Showing results by narrator "Cathy Dobson" in All Categories

"The Storm" is Kate Chopin's most sexually charged story, and as such is quite exceptional for a work which was written in 1898. It describes a chance sexual encounter between Calixta and her former flame Alcée during a heavy storm in Louisiana when her husband Bobinôt and her son Bibi are absent. Chopin's description of the events of that day is refreshingly modern and free of the stifling morals of the day.

Percival Christopher Wren (1875 - 1941) was an English writer of adventure fiction mostly dealing with colonial soldiering in Africa. He is remembered best for Beau Geste, a much filmed book of 1924, involving the French Foreign Legion in North Africa. 'The Dust That Was Barren' is a strange tale of a peculiar incident in the French Foreign Legion. Commandant Le Sage comes across a legionnaire who has fallen behind his comrades and has laid himself down in the sand, saying he is dying....

>A true classic tale from the genre of weird Victorian tales based on a fascination with Ancient Egypt. A student of Egyptology gets shut into the Louvre at night by accident. Suddenly he sees a light approaching. Fearing that it is burglars, he hides and watches. The museum attendant, to whom he had spoken earlier, and who bears an uncanny physical similarity to images of ancient Egyptians, proceeds to open a mummy case and then unwrap the mummy. What he does next shocks the student of Egyptology to the core....

Herbert George Wells (1866 - 1946) was a prolific English writer best known for his outstanding science fiction stories and novels. He was nominated for the Nobel Prize in Literature four times. 'The Crystal Egg' is a science fiction short story about an antiquarian dealer, Mr. Cave, who discovers that a crystal egg in his shop has strange properties. In certain light conditions it functions as a window on the planet Mars and he is able to observe the Martians and their bizarre cities and machines.

When the retiring young bank clerk Smith ducks into the British Museum one day to avoid the rain, he finds himself confronted with the bust of an Egyptian lady so beautiful that he becomes infatuated with her. His obsession leads him to read extensively on the subject of Egyptology, learn to read hieroglyphics, and gradually become an established Egyptologist. Every winter he travels to Egypt and undertakes archeological work. Then, in the third year, he makes an astounding discovery which changes the course of his life forever.

We all know what happened in the Arabian nights. The King's plan to put his wife to death in the morning was always foiled by her telling an exciting but unfinished story the night before the execution... until finally after 1001 nights, he agreed not to have her killed. But at this point the traditional story ends. In this tale, Poe conjurs up an amusing and macabre scenario for what happened on the thousand and second night.

A creepy collection of the very best Gothic tales from the masters of suspense, horror, supernatural and occult fiction. 1.The Room in the Tower by E. F. Benson 2. Afterward by Edith Wharton 3.The Green Light by Barry Pain 4. Fingers of a Hand by H. D. Everett 5. The Squaw by Bram Stoker 6. The Dancing Partner by Jerome K. Jerome 7. Lost in a Pyramid by Louisa M. Alcott 8. The Girl who was Tired of Love by Leonard Merrick 9. The Parasite by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle 10. The House with the Brick Kiln by E. F.

"The Outsider" is one of Lovecraft's earliest and creepiest stories. A man exists alone in a mysterious dark castle, with no memory of how or why he is there. One day he decides to climb the highest tower in the hope of seeing the sky...and in doing so briefly learns the terrible, ghastly, unbearable truth....

A fascinating collection of short stories by some of Australia's best classic writers.

'Jerry Bundler' is a ghost story with a twist. We open in a tavern where travellers are telling ghost stories late one night. One gentleman tells a tale about a ghost haunting the very house where they are all sitting. His story frightens all the company gathered around the fire...and when the old gentleman retires to bed, one of the others proposes to take revenge by pretending to be the ghost. But what happens next is very far from a joke.

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 Red Room is the account of the terrifying nocturnal experiences of a young man who volunteers to spend a night in the haunted red room at Lorraine Castle.

A terrifying collection of classic Victorian short stories about ghosts, werewolves and vampires. The Wolf Book by Henry Chapman Mercer. Number Ninety by B. M. Croker. Ken's Mystery by Julian Hawthorne. The Piano Next Door by Elia W. Peattie. The White Wolf of the Hartz Mountains by Frederick Marryat. The Horla by Guy de Maupassant. Absolute Evil by Julian Hawthorne. Mrs. Amworth by E. F. Benson.

The Tales of King Arthur and his Knights of the Round Table are of Celtic origin. It is believed that King Arthur lived in the sixth century, just after the Romans withdrew from Britain. Minstrels and storytellers travelled through the land in the centuries after this, telling tales of chivalry and heroism, and the legends of King Arthur grew up across Britain and parts of Europe. Andrew Lang's collection of Arthurian legends is one of the most complete and comprehensive ever written and is more accessible than most.

William Wilkie Collins (1824-1889) was an English novelist, playwright, and author of short stories. Mad Monkton is a bizarre ghost story. It is said that a strain of hereditary madness blights the Monkton family, heirs to the huge domain of Wincot Abbey. Rumours in the neighbourhood are that Alfred, the youngest scion, has inherited this insanity. His odd behaviour certainly points that way. Alfred is engaged to his childhood sweetheart, Ada Elmslie.

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.

'Relics of General Chassé' is a humorous tale of a corpulent and somewhat dandified clergyman who, while visiting the castle at Antwerp, inadvertently becomes separated from his breeches. What follows shakes him to the core. The breeches fall into the hands of a group of female English tourists who decide to take some sample of the cloth as a souvenir.

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....

Poe's eerie story of a strange doppelganger, with a classic twist at the end. William Wilson, from his early schooldays, is dogged and taunted by another boy of similar height and appearance, who bears the same name as himself. Although as young boys they manage to tolerate each other, over time, as Wilson moves through Eton and Oxford and out into the world, his alter ego frequently turns up to thwart him at critical moments in his life.

A fascinating collection of some of the great - but less well known - fairy tales of all time.

O. Henry was the pen name of William Sydney Porter (1862-1910), an American writer of outstanding short stories, known for their wit, wordplay, warm characterization, and surprise endings.The Clarion Call tells of the chance encounter between two old childhood friends. One, Kernan, is now a burglar who three weeks ago committed his first murder. The other, Woods, is a New York detective. Woods is faced with a terrible dilemma....