Showing results by author "Robert Barr" in All Categories

Robert Barr (1849-1912) was a Scottish-Canadian short story writer and novelist, born in Glasgow, Scotland. 'The Hour-Glass' is a mysterious ghost story. An avid antique collector buys an ancient and defective hourglass from a curiosity shop. When he takes it home and starts to examine it, he is startled by a strange visitor who claims to be the real owner of the hourglass. His story is a very bizarre one.

"The Absent-Minded Coterie", a short story published in 1906, tells of a cunning scam devised by crooked counterfeiters. But, of course, French detective Eugene Valmont eventually discovers the truth. "The Absent-Minded Coterie" is widely recognized as one of the best crime stories of the time.

They were married, but they hated and couldn't stand each other. Why not a divorce? Not that easy when there is a lot of money involved. Perhaps they could work things out on a trip to the Swiss Alps.

In this delightful collection of short stories, Robert Barr weaves romance and humor into the lives of his characters. In One Days Courtship, British artist John Trenton finds himself in Quebec, hoping to squeeze in a picturesque canoe trip to capture the stunning Shawenegan Falls on his final day. Meanwhile, in The Heralds of Fame, a budding novelist embarks on an adventure to America, armed with copies of his debut book. A moment of panic leads him to buy an extra copy at a bookstand, setting off a humorous chain reaction that tests his resolve and creativity. Join Nat Spratt as he narrates ...

Robert Barr was born in Glasgow, Scotland on the 16th September 1849. Five years later the family emigrated to a farm near Muirkirk in Upper Canada. Although a number of his crime novels and short stories are parodies on Sherlock Holmes and other best-selling detectives of the time, he also wrote short stories across a whole range of subjects and genres usually with intriguing ideas and many laced with wit and humour.

In this volume our classic authors conjure up all sorts of damnations and destructions in literary assaults testing our will to survive and our ingenuity to overcome situations where the outlook is bleak at best and the total extinction of us at worse.

Throughout the long centuries of human history is the want, and the need, to share information, to exchange ideas and for that knowledge and experience, for curiosity and learning, to be the basis of a civil society. In this volume we offer up a small selection of talents from the literary landscape of 1800 to 1849 and its male authors whose time has now come again.