Showing results by narrator "Cathy Dobson" in All Categories

Venturers are those who seek excitement, unpredictability and chance in life. Forster is one such venturer, but finds his life in New York too boringly predictable. But when he meets Ives, the latter suggests they dine in a posh hotel together although neither has any money with them, and then toss a coin to see which of them will bear the consequences when they are unable to pay. The escapade turns out to have consequences which neither of them could have predicted.

Sir Hugh Seymour Walpole (1884-1941) was a New Zealand-born English novelist famous for his skill at scene setting and vivid plots. He was a best-selling author in the 1920s and 1930s and remains popular to this day. "Seashore Macabre" tells the story of a curious boy who inexplicably follows a sinister-looking man at a seaside resort. The old man goes to a remote cottage on the edge of the sand dunes.

Lady Eleanor Furneaux Smith (1902-1945) was an English author, journalist and film critic. Many of her books, including her extensive oeuvre of ghost stories, involve a circus or gypsy setting, based on her own research and her (unsubstantiated) belief that she had a Romany great grandmother. Satan's Circus is a creepy tale of a circus run by a sinister and manipulative couple, Carl and Lya Brandt. When a new circus hand, Anatole, joins the troupe in North Africa, he is assigned to work with the menagerie.

Elia Wilkinson Peattie (1862-1935) was a prolific American author, journalist and critic. Although she left school at 14, she was exceptionally talented as a writer, and by her 20s she was well recogized as a popular writer of short stories. 'From the Loom of the Dead' is a story with the character of an Icelandic folktale about two young orphaned children suffering at the hands of a cruel and neglectful stepmother. But the ghost of their dead mother returns to haunt the stepmother and forces her to care for the children.

Bithia Mary Croker (1848-1920) was an Irish-born novelist and a notable writer of ghost stories; much of her work concerned life and society in British India. 'The Former Passengers' (1893) tells the story of Mr. Lawrence, who is on his way to Singapore to give his sister away at her wedding. As he finds he has missed the steamer he intended to catch, he persuades Captain Blane to take him in his cargo boat, the Wandering Star.

'Ken's Mystery' is a wonderful story blending Gaelic folklore with Gothic mystery. Kenningale - or Ken, as his friends call him - has been on an educational trip to Europe from which he has returned with a mysteriously aged and rotting banjo. While in Ireland, walking home late on Halloween, he had met a mysterious and beautiful woman in a graveyard who asked him to play his banjo for her. Later the same night, he met her again...or was it her? And again she asked him to play. But why was she so cold and pale?

Herbert George Wells (1866 - 1946) was a prolific English writer best known for his outstanding science fiction stories and novels. He was nominated for the Nobel Prize in Literature four times. 'The Crystal Egg' is a science fiction short story about an antiquarian dealer, Mr. Cave, who discovers that a crystal egg in his shop has strange properties. In certain light conditions it functions as a window on the planet Mars and he is able to observe the Martians and their bizarre cities and machines.

'The Thing in the Upper Room' is a classic Victorian horror story. Poor young English artist Attwater is delighted to find an oddly cheap top-floor room to rent in an old house in Paris. The room, as he is aware, has a reputation for being haunted. But what the nature of the haunting is, nobody seems to know - the place has been let only once in living memory owing to its reputation, and that tenant had committed suicide at the point where the police were breaking down his door to arrest him for murder.

When Vi and Amos go diving for the first time in the West Indies, they hope to explore the recent wreck of a smuggling ship. Once underwater, Vi struggles to remember who the man up on the surface, pumping air down to their diving suits, reminds her of. Suddenly she realizes. He is Nana's son! Nana, the housekeeper who Amos sacked for stealing. And Nana's son had vowed to get even with them. Vi searches frantically among the coral for Amos and struggles to make him understand what has happened.

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 Diamond Cut Diamond, Britten Austin tells the tale of the agent Sir Humphrey Maule who appears unexpectedly in the office of Quentin Quayne.

A breathtaking werewolf story by the master raconteur Guy de Maupassant. Two brothers with a shared obsession for hunting, attempt to pursue a werewolf which is ravaging the neighbourhood. One brother is killed in the chase, but when the werewolf appears, the other brother's rage is such that he undertakes the hunt of his life.

Henry Chapman Mercer (1856-1930) was, amongst other things, an eccentric archaologist, historian, architect, antiquarian collector and author of Gothic horror stories very much after the fashion of M. R. James. 'The Dolls' Castle' is the creepy story of a haunted house with a sinister past which uses old, rotting dolls to lure unwary children away from their parents.

Herbert George Wells (1866 - 1946) was a prolific English writer, now best remembered for his science fiction novels. 'The Diamond Maker' is the story of a self-taught chemistry enthusiast who is obsessed with developing a process for creating artificial diamonds.

Over 10 hours of riveting stories by some of the world’s greatest short-story writers.

William Chambers Morrow (1854-1923) was an American writer, famous for his short stories of horror and suspense. 'Over an Absinthe Bottle' is a peculiar horror story about a young man down and out in San Francisco who is slowly starving to death. Then he happens to meet a peculiar pale stranger who invites him to share a bottle of absinthe with him and then engages him in a terrifying game of dice, where the stakes rise with every throw.... The tale takes a very strange turn at the end.

Francis Marion Crawford (1854-1909) was an American writer noted for his classic weird and fantastic stories, especially those set in Italy. One of the most famous of these is 'For the Blood Is the Life' - a strange and uncanny vampire story set on the coast of Calabria.

Edward Frederic Benson (1867-1940) was an English novelist, biographer, memoirist, archaeologist, and short story writer, best known for his evocative and beautifully narrated ghost stories. The House with the Brick Kiln is one of E. F. Benson's most sinister ghost stories, and tells the tale of the manor of Trevor Major. The narrator and his friend, Jack Singleton, rent it for a month one summer for the excellent dry fly fishing available nearby.

Mrs. Packletide is determined to shoot a tiger in order to get one up on her arch rival Loona Bimberton. In a comical and at times ironic sequence of events, Mrs. Packletide finds herself at the mercy of another rival, just when she had least expected it. Hector Hugh Munro at his most witty and ironic. A masterpiece!

Hugh and Margaret Grainger have rented a lovely old house near an excellent golf course. At the bottom of the garden is a strange, well-kept, but untenented thatched cottage. A visitor to the Graingers has a strange and overwhelming presentiment on passing the cottage that the house is actually not empty. Indeed, on several occasions he seems to see a light in the cottage. And one evening he thinks he sees a figure entering the house. But every attempt to investigate confirms that the cottage is abandoned.

Laura is dying. She confidently predicts that she will be reincarnated as an otter. When the day before her funeral, a she-otter goes on the rampage in her arch nemesis Egbert's chicken run and flower beds, Amanda feels this is far too much of a coincidence. Egbert decides to call in the otter hounds. But even Amanda cannot foresee what happens next....Gripping!