Showing results by narrator "Cathy Dobson" in All Categories

The Reverend Father Gaucher's Elixir is set in a dilapidated monastery in Provence. The order has fallen on hard times and the future of the entire monastery is in jeopardy. But the order's simpleton cow-herd, Brother Gaucher, has an unexpected idea. His old Auntie Bégon had in her later years invented a marvellous herbal elixir. By producing, bottling, and selling this, Brother Gaucher believes the order can become as rich as the Trappists and the monks of Chartreuse.

Constance Peel OBE, (1868 - 1934) was an English journalist and writer, best known for her non-fiction books on cheap household management and cookery. During the first world war, Zeppelin raids on London made the night-times hideous. But then, on June 13th 1917, something unexpected happened. "The Daylight Raid" is a collection of first hand accounts of the first German attack on London from the air during broad daylight.

Herbert George Wells (1866-1946) was a prolific English writer of stories and novels and is frequently credited as being the father of science fiction. 'A Vision of Judgment' tells the story of a man who is awakened from his grave by a trumpet sounding for the last judgment. As the first souls are called before God, he realises that things are not quite as he had expected....

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?

Richard Austin Freeman (1862-1943) was a British writer of detective stories, many featuring the investigator Dr. Thorndyke, who uses a mixture of medical and forensic techniques to solve the most baffling crimes. In The Blue Sequin, a beautiful young woman as been found alone, dead in a railway carriage, with a peculiar combination of head injuries inflicted with great force by a sharp, round implement.

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 and horror stories. 'Mrs. Amworth' is arguably Benson's most famous story...and certainly one of the most terrifying. It tells the story of a mysterious outbreak of vampirism in the heart of a quiet English village.

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.

When young Gillian inherits a sum of one thousand dollars from his late uncle, with the condition that he should spend it and return to the lawyers' office with a detailed account of his expenditure, he is at a loss what to do with the money. He seeks ideas and advice from many...but eventually the solution dawns on him.

Robert Ervin Howard (1906-1936) was an American writer of weird tales and horror fiction. Rattle of Bones is a tale featuring one of Howard's most popular heroes, the stalwart English puritan, Solomon Kane. In this tale Kane meets another traveller while journeying through the Black Forest, and the two arrive at a sinister, lonely inn, which bears the sign of a cleft skull. In the course of the night, the two uncover the terrible and macabre secret of the tavern....

The bizarre death of the Countess Görlitz at Darmstadt in Germany, in 1847, was one of the greatest mysteries of the age. For several years it was widely believed that the Countess had spontaneously combusted at her writing desk. Another popular theory was that her husband, Count Görlitz, a Privy Councillor and Chamberlain to the Grand-Duke of Hesse had murdered her - a charge which he vigorously denied.

First published in 1911, Katherine Mansfield's collection In a German Pension was inspired by her extended stay in a spa town in Bavaria in 1909, during which she suffered a miscarriage. The collection brought her instant fame and popularity as a short story writer, particularly as her amusing - though less than favourable - caricatures of the Germans were very popular at that time.

William James Wintle (1861-1920) was already a recognised writer before he became an Oblate for the Abbey of Caldey Island in Wales. It was there that he wrote a series of horror stories for the entertainment of eight boys who attended the abbey. In the foreword of this collection, Wintle explains that the stories were originally told on Sunday nights while "crouching over a wood fire on a wind-swept island off the Western shore."

Barry Eric Odell Pain (1864-1928) was an English journalist, poet, and writer best known for his ghost and horror stories. Rose Rose is a hauntingly beautiful ghost story about an artist and his exquisite if somewhat unreliable model, Miss Rose Rose, who is sitting for his great painting of Aphrodite. Miss Rose Rose, on this occasion, is not as unreliable as expected....

Sir Hugh Seymour Walpole (1884-1941) was a New Zealand-born English novelist and short-story writer. The Enemy tells the story of a mild-mannered bookseller, Jack Harding, whose life is completely ordered and unremarkable except that he has a terrible enemy - a man named Tonks, who pursues him with uninvited joviality, driving Harding to distraction.

'The Grinding of the Mills' is the bizarre tale of two men born at the same moment in the same hospital but from very different backgrounds. It appears that key future events in their lives are predetermined by the timing and location of their birth...although given their different characters and circumstances, they respond in very different ways to similar challenges. When the men meet, their relationship takes a dramatic turn. At their first meeting, one saves the life of the other. Later on, events cause one to resolve to murder the other.

W.W. Jacobs was an English writer, famous for his humorous short stories, particularly those relating the preposterous adventures and misadventures of sailors on leave. This collection, Short Cruises, contains some of W.W. Jacobs' most popular characters, including the night watchman at the docks in Wapping who relates the stories of his friends Ginger Dick, Sam Small, and Peter Russet.

Richard Barham Middleton (1882-1911) was an English poet and author who is remembered mostly for his supernatural short ghost stories, in particular 'The Ghost Ship', 'The Conjurer' and 'On the Brighton Road'. 'On the Brighton Road' is a strange tale of a homeless man who is trudging between London and Brighton when he meets a fragile-looking young boy, also homeless, who offers to walk with him for a while.

Vincent O'Sullivan (1868-1940), born in New York to an Irish-American family, moved as a child to London. As a young man he soon became well recognised at the master of decadent and macabre fiction. "A Study in Murder" is the story of a man committing the perfect murder, told from the perspective of the warped murderer.

Robert Ervin Howard (1906-1936) was an American author famous for his weird tales and horror stories. Sea Curse is the tale which starts with a village tragedy. A local girl who lives with her elderly aunt has been seduced and deflowered by a swaggering, drunk sailor. In despair she drowns herself in the ocean. The sailor mocks her aunt over the girl's washed-up body on the beach. The old aunt retaliates by putting an awful, terrible curse upon the sailor and his mate....

Percival Christopher Wren (1875 - 1941) was an English writer of adventure fiction mostly dealing with colonial soldiering in Africa. He is remembered best for Beau Geste, a much filmed book of 1924, involving the French Foreign Legion in North Africa. 'The Dust That Was Barren' is a strange tale of a peculiar incident in the French Foreign Legion. Commandant Le Sage comes across a legionnaire who has fallen behind his comrades and has laid himself down in the sand, saying he is dying....