Showing results by narrator "Cathy Dobson" in All Categories

The Princess Who Was Hidden Underground is the tale of a king who goes to extreme lengths to safeguard his daughter from potential suitors unworthy of her hand. But one cunning young lad manages to outwit the king by disguising himself as a sheep.

The Stonecutter is a fairy tale Lang collected in Japan. A stonecutter sees how rich people live when he is delivering a gravestone one day. From that day on he is dissatisfied with his own lot and wishes to be rich. His wish is granted by the spirit that lives in the mountain...but the stonecutter is still not satisfied with his life and makes further wishes, each taking him a little further on his quest for happiness.

Peter Christen Asbjørnsen (1812-1885) was a Norwegian writer, scholar and collector of traditional folktales. The Cormorants of Udröst is one of the stories he collected. It tells of a fisherman who found the mythical island of Udröst and befriended its strange and wonderfully generous inhabitants.

Maurice Baring (1874-1945) was an English short story writer, novelist, and travel writer and war correspondent during the First World War. The Shadow of a Midnight is a ghost story with a twist. Two students on a walking tour in Germany stay in an interesting old inn which had formerly been a convent. One of them has a strange dream, which turns out perhaps not to have been a dream after all....

'The Red-Haired Girl' is a ghost story about an eerie and ominous servant-girl who stalks the house watching its inhabitants malevolently.

Peter Christen Asbjørnsen (1812-1885) was a Norwegian writer, scholar and collector of traditional folktales. 'Matthias the Hunter's Stories' is one of the sets of tales he collected and tells accounts of encounters with the Hulda (woodland or bogland fairy) and the brownie.

Thomas Anstey Guthrie (1856-1934) was an English novelist and journalist who wrote his comic novels and humorous short stories under the pseudonym F. Anstey. 'A Bohemian Bag' is the story of a piece of luggage with a perverse mind of its own. The Gladstone bag in question goes on its own travels every time it is left in the care of a railway porter or station master...usually catching up with its hapless owner only days later.

A delightful collection of light-hearted classic stories from some of the greatest Victorian and Edwardian-era writers.

Joseph Smith Fletcher (1863-1935) was a British journalist and author. He wrote more than 230 books on a wide variety of subjects, both fiction and nonfiction. He was one of the leading writers of detective fiction in the Victorian golden age of the short story. This collection brings together some of the finest and most diverse examples of Fletcher's genius.

'Mr. Tallent's Ghost' is an amusing tale about an eccentric writer who likes to read his appalling and tedious novels aloud to his relatives...or indeed anyone who will listen. He persuades a lawyer to draw up a will devoting his entire fortune to funding the publication of his writing. Shortly after this, news of Mr. Tallent's death arrives. The disinherited relations dispute the will vigorously, and soon after this, the ghost of Mr. Tallent begins to haunt the relatives and the executor.

Isobel Violet Hunt (1862-1942) was a British author of short stories, novels, memoir and biography. She is most famous for her supernatural fiction. The Operation is a short novella which tells a very odd story. The second wife of the famous dwarf comedy actor, Joseph Mardell, learns that her cook has seen a funeral procession leaving a neighbouring house on Christmas day.

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 'The Strange Case of Mr. Todmorden' an elderly and wealthy woman has been mysteriously murdered in her bed.

Ivan Sergeyevich Turgenev (1818 – 1883) was a Russian novelist, short story writer, and playwright. He was a great figure in Russian Realism and his novel Fathers and Sons is regarded as one of the major works of 19th-century fiction. The District Doctor is the poignant story of the emerging relationship between a doctor and his dying patient.

During the last part of the nineteenth century, the detective story took off as a popular genre as literary magazines vied with each other to draw in readers with gripping page-turners by the likes of Arthur Conan Doyle, G. K. Chesterton, Guy Boothby and Wilkie Collins. This collection brings together some of the great detectives of the Victorian era, from the master sleuth himself, Sherlock Holmes, to the mild mannered Father Brown, to the feisty J. G. Reeder.

A mesmerizing collection of 30 wonderful stories by great classic writers. 1. The Invisible Man by G. K. Chesterton 2. At the Farmhouse by E. F. Benson 3. The Parasite by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle 4. The Watcher by the Threshold by John Buchan 5. Query by Seamark 6. The Man of the Night by Edgar Wallace 7. The Earl, the Warder and the Wayward Heiress by J. S. Fletcher 8. Afterward by Edith Wharton 9. The Murderer by Perceval Gibbon 10. The Idiot by Arnold Bennett 11. Oh Liberty by W. Pett Ridge

A gripping collection of classic spy stories by some of the great early masters of espionage fiction: 'The Secret of the Black Bag' by William Le Queux, 'How I Became a Secret Agent' by Dr. A. K. Graves, 'The Secret of the Smoked Spectacles' by William Le Queux,'The 39 Steps' by John Buchan, 'Matahari and Some Other Women Spies' by Sir Basil Thomson, 'The Secret of Dr. Vaux’s Intrigue' by William Le Queux.

Robert O'Hara Burke (1821-1861) was one of the great Victorian explorers. In 1860 he was appointed to lead the Victorian Exploring Expedition, which aimed to cross the Australian continent from south to north. The expedition left Melbourne on Monday, 20 August 1860 with a total of 19 men, 27 (rum fuelled) camels, and 23 horses. The expedition was dogged by disputes and poor leadership decisions from the start. Even at the first staging post the second in command and the medical officer resigned.

Six men, shipwrecked on the ice and trapped in their shack by the bitter Arctic winter, might be excused for beginning to "see" things. But how was it that they all saw the same thing - the mysterious stranger?

The Magic Casket describes a classic case for Dr. Thorndyke. It tells the story of an ordinary and apparently quite worthless metal casket, which conceals a mysterious secret which nearly costs a young woman her life.

On the surface, Immensee is a simple love story, of an old man, Reinhardt Werner, remembering Elisabeth, the lost sweetheart of his youth, who married his best friend, Erich. Reinhardt had neglected their relationship when he had gone away to university, and after two years when he failed to write to Elisabeth, she gave up waiting and accepted a marriage proposal from Erich, a wealthy young farmer with a fine house on the shores of the Immensee.