra during the musical festival in the five towns, his mother is convinced that he will be the cornerstone of the entire event. When local dignitary Mrs. Clayton-Vernon invites Gilbert to dinner before the concert with her cousin, the famous conductor from London, she sees this as recognition of his musical genius. A sudden cold snap on the day, however, makes Mrs. Swann fearful that Gilbert's hands will get cold on the journey from Mrs. Clayton-Vernon's house to the concert.

Elizabeth, a young wife and mother, waits for her husband Walter to come home from the coal mine. She attributes his lateness to him having gone drinking. As time goes on, she goes to look for him and alerts his colleagues. It transpires he has been killed in a pit accident. Elizabeth's mother-in-law helps her to wash the corpse after it is brought home from the mine. The reactions of the two women are in stark contrast - and the experience of laying out the body shows Elizabeth how she and her husband never really knew one another in life.

The "Red Death" had long devastated the country. No pestilence had ever been so fatal, or so hideous. Blood was its Avatar and its seal - the redness and the horror of blood. To avoid the terrible plague which is devastating his kingdom, Prince Prospero locks himself with 1000 revellers in his castle and holds one hedonistic party after another. For months they celebrate their crazed feasts, until one night a stranger appears at the festivities... a stranger who strikes fear into the hearts of all present. Terrifying!

When the young bank clerk Charlie Mears comes up with an innovative idea for a new story, he has no notion just how amazing his tale is. Inspired by dreams which are memories of former lives, he takes us back to the vivid and brutal world of ancient Greece. But Charlie’s own literary skill is not equal to the task of writing his novel. His friend must take on the challenge of extracting the finest tale in the world from the reluctant and ever-distracted brain of the young clerk. But just as there seems to be some progress, something most unexpected occurs….

Sarah Grand (1854-1943) was a well-known Victorian writer and suffragette. 'The Man in the Scented Coat' is a story about an adventurous lady, Josepha, who gets lost in a pea-soup fog in London one evening. As she cannot see anything, she follows a scent of flowers, which turns out to emanate from a distinguished gentleman in disguise who is on a secret mission.

Hulbert Footner (1879 - 1944) was a popular Canadian writer of detective fiction. "The Murder at Fernhurst" features Footner's first great sleuth, Madame Rosika Storey. The famous female detective is called in to investigate what seems like an open-and-shut case. A rich industrialist has been found shot...and all the evidence points to the murder having been committed by his vastly wealthy young ward. By what could have been her motive?

When the elderly widow Cipriana is visited by a strange and scary fire spirit, he tells her that he will help her to make her fortune. The weird elf tells her that he is responsible for fires all over the world and he tells her of a major fire that will break out in the city of Murcia in two weeks time. He advises Cipriana to go to the authorities there and predict the fire. Of course, she will not be believed at first...but when her predictions come true, she will be in great demand and will be well rewarded. Things do not go quite according to plan.

William Wilkie Collins (1824-1889) was an English novelist, playwright, and author of short stories, and was a great friend and collaborator of Charles Dickens. The Biter Bit is a detective story with a twist. A rookie investigator, Matthew Sharpin, has been thrust on Scotland Yard with instructions to try him out on a case. He is assigned the case currently being worked on by experienced officer Sergeant Bulmer.

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....

Edith Wharton (1862-1937) was a Pulitzer Prize-winning American novelist and short story writer. She was nominated for the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1927, 1928 and 1930. Among her most popular and terrifying tales are the many masterly ghost stories which she wrote in her early career. This selection presents six of her best tales: "Afterward", "The Eyes", "The Debt", "Kerfol", "Miss Mary Pask" and "Pomegranate Seed".

Frances Browne (1816-1879) was an Irish poet and novelist who is best remembered for her enchanting stories for children, published under the title of Granny's Wonderful Chair. The collection tells the story of Snowflower, a little girl left alone in the world with a magical chair belonging to her absent grandmother, which can take her wherever she wants to go and can tell her marvellous stories.