Showing results by narrator "Cathy Dobson" in All Categories

Harry Houdini's greatest escape ever. While visiting Cairo as a tourist, Houdini and his wife are shown around the pyramids by a mysterious and slightly sinister guide who has a strange hollow voice and looks like an old pharaoh. What starts as a strange traveller's adventure to witness a duel at midnight on the summit of one of the pyramids, turns into a nightmare as Houdini is seized, tied up and lowered on a rope far into the bowels of the earth to an unknown tomb where the oldest and most sinister of the Egyptian Pharaohs dwell....

An absorbing set of stories set in Victorian and Edwardian London. Old Fags by Stacy Aumonier, The One Million Pound Bank Note by Mark Twain, The Omnibus by Sir Arthur Quiller-Couch, A Circular Tour by W. W. Jacobs, The Hired Baby by Marie Corelli, Juxtapositions by Stacy Aumonier, Mixed Relations by W. W. Jacobs, The Inconsiderate Waiter by J. M. Barrie, The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde by Robert Louis Stevenson, The Talking Horse by F. Anstey Guthrie, London Street Markets by Henry Mayhew,

A timeless collection of classic short stories by some of the master storytellers of the world. Old Iron by Stacy Aumonier, Odour of Chrysanthemums by D. H. Lawrence, The Idiot by Arnold Bennett, Miss Harriet by Guy de Maupassant, Red Hanrahan by W. B. Yeats, The Doll's House by Katherine Mansfield, The Devil's Spectacles by Wilkie Collins, The Model Millionaire by Oscar Wilde, Miss Bracegirdle does her Duty by Stacy Aumonier, The Piece of String by Guy de Maupassant, Glad Ghosts by D. H. Lawrence.

When the young bank clerk Charlie Mears comes up with an innovative idea for a new story, he has no notion just how amazing his tale is. Inspired by dreams which are memories of former lives, he takes us back to the vivid and brutal world of ancient Greece. But Charlie’s own literary skill is not equal to the task of writing his novel. His friend must take on the challenge of extracting the finest tale in the world from the reluctant and ever-distracted brain of the young clerk. But just as there seems to be some progress, something most unexpected occurs….

First published in 1899, The Story of the Treasure Seekers tells the tale of the Bastable children, Dora, Oswald, Dickie, Noel, Alice and H.O. (short for Horace Octavius) and their attempts to restore the fallen fortunes of their family. They devise a series of plans to find or make money, varying from digging for treasure to being bandits, from going into business to rescuing rich elderly gentlemen from deadly peril.

Robert Browning's classic adventure ballad. Three riders set off from Ghent to bring urgent news to Aix. They ride furiously through the night and the next day. Only one completes the journey and saves the fate of the town.

Kipling’s classic tale taken from the Just So Stories. The young elephant has an unfortunate encounter with a crocodile, which results in his nose being stretched, which is how he got his trunk.

'The High Seas' is the story of two brothers, Bran and Agar Yeld, twins, both sailors, sworn and bitter enemies. Agar has stolen Bran's sweetheart and married her while he was away at sea. Bran is determined to kill his brother. But circumstances keep them apart for many years. Then one day both Bran and Agar find themselves hired aboard the same ship. All Bran needs to do is wait for the right moment....

Herbert George Wells (1866 - 1946) was a prolific English writer of science fiction stories and novels, and is often credited as the father of science fiction. 'The Triumphs of the Taxidermist' is a tongue in cheek macabre tale of a taxidermist's anecdotes of strange creatures he has stuffed, ranging from fraudulent birds to human beings.

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 Clock is an atmospheric tale of the supernatural where a young woman finds herself alone in an empty house, searching for a missing clock.

Katherine Mansfield (1888-1923) was a prominent modernist writer of short fiction and a close associate of D. H. Lawrence and Virginia Woolf. A Dill Pickle is a wistful love story about a couple who meet again six years after their break-up, and for a moment the old passions, positive and negative, resurface in the course of a short intense conversation.

Fedor Sologub (1863-1927) was the greatest of the Russian symbolists. Alongside his great novel The Little Demon, he wrote a number of masterful and haunting short stories, among which "The White Dog" is a superb example of his beautiful, poetic, and mystic prose.

A poignant and profound collection of stories which explore the theme of childhood and a child's perspective on the world. "The Dabblers" by W. F. Harvey. "The Doll’s House" by Katherine Mansfield. "The Roman Road" by Kenneth Grahame. "The Sailor Uncle" by Mary Lamb. "The Egg" by Sherwood Anderson. "Gabriel-Ernest" by Saki. "A Child’s Revenge" by Paul Bourget. "The Apple Tree" by Katherine Mansfield. "A Falling Out" by Kenneth Grahame. "The Christmas Tree and the Wedding" by Fyodor Dostoyevsky

Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's most intriguing novella. Austin Gilroy is a scientist and is by nature sceptical of anything to do with the occult. So when his colleague, Professor Wilson, introduces him to the mysterious and sinister hypnotist, Miss Penclosa, he is inclined to view her as a fraud. But when Gilroy's fiancée is hypnotised and Miss Penclosa makes her do the unthinkable, Gilroy is forced to change his views.

An old man revisits the scene of a terrible incident from his youth. The place is Moon's Gibbet - where the body of a hanged murderer named Moon was hung, tarred, and fettered 35 years earlier. On that night, the man had been on that hill and had seen the body hung up. Once the hangman and his assistant had left, the hung body began to groan. At the same time an old man appeared, the father of the criminal, and between the two of them they managed to save the young man from the gallows. But this is only the start of the dreadful events of the evening.

A British sniper is waiting in a shell-hole in no-mans land for his enemy. It is a battle of wits...the game of no mistakes. It takes the instinct of a hunter after a bear to spot the imperceptible movement, the chink of light and shift in the mud that reveals the movement of his enemy. A tense tale in which we sit alongside the sniper, watching with him as he waits to shoot his enemy.

When Paul Forsyth and his archeologist friend Professor Niles are exploring the Cheops pyramid in Egypt, they become separated from their guide and lose their way in the labyrinthine tunnel network. Finding themselves close to a female mummy, they decide to create a fire using the wooden case in the hope of attracting the attention of the Egyptian guides. Professor Niles is keen to unwrap the mummy and see what items may have been hidden in the bandages. They do indeed find treasures...one of which is a golden box containing some mysterious seeds...and another is a scrap of parchment casting a curse on anyone who disturbs the rest of the mummy....

When Richard Hannay returns to London after an action-packed life in Rhodesia, he finds life unbearably dull. He is on the point of leaving the city in search of adventures, when mystery and intrigue turns up at his door in the shape of Franklin Scudder, Hannay’s neighbour, who turns out to be a spy trying to escape the clutches of a shady international organisation, bent on sparking a European war. When Scudder is mysteriously murdered and all the evidence seems to point to Hannay himself, he escapes to Scotland, bearing Scudder’s cryptic coded notebook, which he struggles to decipher.

Kipling’s classic tale taken from the Just So Stories. The whale likes to eat anything and everything in the sea, but when he attempts to swallow a shipwrecked mariner he finds himself outwitted. The mariner not only tricks the whale into giving him a free ride home, he also ensures that never again can he swallow anything larger than tiny plankton.

An intriguing collection of short stories by some of the greatest women fiction writers of the last century. The Lifted Veil – George Eliot Miss Brill – Katherine Mansfield The Fly – Katherine Mansfield The Jew’s Beech Tree – Annette von Droste-Hülshoff The Yellow Wallpaper – Charlotte Perkins Gilman Mansize in Marble – Edith Nesbit