Showing results for "Spider" in Classics

Confessions of an English Opium-Eater by Thomas De Quincey (1785-1859) was first published anonymously in 1821 in the London Magazine and was published in book form a year later. A revised edition was published in 1846. It is an account by the author of his addiction to laudanum and the effects it had on his life. This recording presents an abridged version of the 1856 edition.

In the 1950s, the street boys of Singapore caught and bet on their wrestling spiders, gaining not only money but also power and prestige as they won. Backgrounded against age-old vices, superstitions, urban legends, as well as a dangerous world of youth gangs and a tumultuous period in Singapore's history, Spider Boys is a moving and sensual story that draws the listener in as if by a beguiling, hypnotic force, alternating arousing and repelling him.

Here is a collection of nine tales of the macabre and the supernatural from the acknowledged master of these genres. They are: "The Black Cat", "The Tell-Tale Heart", "The Facts in the Case of M. Valdemar", "The Premature Burial", "The Pit and the Pendulum", "The Cask of Amontillado", "The Oval Portrait", "Berenice", and "Ligeia".

They call me the Spider. I'm the most feared assassin in the South -- when I'm not busy at the Pork Pit cooking up the best barbecue in Ashland. As a Stone elemental, I can hear everything from the whispers of the gravel beneath my feet to the vibrations of the soaring Appalachian Mountains above me. My Ice magic also comes in handy for making the occasional knife. But I don't use my powers on the job unless I absolutely have to. Call it professional pride.

After he fails to save a stranger from being mauled to death by a bear, a young mercenary is saddled with the baby girl the man died to protect. Now, 16 years later, that young mercenary has grown up to become cynical sword jockey Eddie LaCrosse. When his vacation travels bring him back to that same part of the world, he can't resist trying to discover what has become of the mysterious infant. He finds that the child, now a lovely young teenager named Isadora, is at the center of a complicated web of intrigue.

Towards mid-day the three pursuers came abruptly round a bend in the torrent bed upon the sight of a very broad and spacious valley. The difficult and winding trench of pebbles along which they had tracked the fugitives for so long, expanded to a broad slope, and with a common impulse the three men left the trail, and rode to a little eminence set with olive-dun trees, and there halted, the two others, as became them, a little behind the man with the silver-studded bridle.

Towards mid-day the three pursuers came abruptly round a bend in the torrent bed upon the sight of a very broad and spacious valley. The difficult and winding trench of pebbles along which they had tracked the fugitives for so long, expanded to a broad slope, and with a common impulse the three men left the trail, and rode to a little eminence set with olive-dun trees, and there halted, the two others, as became them, a little behind the man with the silver-studded bridle.

William James Wintle (1861-1920) was a Welsh writer who distinguished himself as a versatile writer before becoming an Oblate for the Abbey of Caldey Island in Pembrokeshire, Wales. There he wrote a collection of supernatural horror stories specifically for the enjoyment of eight boys who attended there. Wintle wrote that the stories were originally told on Sunday nights while "crouching over a wood fire on a wind-swept island off the Western shore".

Chosen by Nelson Mandela, this extraordinary story features celebrity narration and celebrates the rich oral tradition of African folktalkes. Nelson Mandela's Favorite African Folktales is an extraordinary audiobook featuring Gillian Anderson, Benjamin Bratt, LeVar Burton, Ricardo Chavira, Don...

Hugh Walpole is best known for his Herries Chronicle, a saga of four books relating the history of the Herries family and set in the Lake District in the north of England, where Walpole settled in his later life. The Chronicle was extremely popular, as was another series of books for children, the Jeremy trilogy. Many of his novels were in the psychological horror genre. He also wrote many short stories that were published in several collections.

The Chronicles of Clovis, which was published in 1911, was the third of Saki's collections of short stories. The character of Clovis Sangrail is, like Saki's earlier hero, Reginald, vain, sarcastic, and self-regarding and another vehicle for Saki's delicious, biting wit satirizing Edwardian high society in some of the funniest exquisite literary miniatures.

Another collection of 16 classic tales of the macabre and supernatural by some of the best-known writers in these genres.

Francis Marion Crawford (1854-1909) was an American writer, born in Italy and educated in the USA. He also studied at the universities of Cambridge and Heidelberg. He was a prolific writer in many fields, but it was his novels that were most popular, commanding a large following. His stories of the macabre and supernatural are very highly regarded. Roy Macready reads five of them from Uncanny Tales.

E.F. Benson (1867-1940) is probably best known today for his sparkling, comic Lucia novels. In his own day, it was his ghost stories which were his most popular works. This collection of 10 stories exemplifies Benson's fine literary style and his ability to create the most frightening of ghostly and macabre tales.

Barry Pain was noted for his humorous tales of “Eliza” and her husband, but his tales of the weird and supernatural are equally noteworthy. This volume, More Tales in the Dark, contains eight of them.

Charles Dickens saw his fictional work in print for the first time in 1833 when he was only 21. It was a story called "Mr Minns and his Cousin" and was published in the Morning Chronicle. He wrote more tales and sketches for newspapers and magazines, which were collected and published in book form in two series in 1836 as Sketches by Boz. Here are nine of them.

The creator of Dracula, Bram Stoker, wrote many other novels and works of short fiction. Here are four of his short stories which have some of the same weird, unsettling, and entertaining qualities as his gothic masterpiece. They are "The Judge's House", "The Secret of the Growing Gold", "The Squaw", and "A Dream of Red Hands."

The story follows the eponymous hero and his tutor Doctor Pangloss through a series of adventures and misfortunes, all the time doggedly attempting, against the odds, to adhere to the doctor's philosophy that "all is for the best in this best of all possible worlds".

Oscar Wilde's classic comic ghost story was the first of his short stories to be published, in February 1887. It relates the experiences of Mr. Hiram B. Otis, an American minister, and his family when they move into Canterville Chase, an ancient pile haunted by the previous owner's dead ancestor, Sir Simon. Of course, Mr. Otis declares, "There is no such thing, sir, as a ghost", and all of Sir Simon's hauntings have no effect on the skeptical American family, with the exception of the daughter, Virginia, despite his most strenuous efforts.

Arthur Machen (1863-1947) was a Welsh author known for his works of horror and the fantastic. He is acknowledged as an influence on modern writers of supernatural fiction. His story "The Red Hand" (1895) tells of a grisly murder committed with the most unusual of weapons, an ancient stone axe.