Showing results by narrator "Cathy Dobson" in All Categories

When a stranger turns up at Shepherd Fennel's party, held in honour of his daughter's christening, he is welcomed and treated to home-brewed mead, a pipe and tobacco and a seat by the fire. When a second, altogether more sinister stranger arrives, he too is welcomed, although he makes rather too free with the host's liquor and sings a song revealing his terrible secret. When a third stranger arrives in the midst of the second stranger's song and taking one look into the room, flees in terror, the guests are mystified.

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.

'Alone on a Wide, Wide Sea' is the tale of two enemies abandoned on a deserted island. Pierre Rochelle, a convict escaped from a French penal colony, has been living alone on a remote Pacific island for the past three years, with no means of escape. Then one day he finds a man asleep on the beach on the far side of the island. The new arrival has just been marooned by his mutineering shipmates. Even as he still sleeps, Rochelle recognizes him as Gaston Charette - his own mortal enemy, the man whose false testimony had sent him to the penal colony in the first place.

Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton (1857-1946) was a prominent and prolific American author of novels, short stories, essays, and articles for magazines and newspapers. Her horror stories are particularly popular. 'The Striding Place' (1895) tells the story of a man who is searching for his best friend ,who's gone missing. The search takes him to a dangerous waterfall in the forest called The Strid, from which many have fallen and drowned. There he discovers something most terrifying and surreal.

Seven famous and sensational true crime stories retold by classic crime writers.

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

A superb anthology of 40 great classic humorous stories.

'Relics of General Chassé' is a humorous tale of a corpulent and somewhat dandified clergyman who, while visiting the castle at Antwerp, inadvertently becomes separated from his breeches. What follows shakes him to the core. The breeches fall into the hands of a group of female English tourists who decide to take some sample of the cloth as a souvenir.

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....

A delightful collection of light-hearted classic stories from some of the greatest Victorian and Edwardian-era writers.

More French Than the French is the risqué story of a British girl who is spending her last night in Paris. She meets a young Englishman who flirts with her. She pretends to be a confident young Frenchwoman and invites the young man back to her apartment. The story follows the mental processes of the two young people as they prepare to lose their virginity.

A gripping collection of dramatic sea stories from famous classic authors. 'Absolute Zero' by Morgan Robertson; 'The Former Passengers' by B. M. Croker; 'The Ghost in the Cupboard Room' by Wilkie Collins; 'The Passing of a God' by Henry S. Whitehead; 'Haunted' by G. Ranger Wormser; 'Sea Curse' by Robert E. Howard; 'Seashore Macabre' by Hugh Walpole; 'Dagon' by H. P. Lovecraft; 'The Lighthouse on Shivering Sand' by J. S. Fletcher; and many more.

Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (1859-1930) was the preeminent figure in late 19th-century detective fiction. A physician by profession, he soon found such popularity as a writer of detective stories that his writing was far more profitable than his medical practice. 'The Adventure of the Sussex Vampire' is a Sherlock Holmes mystery. Holmes and Watson are contacted by a country gentleman whose Peruvian wife has been caught red-handed sucking the blood from her baby's neck. Can there be any explanation other than that the woman is a vampire?

'Good Lady Ducayne' is a sensational tale of a young woman, Bella Rolleston, who secures a job as a paid companion to a very elderly and wealthy aristocratic lady who offers her a handsome salary, a winter travelling on the Italian Riviera and the Italian Lakes and very little to do. It all seems too good to be true. And when Bella learns that the old lady's previous two companions died under mysterious circumstances and she herself is becoming paler and sicker...it does seem as though something sinister is afoot.

Mary Wilkins Freeman (1852-1930) was an American writer, best known for her stories reflecting the world of women fighting for dignity and independence from men. Her tales typically describe domestic settings and intimate relationships and are told with sensitivity and a poignancy which illuminates a bygone era in vivid detail. "The Revolt of Mother" tells the story of a strong and self-reliant farm wife who defies her obstinate husband by moving her household into his newly built barn.

Frederick Britten Austin (1885 - 1941) was a popular British fiction writer, whose crime and mystery stories were very much influenced by his experiences as a soldier. He had enlisted in the London Rifle Brigade on 4 August, 1914, the day war was declared on Germany. By war's end he had reached the rank of captain. In 'The Strange Case of Mr. Todmorden' an elderly and wealthy woman has been mysteriously murdered in her bed.

Ernest Bramah (1868-1942), was an English author who wrote twenty-one books and numerous short stories. His humorous works were ranked with Jerome K. Jerome and W.W. Jacobs, his detective stories with Conan Doyle, his politico-science fiction with H.G. Wells and his supernatural stories with Algernon Blackwood. "A Very Black Business" is a strange supernatural story about a musician who is driven to the point of suicide by the failure of various coal merchants to deliver a supply of fuel for his stove.

A mesmerizing collection of 30 wonderful stories by great classic writers. 1. The Invisible Man by G. K. Chesterton 2. At the Farmhouse by E. F. Benson 3. The Parasite by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle 4. The Watcher by the Threshold by John Buchan 5. Query by Seamark 6. The Man of the Night by Edgar Wallace 7. The Earl, the Warder and the Wayward Heiress by J. S. Fletcher 8. Afterward by Edith Wharton 9. The Murderer by Perceval Gibbon 10. The Idiot by Arnold Bennett 11. Oh Liberty by W. Pett Ridge

Colonel John Buchan, 1st Baron Tweedsmuir (1875 - 1940) was a Scottish novelist, historian and politician. He is best known for his mystery and ghost stories.The Wind in the Portico is a strange tale of a visit by a classical scholar, Nightingale, to an odd castle set in a park in Shropshire where a rare manuscript is housed.

Six men, shipwrecked on the ice and trapped in their shack by the bitter Arctic winter, might be excused for beginning to "see" things. But how was it that they all saw the same thing - the mysterious stranger?