Showing results by publisher "Red Door Audiobooks" in History

The definitive collection of traditional Celtic fairy tales. Joseph Jacobs' 1892 anthology of the most enduring folklore from Ireland, Wales, Scotland, and Cornwall is a delight for both young and old. Leprechauns, giants, witches, princesses, castles, and sea monsters all abound in this compendium of the best mythology Britain and Ireland have to offer.

The Elephant Man is Treves' own firsthand account of how he met and befriended Joseph Merrick (whom he mistakenly calls John Merrick), a young man with very severe physical deformities, who was being exhibited as a sideshow freak, as half man, half elephant. Treves initially invited Merrick to his rooms in the London Hospital so as to examine him, and to ensure Merrick's admittance he gave him his card.

A unique collection of eyewitness accounts from some of the greatest diarists and journal writers of the last two centuries.

Writing in the 19th century, John Timbs recounts the tales of some of the most idiosyncratic eccentrics of his own day and the preceding centuries. This audiobook begins with the story of the Beckford dynasty, who lavishly built the monstrous Fonthill Abbey, which, owing to their unconventional approach tended to fall down as quickly as it could be constructed. Then there is Beau Brummel, the celebrated dandy, whose stylish attire and his ongoing feud with the Prince of Wales were the gossip of the day.

Sir Ernest Henry Shackleton (1874 - 1922) was a polar explorer who led three British expeditions to the Antarctic. 'The Voyage of the James Caird' is the story of Shackleton's 1916 failed attempt at a crossing of Antarctica from sea to sea via the pole. The expedition turned to disaster when Shackleton's ship, Endurance, became trapped in pack ice and was slowly crushed. The crew escaped by camping on the sea ice until it disintegrated, then by launching the lifeboats to reach Elephant Island.

Maurice Baring (1874-1945) was an English short story writer, children's writer, novelist, travel writer and war correspondent during the First World War. The Blue Rose is a fairy tale about a Chinese princess who is as clever as she is beautiful. When her father sets out to find her a husband, she determines to make her own choice. The Emperor declares that whoever can find and bring his daughter a blue rose shall wed her. But the wise princess is able to debunk all the blue roses proffered and at the same time works out a way to favour her own lover.

The extraordinary story of Robert Jeffrey who was press-ganged into the Royal Navy in 1808 at the age of 18. On his first voyage on board the Recruit under the strict Captain Lake, Jeffrey gave in to temptation and stole a sip of rum. For this he was clapped in irons for two days and then given two dozen lashes. A few days later however, he drank two quarts of spruce beer belonging to the midshipmen. For this repeat misdemeanor, Captain Lake ordered him to be put ashore on a barren rock on the outskirts of the Leeward Islands.

'The Green Bicycle Mystery' is Jepson's account of a true unsolved murder case. Bella Wright was found lying dead beside her bicycle on a lonely country lane in Leicestershire. She had been shot through the head. The last person seen in her company was a man on a green bicycle. When months later a green bicycle is dredged from a canal, the police are hot on the track of the mystery man.

On 28 May, 1828, a boy of around 16 appeared in the Bavarian city of Nuremburg holding a letter in his hand. The lad was unable to speak, apart from three odd phrases which he repeated parrot-like, one of which was: "Want to be a soldier, as father was." The letter, addressed to the captain of the local infantry regiment, told a bizarre story. It appeared that the boy had been kept shut up in isolation in the dark for his entire life, had never learned to speak and knew nothing of the world.

The true crime story of Henri Désiré Landru, master of murder and the art of making love, captivated the whole of Europe for almost two years. Landru is known to have murdered at least a dozen women for their savings and their furniture. Moreover, the uncanny fascination which he held for his victims from the moment he fixed them with his strangely compelling eyes, has never been properly explained.

Margaretha Geertruida Zelle (1876 – 1917), better known by the stage name Mata Hari, was a Dutch exotic dancer who was convicted of being a spy and executed by firing squad in France during the first World War. Sir Basil Home Thomson, KCB (1861 – 1939) was a British intelligence officer, police officer, prison governor, colonial administrator, and writer.

The "Mary Russell" was a trading boat that set sail from the harbour of Cobh in County Cork on 8 February 1828, carrying a cargo of mules bound for Barbados. When it returned to Cobh on 25 June 1828, the horrified people of Cork found a cabin awash with blood and the bound and battered corpses of the ship's crew.

English novelist and journalist Wilfrid Ewart (1892-1922) survived the battlefields of the First World War only to die a few years later in Mexico City where near midnight, he stepped out onto his hotel balcony to observe the New Year's festivities and was killed by a stray bullet fired by a reveler below. This is Ewart's firsthand account of his first visit to the trenches in February 1915.

In March 1873 Great Britain was rocked by the forgery case of the century, perpetrated against no less than the Bank of England. Four criminal brains took on the entire financial system... and would have got away with it too, had it not been for one tiny detail.

The "Mary Celeste" (or Marie Celeste as it is wrongly referred to several writers) was a British merchant brigantine. The ship is best known for having been discovered on 5 December 1872 in the Atlantic Ocean, unmanned and apparently abandoned, although the weather was fine, the ship intact and her crew experienced and capable seamen. The "Mary Celeste" was in sound and seaworthy condition and was under full sail heading for the Strait of Gibraltar.

The Secret of the Moat Farm is Wallace's account of a real-life murder mystery which he had covered as a young journalist. Camille Holland, a spinster of 56, became enamoured of an attractive scoundrel named Dougal. When the two moved into the remote Moat Farm, it was not long before Miss Holland disappeared. Dougal remained at the farm, spending Miss Holland's money and entertaining a series of mistresses...until finally suspicions were aroused.

Richard Horatio Edgar Wallace (1875-1932) was an English writer of 957 short stories and over 170 novels. He is widely recognized as one of the most prolific writers of his age.

'The Murder on Yarmouth Sands' is a true crime story. Towards the end of the Boer War, the body of a woman was discovered on Yarmouth Sands. She had been strangled by a mohair bootlace. There are only two clues to the crime...and the police set out to follow them up....

'Dr. Crippen, Lover and Poisoner' is Le Queux's account of the case of the famous poisoner Hawley Harvey Crippen, whom Le Queux claimed to have met personally on several occasions. Crippen, to escape the bondage of an unhappy marriage, and because he had fallen in love with another woman, Ethel Le Neve, murdered and dissected his wife and escaped with his lover in disguise, sparking a transatlantic hue and cry.

The mysterious man known as Dr. Armgaard Karl Graves was a double agent working for the German secret service and MI5 before the start of the first world war. In 1912 he was arrested in Scotland and imprisoned. But after 8 months he was mysteriously released and shortly afterwards appeared in New York, where he caused a sensation by publishing his memoirs of his service as a spy, which sold over 100,000 copies.

Constance Peel OBE, (1868 - 1934) was an English journalist and writer, best known for her non-fiction books on cheap household management and cookery. During the first world war, Zeppelin raids on London made the night-times hideous. But then, on June 13th 1917, something unexpected happened. "The Daylight Raid" is a collection of first hand accounts of the first German attack on London from the air during broad daylight.