Showing results by narrator "Cathy Dobson" in All Categories

Stacy Aumonier (1877-1928) was a British writer best known for his outstanding short stories. Nobel Prize-winner John Galsworthy described Aumonier as "one of the best short story writers of all time" and predicted that he would "outlive all the writers of his day." Aumonier wrote over 85 short stories in his lifetime. He has been described as the "British Maupassant" owing to his captivating plots and his ability to create complex characters with just a few lines of carefully selected prose.

It is 1813 in Northern Spain. The crew of a British warship is attempting to make contact with the local resistance fighters who are battling the French. They send a brave crewman, known as Cuba Tom, to try to make contact with the local chief of the Guerrillos, but he fails to return. So a young naval officer, Edgar Byrne, sets off to try to trace him. The trail leads him to a strange inn which is run by two very sinister old women...

When a friend phones H. K. Hales one Christmas Eve in a panic and asks for help, he is somewhat bemused. The caller is due to be married the next day and cannot possibly get there on time. H. K. rises to the challenge of driving him at top speed to Ashby-de-la-Zouch. It seems like they might be in with a chance of getting there on time, until the car breaks down nine miles short and they are forced to try to find an alternative mode of transport.

Ernest Bramah (1868-1942) was an English author of 21 novels and numerous short stories and features. His humorous works have been 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. In his stories of detection, Bramah hit on the idea of a blind detective, Max Carrados, whose triumphs are all the more amazing because of his disability.

As the invention of the automobile enabled quicker travel and enhanced the lives of the early motorists, it also gave new impetus to a generation of story writers. Automobiles were unusual, unfamiliar beasts. They combined speed and danger with an uncanny ability to break down at unexpected moments, catapulting the unhappy traveller into new adventures, or thusting mystery strangers onto the inhabitants of remote houses.

Hulbert Footner (1879 - 1944) was a popular Canadian writer of detective fiction. "The Murder at Fernhurst" features Footner's first great sleuth, Madame Rosika Storey. The famous female detective is called in to investigate what seems like an open-and-shut case. A rich industrialist has been found shot...and all the evidence points to the murder having been committed by his vastly wealthy young ward. By what could have been her motive?

Edward Frederic Benson (1867 - 1940) was an English novelist, biographer, memoirist, archaeologist, and short story writer, best known as the true master of the gothic occult story. The Horror-Horn tells the story of a skiing holiday in the shadow of the mysteriously named Ungeheuerhorn mountain. Literally the name translates as "Horror-Horn". It appears that a local legend has it that hideous and terrifying monsters live in caves high up on the mountain.

William Fryer Harvey (1885-1937) was an English writer of short stories, most notably in the mystery and horror genres. The Man Who Hated Aspidistras is an eerie tale of a man whose life, from boyhood onward, as been blighted by the sinister houseplants favoured by Victorian ladies. His dislike turns almost to a mania...and then things take on a very peculiar turn....

William Fryer Harvey (1885-1937) was an English writer of short stories, most notably in the mystery and horror genres. Born into a wealthy Quaker family in Yorkshire, he went to Balliol College, Oxford, and took a degree in medicine at Leeds. Ill health dogged him, however, and he devoted much of his recuperation to writing short stories. "The Dabblers" is a mysterious tale of strange rituals in the grounds of a boarding school on a particular night in June every year. Weird singing can be heard...

William Wymark Jacobs (1863 - 1943) was an English author of short stories and novels. Most of his works were either humorous tales or horror stories. Many of his popular tales are written in the cockney vernacular and are based either on the docks at Wapping, or in the bar of the infamous tavern The Cauliflower. 'A Tiger's Skin' is a tale narrated by the oldest regular at The Cauliflower. It is the story of the Claybury tiger... a beast which had apparently escaped from a travelling circus....

"The Box Tunnel" tells the story of a bet between two soldiers, travelling on a train across Britain, in the spring of 1847, that one of them will not manage to kiss one of the two other ladies travelling in the carriage. One of these ladies is pretty, the other rather unattractive. The young soldier takes up the bet, and when the train reaches the box tunnel, just after Swindon, he commits the outrage on the delicious young Miss Haythorne. This ungentlemanly conduct cannot be allowed to go unpunished....

Samuel Langhorne Clemens (1835-1910) was better known by his pen name, Mark Twain. He is widely recognized as one of America's greatest authors and humorists. A Ghost Story is a classic Twain story. The author skillfully builds up layers of atmosphere and tension as he describes spending the night in a spooky house where chains rattle and terrifying apparitions appear...and then Twain amusingly turns the narrative into humour with a hilarious twist. Brilliant!

"Comrades" reveals an ironic humour in its conception and is one of Gorky's lighter tales. A peasant policeman is dispatched to escort a vagrant without papers to the nearest magistrate, a considerable distance away. As the two talk on the journey, it becomes clear to the listener...and finally to the policeman...the real identity of the vagrant.

Edith Wharton (1862-1937) was a Pulitzer Prize-winning American novelist and short story writer. She was nominated for the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1927, 1928 and 1930. "The Debt" is the story of the relationship between an eminent Professor of Biology and a young but highly talented student. The great Professor Landfear adopts the bright but socially awkward Galen Dredge as his protegé and future successor, preferring him even over his own son Archie.

Honoré de Balzac (1799-1850) is arguably the greatest European novelist in terms of the range and power of his writing. Most of his short stories predate his long novels and are written in a different style. One of the earliest is An Episode of the Reign of Terror in which two nuns and a priest in hiding from the mob are visited by a stranger with a very peculiar request, and even odder motives behind it.

Herbert George Wells (1866-1946) was a prolific English writer, now best remembered for his science fiction novels and often credited as being the father of science fiction. 'The Valley of Spiders' is the creepy tale of three men who ride into a remote and deserted valley in pursuit of a fleeing woman they are tracking. Before long they discover that the valley holds a terrifying secret...it is the home of a myriad of huge spiders. Will any of them get out of the valley alive?

Poe's brilliant account of committing a perfect murder from within the paranoid brain of the murderer.

The deceptively mild mannered detective, Mr. J.G. Reeder devises a cunning plan to set a thief to catch a murderer.

Anatole France (1844 - 1924) was a leading French poet and writer who was awarded the Nobel Prize for literature in 1921. "In the Reign of Terror" is a short story describing a daring spur of the moment escape by an aristocratic woman, when the mob appears at her door, seeking a neighbour who they wish to drag off to the guillotine.

Major Milton is in the thick of defending a key line in the trenches of Flanders, playing the key role of commanding the various positions from his field telephone system. But his attention is distracted by another, greater battle which is being fought on the home front...