検索キーワード： ナレーター "Cathy Dobson" すべてのカテゴリー

Thomas Hood (1799-1845) was an English writer and great friend of Lamb, Hazlitt and De Quincey. Hood wrote regularly for The London Magazine, the Athenaeum, and Punch. He later published a magazine largely consisting of his own works. "A Tale of the Great Plague" is an ironic piece set in the time of the Black Death, about how an old man outwits a gang of ruthless cutthroats.

Gilbert Keith Chesterton (1874-1936) was an English writer best known for his fictional priest-detective, Father Brown. In The Paradise of Thieves Father Brown is travelling in Italy when he comes across a strange situation. An English family on vacation is in the guidance of a local courier, and the daughter is also flirting with an Italian poet and musician who appears to be something of a lothario. But Father Brown senses that something is not right.

When Darcy, recuperating from a serious illness, goes to stay with an old friend of his, Frank, in the New Forest, he discovers a puzzling change in the man. He appears to have become significantly younger and is also filled with exuberance and joy. Frank explains that he has spent the last six years studying Nature and has discovered a new philosophy of life around the joy of nature.

Nathaniel Hawthorne (1804-1864) was an American novelist, Dark Romantic, and prolific short story writer. 'The Adventure of the German Student' is a ghost story set during the French Revolution. A young German student who is depressed and lonely has a recurrent dream about a beautiful female face. He begins to obsess over the features day and night. Then one evening as he is walking home through the Place de Grève, where the guillotine stands....

Montague Rhodes James (1862-1936), who wrote as M. R. James, was an English author, mediaeval scholar, and provost of King's College, Cambridge, and of Eton College. He is best known for his outstanding ghost stories. James reinvented the ghost story for the modern audience by moving away from Gothic elements and using realistic contemporary settings. His protagonists and plots often reflect his own antiquarian interests. Accordingly he is known as the originator of the "antiquarian ghost story".

Andrew Barton "Banjo" Paterson (1864 – 1941) was an Australian bush poet, journalist and author. This is his poignant description of a journey through the country during a period of severe drought in Australia, describing the rugged determination and imperfect grasp of basic economics of the "cockies" or rural settlers.

William Chambers Morrow (1854-1923) was an American author, famed for his short stories of horror and suspense. 'His Unconquerable Enemy' is the story for which Morrow is best known, and it tells the story of the determined revenge of a servant whose limbs have been amputated on the orders of a cruel rajah.

A fascinating collection of short stories by some of the greatest Victorian female writers. This anthology covers every theme from spirits and the occult to love and sexuality to sentimentality and romance to social observation and critique. 'The Operation' by Violet Hunt, 'Satan's Circus' by Eleanor Smith, 'A Dream of Wild Bees' by Olive Schreiner, 'A Dill Pickle' by Katherine Mansfield, 'Squirrel in a Cage' by E. M. Delafield, 'Afterward' by Edith Wharton, 'The Yellow Wallpaper' by Charlotte Perkins Gilman....

Sir Hugh Seymour Walpole (1884-1941) was a New Zealand-born English novelist famous for his skill at scene setting and vivid plots. He was a best-selling author in the 1920s and 1930s and remains popular to this day. 'Mr. Huffam' is a heartwarming story about a delightful stranger who, on account of his personal bonhomie and his wonderful ability to tell stories, charms the household of Sir Roderick Winslow, from the haughty aristocratic relatives to the domestics.

William Le Queux (1864 - 1927) was an Anglo-French journalist and writer, diplomat, traveller, flying buff and wireless pioneer who broadcast music from his own station long before radio was generally available. He was phenomenally successful as a novelist and short story writer, and many of his tales are based on his own exploits, albeit vastly exaggerated.

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 as the master of decadent and macabre fiction. 'The Business of Madame Jahn' is a macabre ghost story of a suicide, a terrible murder and an awful revenge.

Howard Phillips Lovecraft (1890-1937), who wrote as H. P. Lovecraft, was an American author of horror fiction who achieved posthumous fame as one of the most influential writers of his day. "The Terrible Old Man" is the gruesome story of three robbers who set out to steal from a mysterious and reclusive retired sea captain who has a circle of strange stones in his garden and conducts even stranger rituals in his house.

A fast-paced and varied collection of captivating short stories ranging from action thrillers to poignant tear-jerkers to the downright weird, including: "Jerry Bundler" by W. W. Jacobs, "The Umbrella Mender" by Beatrice Harraden, "Green Ink" by J. S. Fletcher, "Why Herbert Killed His Mother" by Winifred Holtby, "The Red Mark" by Israel Zangwill, "The White Kid Glove" by J. S. Fletcher, "Sophy Mason Comes Back" by E. M. Delafield, plus many more.

A superb collection of captivating short stories by leading classic writers, including 'The Cone' by H. G. Wells, 'The Dream Woman' by Wilkie Collins, 'Fortunes Adrift' by Charles John Cutcliffe Hyne, 'The Kidnapping of Phil Altamore' by Ella Hepworth Dixon, 'The Table Under the Tree' by E. Phillips Oppenheim, 'In Yeddo Bay' by Jack London and many more gripping short stories by famous writers.

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."

A highly unsettling collection of macabre stories in which death and the dead are key themes. Moon’s Gibbet by Egerton Castle, A Strange Goldfield by Guy Boothby, The Withered Arm by Thomas Hardy, The Pistol Shot by Alexander Pushkin, The Premature Burial by Edgar Allan Poe, The Dead Hand by Wilkie Collins, The Famous Race between the Hearse and the Steamroller by Sidney Keyes, The Masque of the Red Death by Edgar Allan Poe, Nine O’Clock by Wilkie Collins, The Queen of Spades by Alexander Pushkin.

Arthur George Morrison (1863-1945) was an English writer and journalist known for his realistic novels and stories about working-class life in London's East End. The Disorder of the Bath is an engaging and humorous story about a burglary told by a cockney rogue who has double crossed his companions and is on the run.

Lady Eleanor Furneaux Smith (1902-1945) was an English author, journalist and film critic. Many of her books, including her extensive oeuvre of ghost stories, involve a circus or gypsy setting, based on her own research and her (unsubstantiated) belief that she had a Romany great grandmother. Satan's Circus is a creepy tale of a circus run by a sinister and manipulative couple, Carl and Lya Brandt. When a new circus hand, Anatole, joins the troupe in North Africa, he is assigned to work with the menagerie.

Gilbert Keith Chesterton (1874-1936) was an English writer best known for his fictional priest-detective, Father Brown. In The Purple Wig, an investigative journalist, Frances Finn, sets out to discover the strange secret of the dukes of Exmoor and the legend of their mysterious hereditary deformed ear. When Finn meets the current duke, he is wearing a hideous purple wig, which apparently he never takes off in the presence of anybody.

'Haunted' is the eerie tale of a man who was once rescued from the sea and who is obsessed with the belief that one day the sea will come and reclaim his soul. But then he meets the fearless fisherman's daughter, Sally. When Sally's father and brother are caught out at sea with a bad storm approaching, the man knows it is time to return to the sea and rescue them...but he also knows that the cunning and vengeful sea will not let him escape a second time....