Showing results by narrator "John Chatty" in All Categories

This is a selection from the "just so" stories. Just So Stories for Children is a collection of highly fantasized origin stories that are among Kipling's best known and, arguably, best works.

The story of the wily Robin Hood and his Merry Men has been passed down in oral legend, movies, and even a TV series. This reading of Howard Pyle's 1883 book The Merry Adventures of Robin Hood relates all the joys, woes, and adventures of the thief who "robbed from the rich to give to the poor". 

Two of Poe's most famous poems, both dealing with love and loss.

Black Beauty, The Autobiography of a Horse, was written in 1877 novel by English author Anna Sewell. The book became an immediate bestseller and is one of the best-selling books of all time. In addition to being a wonderful story for both children and adults, it teaches both animal welfare, and how to treat people and animals with kindness, sympathy and respect.

Robert Louis Stevenson was best known for novels like Treasure Island and Kidnapped, but he also wrote a number of fascinating short stories, many dealing with the supernatural.

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 is tormented by a cat and decides to take a terrible vengeance, but things do not go as planned.

The story takes place in Salem, Massachusetts, part of Puritan New England, which was a common setting for Hawthorne's work. Its theme is one often used by Hawthorne: the conflict between good and evil in human nature and, in particular, the problem of public goodness and private wickedness.

Since its publication in 1883, Treasure Island has remained one of the great tales of the sea. The story is told through the eyes of young Jim Hawkins, who first hears the tales of buried pirate treasure while working in his father's tavern. Once he actually meets some of those pirates, the action moves from the tavern, to the the high seas, and then to a secret island. A true adventure classic.

Tales of the frozen North and the men and women who dared to challenge it, by the author of The Call of the Wild.

Herman Melville, known primarily for his epic Moby Dick, also wrote a number of equally incisive, but much shorter stories. This collection contains four of his best: "Bartelby the Scrivner", "Benito Cereno", "Jimmy Rose", and "The Fiddler".

As with The Call of the Wild, White Fang explores a world in which animals and men depend on each other for survival. The story of a dog who is part wolf has lasted because Jack London gives each of his animals a personality. London's narratives are more than epics of hardship and survival; the are morality plays in which virtuous good triumphs over corrupt evil.

The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym of Nantucket is Edgar Allan Poe's only complete novel, published in 1838. Set in 1827, it is an exciting blend of science, romance, adventure, realism, and supernaturalism. It is based on the actual experiences of J.N. Reynolds, whose book Poe consulted.

"The King of the Golden River" is the magical story of a boy named Gluck, his evil brothers, and a dangerous quest to find treasure lurking in the Golden River. It is a classic tale and the only fairy tale the famous English author and critic ever wrote. It could also be classified as a fable or parable since it it explains "how things came to be".

Ligeia is a haunting story told by a husband about his deceased wife. She was beautiful but, also very strange in many ways. After her untimely death,he marries again but strange things start to happen as he becomes disenchanted with his newwife and begins thinking more and more about his first wife, Ligeia. Poe's descriptive powers are at his best here in setting the mood for this incredible story.

This collection consists of the following nine stories: "Dr. Heidegger's Experiment", "The Great Stone Face", "My Kinsman, Major Molinaux", "The Minister's Black Veil", "Mr. Higgonbotham's Catastrophe", "The Ambitious Guest", "The Birthmark", "The Minotaur", and "Young Goodman Brown".

C. Auguste Dupin is a Frenchman who decides to solve the mysterious brutal murder of two women in Paris. Numerous witnesses are quoted in the newspaper as having heard a suspect, though the witnesses each think it was a different language. As the first true detective in fiction, the Dupin character established many literary devices which would be used in future fictional detectives including Sherlock Holmes and Hercule Poirot.

Poe is best known for his tales of mystery and the macabre and this story is no exception. In it, a man's life is seemingly ruined by one he considers an arch enemy - until a startling revelation at the end of the story.

The book begins when Weyden's ship sinks in San Francisco harbor. Rescued by Larson, Weyden is forced to serve as cook's scullion. Larson's heads for the Bering Sea where Van Weyden finds human cruelty matched only by nature but he also finds something else when a young lady is also rescued by Larson.

Young David Balfour is cheated out of his inheritance by his uncle, who then has him kidnapped and forced into servitude on a sailing ship bound for a long voyage. What follows is one of the most spellbinding stories ever written.

Jack London gained his first and most lasting fame as the author of tales of the Klondike gold rush. This, his first collection of stories, draws on his experience in the Yukon. The stories tell of gambles won and lost, of endurance and sacrifice, and often turn on the qualities of exceptional women and on the relations between the white adventurers and the native tribes. Stories included are: "The white Silence," "The Son of the Wolf," "The Men of Forty Mile," "In a Far Country," "To the Man on Trail," "The Priestly Perogative," "The Wisdom of the Trail," "The Wife of the King.""An Odyssey of the North."