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

Ten classic short stories from the quills of great bird-loving authors.

Henry Chapman Mercer (1856-1930) was, amongst other things, an eccentric archaologist, historian, architect, antiquarian collector and author of Gothic horror stories very much after the fashion of M. R. James. 'The Dolls' Castle' is the creepy story of a haunted house with a sinister past which uses old, rotting dolls to lure unwary children away from their parents.

Edith Wharton (1862-1937) was a Pulitzer Prize-winning American novelist and short story writer. She was nominated for the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1927, 1928, and 1930. Among her most popular and terrifying tales are the many masterly ghost stories which she wrote in her early career. During a convivial evening during which all the guests recount their own personal ghost stories, nobody expects the dry old host, Andrew Culwin, to contribute any supernatural experience.

When the narrator finds a mysterious brass box in a curiosity shop, he is intrigued. It is heavy, round, and shaking it shows that it clearly contains something...but it cannot be opened. He buys the box and takes it home. With some effort, he manages to open it and discovers a plait of mysterious hair. After cleaning and examining the hair, he discards it on a piece of blank cardboard... or so he thinks. But then mysterious and sinister events begin to take place, and he discovers that the hair has terrifying powers, which he sets out to harness. Gripping and perverse!

Robert Ervin Howard (1906-1936) was an American author well known for his weird tales and horror fiction. In the Forest of Villefore is a grisly tale of a traveller passing through a dark forest at dusk who meets a mysterious masked stranger. The stranger offers to show the traveller the way to Villefore... but the path is dark and overgrown, and the circumstances become increasingly weird and threatening. As the tension builds, it becomes clear to the listener that something horrific is about to happen....

'A Double Return' is a classic doppelganger tale. A successful artist, Hallswell, is returning by train from a painting trip in the southwest of England. As the down train passes him at a junction, he imagines he catches a glimpse of his own face in the train rushing past his window. When he reaches home, a strange and sinister mystery awaits him....

Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (1859-1930) was the preeminent figure in late nineteenth century detective fiction. A physician by profession, he soon found such popularity as a writer of detective stories that his writing was far more profitable than his medical practice. The Adventure of the Mazarin Stone is a Sherlock Holmes mystery in which Holmes is in pursuit of a stolen diamond. By the start of the story, he has already solved every aspect of the case except the one crucial point.

A riveting collection of true stories which are so strange as to be almost unbelievable.

George Robert Gissing (1857-1903) was a popular English novelist and short-story writer who also worked as a teacher and tutor throughout his life. The Scrupulous Father is an unusual love story set in the world of stifling Victorian propriety. Rose, the only daughter of the highly respectable and class obsessed Mr. Wiston, is drawn to a young, redheaded clerk at an inn while she is on holiday. The young man is outgoing, cheerful, and free of all the petty rules and inhibitions which dominate her own life.

Morley Roberts (1857-1942) was an adventurer who worked on railways, cattle, and sheep ranches all over Africa and the Americas and still found time to write a large number of very varied novels and stories with a zest that only real-life experience can give. The Overcrowded Iceberg is the story of the argumentative crew of a fog-bound ship in the northern Atlantic, which eventually strikes an iceberg and sinks.

Perceval Gibbon (1879-1926) was an author and journalist, working on the Rand Daily Mail in South Africa and several other publications. He is best remembered for his masterly short stories which were often characterized by an ironic twist at the end. The Murderer is just such a tale.

When Don Juan returns home after years of travel, he brings with him a beautiful and mysterious young wife, Dona Pepa. Despite her beauty, Dona Pepa is mistrusted and disliked by everyone. Several years after this, Don Juan invites his nephew, Don Luis, for an extended visit. Don Luis takes an instant dislike to his aunt. Moreover, he often sees a sinister snake around the house, which fills him with fear and loathing. He soon realises that this snake is Dona Pepa in another form.

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.

Barry Eric Odell Pain (1864-1928) was an English journalist, poet, and writer best known for his ghost and horror stories. This Is All tells the story of Alexander Wyatt, who has a morbid fear of dying. Unfortunately Wyatt is ill with a heart condition, which, in combination with his paranoid anxiety and depression, threatens to become life threatening. His doctor prescribes a strict regime of early nights and no caffeine.

Herbert George Wells (1866 - 1946) was a prolific English writer of science fiction stories and novels, and is frequently credited as being the father of science fiction. 'The Moth' is the strange tale of two rivalling entomologists, each determined to demolish the other's life's work. When one of them dies, the other struggles to cope in the absence of his rival. And then he discovers an entirely new species of moth - a moth very reminiscent of his dead rival - and which pursues him wherever he goes.

An engrossing collection of detective stories featuring all the great classic sleuths, including Sherlock Holmes, Father Brown, Max Carrados, J. G. Reeder, and C. Auguste Dupin. 1.The Tea-Leaf by Edgar Jepson & Robert Eustace 2.The Queer Feet by G. K. Chesterton 3.The Curious Circumstances of the Two Left Shoes by Ernest Bramah 4. The Club of One-Eyed Men by Arthur Somers Roche 5.Diamond Cut Diamond by F. Britten Austin 6.The Game Played in the Dark by Ernest Bramah

Frederick Marryat’s The White Wolf of the Hartz Mountains is a unique literary work that stands out amidst the body of work of an author best known for pioneering the genre of the sea story. Excised from Marryat’s novel The Phantom Ship (1839) and published separately as The White Wolf it represents the first appearance of a female werewolf in Victorian literature. Krantz, a fugitive from justice, takes refuge in the Hartz mountains with his three children and lives by hunting in the forest and subsistence farming.

Six fascinating tales of the mysterious doings of secret societies and gentlemen's clubs. A Foggy Evening by A. J. Alan The Giraffe Problem by Barry Pain The Suicide Club by Robert Louis Stevenson The Dream by A. J. Alan The Inconsiderate Waiter by J. M. Barrie The 19 Club by A. J. Alan.

Herbert George Wells (1866-1946) was a prolific English writer, now best remembered for his science fiction novels and often credited as being the father of science fiction. 'The Beautiful Suit' is a haunting allegorical tale of a man who has a beautiful suit of clothes which he is never allowed to wear. But one night he decides to put on the suit and wear it as it should be worn....

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.