Showing results for "Arthur Conan Doyle" in Anthologies & Short Stories

Who would suspect that the same mind that created the most famous literary detective of all time also took on the eternally popular genre of vampires? Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, a contemporary of Bram Stoker, gave us some fascinating works of vampire fiction. From the bloodsucking plant in "The American's Tale" to the bloodsucking wife in "The Adventure of the Sussex Vampire," he reveled in the horror created by creatures who survived on the blood of men and women.

CONTENTS: A Suspicious Gift [Algernon Blackwood], Skeleton Lake: An Episode in Camp [Algernon Blackwood], The Wood of the Dead [Algernon Blackwood], A Baby Tramp [Ambrose Bierce], The Damned Thing [Ambrose Bierce], Dagon [H.P Lovecraft], The Horror of the Heights [Arthur Conan Doyle], The Descendant [H.P Lovecraft], The Cats of Ulthar [H.P Lovecraft], The Evil Clergyman [H.P Lovecraft], He [H.P Lovecraft], The Book [H.P Lovecraft], In the Vault [H.P Lovecraft], Nyarlathotep [H.P Lovecraft], Death and the Woman [Gertrude Atherton], The Striding Place [Gertrude Atherton].

When we hear the name Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, most people think of Sherlock Holmes, his most famous creation. However, detective stories were not Doyle's favorite. His lifelong passion was the supernatural and because of this he wrote a number of fascinationg supernatural stories. This section includes 7 of the best.

Arthur Conan Doyle, le créateur du personnage de "Sherlock Holmes", le détective privé par excellence, était un écrivain prolifique. Il s'est aussi attelé à l'écriture de nombreux romans, historiques ou policier. On découvre ici une autre facette de son talent : l'écriture de nouvelles fantastiques, d'anticipation et d'horreur.

Mr. Hammond, who is travelling on the American steamer "The Spartan", is suspicious about two passengers after having witnessed their conversation on the deck. They were talking about a secret square box, a mechanism, and the fact that the world will soon hear of it...

The narrator of the story is passionate about writing. He decides to take a few weeks to write a masterpiece, but inspiration does not come. One evening after supper, he falls asleep and dreams that the greatest writers of the last few centuries are invited to his table to create a story: William Defoe, Tobias Smollett, Jonathan Swift, Henry Fielding, Samuel Richardson, Lawrence Sterne, Sir Walter Scott, George Eliot, William M. Thackeray, James Payn, Walter Besant, a lady known as "Ouida", Robert Louis Stevenson, Edward Bulwer-Lytton, and Captain Marryat.

Mr. John Vansittart Smith is a student of Egyptology who travels to France to see some papyri in the Louvre Museum. Tired from his visit, he sits in a corner of the museum and dozes. When he wakes up, the museum is closed and he is locked inside...

Recently unemployed, John Huxford accepts an offer to work at Sheridan & Moore, Montreal in Quebec. He agrees with his fiancée that he will first travel alone to prepare everything for a few weeks before she can join him. Unfortunately, weeks, months pass and she gets no news from John. Sheridan & Moore even say they never saw him in Montreal. Many years pass, and it seems that he has died somewhere or started a new life.

Elias B. Hopkins, aka "The Parson", is a new reverend at Jackman's Gulch, a small miner village in Australia. In the local bar, swearing and blasphemies are not uncommon. That's why he decides to recite the Bible aloud for each bad word he hears. So much that he who swears is now frowned upon by his peers for breaking the atmosphere.

Unexplained events are happening at Oxford these days. Several students have been attacked at night by some strange form of wild animal. It can scale walls with cat-like agility. Its arms are as thin and as strong as steel bands. And there is one student who conducts midnight studies in his room with certain Egyptian artifacts. The most significant of which is a 6'7" tall mummy.

Sir Arthur Conan Doyle wrote many types of fiction: mystery, detection, science fiction,and historical adventures. He created many memorable characters, wrote dozens of short stories and more than two dozen novels, Yet everything he wrote fell under the the shadow of Sherlock Holmes.

At the request of an old rugby friend of Dr. Watson, Sherlock Holmes finds himself on a hunt for a vampire - or rather, on a mission to prove that vampires are the stuff of Medieval legend, not a part of the modern world. Holmes soon faces a question that truly tests his superb detective abilities: Could a mother harm her own child?

Covered in grotesque wounds, he staggered toward Holmes, shrieked, "the Lion's Mane", and died on the spot. The seaside was tranquil no longer....

Though Sir Arthur Conan Doyle is best known for his detective stories, he also wrote other short stories which are masterpieces of mystery and suspense. In some of the stories, a supressed uneasiness gradually builds up and evolves into sheer terror; in others, the story line unexpectedly changes and comes to an unlikely conclusion. In "The Beetle-Hunter", a beginning doctor is employed on a strange errand to a coleopterist.

A man is hired by a British gentleman because of his strength, his medical degree, and his extreme knowledge of beetles.

Sir James Damery calls upon Sherlock Holmes, representing an exalted client who wishes his identity protected. Holmes' mission is to break up an engagement between Violet De Merville, the daughter of a prominent citizen, and her rakish fiancee, by exposing his true scoundrel character to her.

In "The Boscombe Valley Mystery", Inspector Lestrade summons Sherlock Holmes to a community in Herefordshire, where a local landowner has been murdered outdoors. The deceased's estranged son is strongly implicated. Holmes, employing his trusty magnifying glass quickly determines that a mysterious third man may be responsible for the crime, unraveling a thread involving a secret criminal past, thwarted love, and blackmail.

"This agency stands flat-footed upon the ground, and there it must remain. The world is big enough for us. No ghosts need apply." So says Sherlock Holmes at the opening of The Adventure of the Sussex Vampire. Holmes investigates what appears to be a case of vampirism in an upper class home.

There is something about the number 3. The Ancient Greeks believed 3 was the perfect number, and in China 3 has always been a lucky number, and they know a thing or two. Whatever history and culture says WE think 3, a hat-trick of stories, is a great number to explore themes and literary avenues that classic authors were so adept at creating.

Welcome to Volume Five of one of the world's largest collections of high quality, classic horror short-story audiobooks. If you're at home, then get some logs ready and put on your most comfortable slippers, as we kick things off with Doug Bradley's well-researched introduction to the authors and stories featured in this volume....