Showing results by narrator "David Ian Davies" in All Categories

The Red-Headed League - Holmes and Doyle pull out all the stops for this classic Conan Doyle story. Of all the many excellent tales in life of Sherlock Holmes this must rate amongst the most perplexing of them all. Why would a pawnbroker have to copy out in long-hand the complete Encyclopedia Britannica, word for word, and what bearing can the knees of a man's trousers have on the case?

E. F. Benson's ghost story In The Tube is posited as an exposition of a vast metaphysical question that we as human beings cannot understand. Our suppositions of time and space are taken to task. This is fiction with historical significance.

A letter from an old friend, Molesworth, sends Watson to Baker Street. Travelling to Winchester, he and Holmes find Molesworth bedridden. He believes he is being poisoned in revenge for the actions of his father in Peking during the invasion of the Forbidden City.

Holmes visits a Chinese poisoner and uses fingerprints to prove his case, but the outcome is not what he would have wished.

After some time of not meeting him, Tevye the Milkman meets Sholom Aleichem, the story's primary narrator as well as its author, and begins to tell of the troubles that have come on him (turning his hair gray) because of his gullibility, fatalism, and obedience to God, which make him an easy target for misfortune.

When you find yourself in need of a few laughs, you can't go wrong with P.G. Wodehouse's Jeeves stories. "The Metropolitan Touch" delivers plenty of smiles, if not outright laughs. Bertie Wooster, our narrator, becomes entangled once again with the love life of his chum Bingo Little. Bingo has left the London high life for village England where he's found the girl of his dreams again. The trouble is that she has more and more suitors every week and has expressed little interest in Bingo.

A story about Lord Emsworth, keen that his fat pig, the Empress of Blandings, should win the 87th annual Shropshire Agricultural Show contest. Yet how he regains the appetite of his sow is truly worth listening to.

The Adventure of the Bruce-Partington Plans is one of the 56 Sherlock Holmes short stories written by British author Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. It is one of eight stories in the cycle collected as His Last Bow, and is the second and final appearance of Mycroft Holmes. Doyle ranked The Adventure of the Bruce-Partington Plans 14th in a list of his 19 favorite Sherlock Holmes stories.

When Pyecroft, an obese man who cannot stop eating, becomes a member at the club H.G. belongs to, his corpulence becomes a disturbance and a distraction. Soon, Pyecroft gets wind of the fact that H.G. has some mystical weight loss remedies given to him by his grandmother, and he begs H.G. to let him have one.

Death at the Excelsior is the first, and only, PI mystery P.G. Wodehouse wrote. This comprehensive story from Wodehouse is a perfect introduction to his unique style.

As Dr. Watson commits to history in his journal, "... in reviewing my notes for the year 1890, I have come across a case that, while seeming at the outset to be one of the most mundane ever brought to him, had one of the most inexplicable endings that I have been privileged to record."

Travel back in time to 16th century Denmark, as renowned vocal actor David Ian Davies introduces you to Shakespeare's timeless play, Hamlet. Filled with all of the excitement and zest you would expect from the Bard, this production is an audio treasure from beginning to end.

As the visitor to Lorraine Castle tells its two elderly caretakers, he does not believe in ghosts and will prove it by spending the night in the Red Room. Their parting words to him are that he is doing it by his own choosing. He moves away, smug with confidence. But as he ascends the spiral stairs with a single candle, what he senses around him begins to fill him with a growing, unnamable fear.

"The Murders in the Rue Morgue" is a short story by Edgar Allan Poe published in Graham's Magazine in 1841. It has been claimed as the first detective story; Poe referred to it as one of his "tales of ratiocination".

In a sleepy, coastal, New England town, three men decide to rob and, if need be, torture a very old sea captain to learn where he keeps his wealth - a man who is so old no one ever remembers him being young; a man who pays for his purchases not with dollars but with ancient gold and silver coins minted over two centuries ago; a man who speaks to spirits in bottles; a man who may not be a man at all.

Mr. Hall Pycroft has no sooner found a new position to replace the job he lost than he is approached by an unknown gentleman who offers him even better and higher paying employment. Pycroft accepts the offer and is told to contact the gentleman’s brother. After traveling to what have been called the temporary offices of the Franco-Midland Hardware Company, Limited, what he sees and hears during his interview raises alarms in his mind. Uncertain of what the strange events all mean, he has come to Sherlock Holmes.

Dr. Watson's account of the strange death of Captain Peter Carey begins one morning with Holmes returning to Baker Street with a "huge barbed-headed spear tucked like an umbrella under his arm." The instrument, the facts unfold, duplicates the weapon which has been driven so violently through the victim's body that it has been discovered pinned to the wall like an insect.

A pair of casual paranormal researchers are experimenting with the idea of astral projection. One night, one of them inadvertently succeeds in projecting his spirit from his body, which is then taken possession of by a malevolent entity in his absence.

England, 1893. Chief Inspector Roderick Langham of Scotland Yard is asked to investigate the discovery of a Russian cargo schooner whose crew has vanished except for its captain, who is found dead, tied to the ship's wheel. The captain's log speaks of strange cargo aboard and the crew members disappearing one after another.

When he takes his young son to a magic shop as a birthday present, a father finds it ever more difficult to separate what is illusion from what he begins to wonder is real magic. This is a wonderful trip into the world of fantasy for young listeners and parents alike.

After George McWhirter Fotheringay discovers that he is able to perform miracles in a local bar after he professes not to believe in them, he experiments in his home with whimsical results. He seeks the advice of local clergyman, Mr. Maydig, who decides to begin a campaign of using Fotheringay's powers to reform the world. But with best of intentions, Mr. Fotheringay has little knowledge and less foresight. Before long a miracle backfires and he must use his power one last time to undo the cataclysm.