Showing results by narrator "Jack Benson" in All Categories

Welcome to ancient Rome, where the steps of the Forum are peopled by nubile slave girls and a range of outrageous characters including Lurcio’s owner, Ludicrus Sextus the senator, his wife, Ammonia, his son, Nausius, and his daughter, Erotica. Lurcio attempts to deliver his prologue and begin proceedings before he’s quickly caught up in the myriad of sexual liaisons in all quarters of his master’s house.

Two wealthy gentlemen decide to give a poor stranger a million-pound bank note to see what he will do with it. The results are very unexpected.

Abraham "Bram" Stoker was a Victorian Irish writer. He moved to London and became the business manager for Irving's Lyceum Theatre, a post he held for 27 years. He also wrote novels and short stories to supplement his income. Stoker is best remembered as the author of the hugely influential horror novel Dracula. However, he also penned a number of chilling horror and supernatural short stories. This tale contains elements of both and is one of his best.

When it comes to short stories, Edgar Allan Poe is considered by many to be the master of terror and the macabre. This is one of his most famous stories. A man visits a friend but finds something very strange is going on with him - and his house.

A gentleman decides to take a sea voyage to calm his nerves. But he encounters an eerie creature on board that has anything but that effect.

This unique presentation combines classic children's favorites with an anthology of stories, poems, and songs of the holiday season.

During the American Civil War, a man stands on a railroad bridge about to be hanged. At the last minute, the rope breaks - or does it? This much-anthologized short story was adapted into one of the most popular episodes of The Twilight Zone.

The Four Million was written in 1906 when roughly four million people lived in New York City. It opens with a reference to Ward McAllister's "assertion that there were only "400" people in New York City who were really worth noticing.

A motley crew, banished from a Western town, find strength, and weakness, in each other.

Frank Stockton was an American writer and humorist, best known for a series of innovative children's fairy tales that were widely popular. His most famous fable is "The Lady or the Tiger?" (1882), about a man sentenced to an unusual punishment for having a romance with a king's beloved daughter. Other memorable tales are "The Griffin and the Minor Canon", "Old Pypes and the Dryad", and "Mr. Tolman".

Here is Anderson's timeless tale of the ugly duckling that became a beautiful swan.

A Christmas Carol is undoubtedly the most famous supernatural story in English. However, it was not the only supernatural story of the season that Charles Dickens wrote. In Victorian England, Christmas was the time to explore the supernatural in stories, and Charles Dickens was one of the best at it. Included in this volume are a full-cast dramatization of A Christmas Carol, plus three more of Dickens' best stories of the season.

This collecton features some of Twain's best known stories as well as some lesser-known gems, such as "A Mysterious Visit", "The Facts Concerning the Recent Carnival of Crime in Connecticut", and "The Loves Of Alonzo Fitz-Clarence and Rosannah Ethelton".

The story of two brothers, the white sheep and the black sheep of the family, is narrated in one of Twain's most satiric stories.

Bram Stoker created an incredible novel in Dracula. The success of the vampire novel unfortunately overshadowed most of his other writings. This volume contains nine of his best short stories, including the one in which the character of Dracula first appeared.

Old Dr. Heidigger calls a few of his friends together to try a new "elixer of life" designed to make them all young again. The results are not what any of them had bargined for and, as is often the case with Hawthorne, the story teaches a valuable lesson.

A town that prides itself on its honesty finds itself severely tested. One of the demons Mark Twain always set out to slay was the myth that the citizens of the American republic are inherently more virtuous than others. By the invention of an elaborate hoax, a kind of giant practical joke, Twain has his hero turn the town of Hadleyburg inside out and, in the process, teach the hypocrites who dwell there a lesson in humility and moral realism.

Stephen Crane's fascinating story "The Blue Hotel" is seen by many as a study of fear. Crane used the stereotypical 1890's American West as his setting, and the story uses a card game to show how fear feeds upon itself. There are both inner fears and fears existing in reality, and the ways that they interact with each other make for a fascinating tale.

This tale, one of Twain's most anthologized, tells the story of a practical joke and its very unexpected consequences.

Satirical humor from the master. A group of congressmen are trapped in a snowbound train for two months. When they run out of food, they do what congressmen do - they form a committee to decide who among them should be eaten first.