Showing results by narrator "Rayner Bourton" in All Categories

A boy is raised by wolves in the Indian jungle with the help of Baloo the bear and Bagheera the black panther, who teach him the "Law of the Jungle". Some years later, the wolfpack and Mowgli are threatened by the tiger Shere Khan. Mowgli brings fire, driving off Shere Khan but showing that he is a man and must leave the jungle.

The Jungle Book (1894) is a collection of stories by the English author Rudyard Kipling. Most of the characters are animals such as Shere Khan the tiger and Baloo the bear, though a principal character is the boy or "man-cub" Mowgli, who is raised in the jungle by wolves. The stories are set in a forest in India; one place mentioned repeatedly is "Seonee" (Seoni), in the central state of Madhya Pradesh. A major theme in the book is abandonment followed by fostering, as in the life of Mowgli, echoing Kipling's own childhood.

A tense, taut tale of mounting suspense and chilling drama. An intricately plotted psychological thriller that explores obsession, madness, betrayal and fear. She has an affair. She ends it. She thinks it's finished. She has fatally miscalculated.... On the same evening Laura Hill first meets Sean Cazaly, her secretary Katie is attacked by "happy slapping" thugs. And Sonila arrives from Albania as part of a human trafficking scam targeting Laura's language school.

Three murders. Multiple suspects. No proof. Sixteen years ago, Alice's closest friend suddenly breaks off their friendship in the New Forest where they both grew up. And Alice's father inexplicably moves the family away to London. All these years later, everything changes. Returning to her childhood home on the death of her grandmother, journalist Alice Myers finds a community in upheaval. The death of her friend Ellie is just the start.

A complex psychological thriller packed with suspense and a plot that twists and turns like an octopus. On 7th July 2005, a man disappears, believed dead, in the London bombings. Some years later, a freelance journalist recognizes his photograph in a newspaper - the man she has just seen in a café. From that second, Alice’s life will be changed forever in ways she could never have foreseen. Immediately she is pitched into a race against time that takes her from London, across Britain and into the heart of a mystery - the reason for his disappearance on that fateful day.

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.

'Today, class,' said Miss Flanders, surveying the room full of Year Ten students seated around the somewhat battered tables, 'we will be looking at the circulatory system. Please open your books at page fifteen.' There were the scrapings and scufflings of chairs being pushed back and bags being opened, and the slap of textbooks hitting the table-tops.

It was a pity about the weather, but even in Yorkshire it couldn't rain all the time. Geraldine pushed her hair into her rainhood and studied the thin drizzle pittering into brimming puddles.

The taxi picked up speed as the post-industrial sprawl of Sheffield gave way to the open hills of the Peak District. Ellen could see the driver glancing at her from time to time in the rear view mirror. Weary after her long rail journey she was grateful for his silence, even though it might have been useful to hear stories of 'The Big House'.

: It has been snowing all day the trees in the garden are hung with icicles, and Graham and Simon had to shovel off some of the thick white blanket that coated the drive so that Clive Mason could inch his car up to the house.

It really is a lovely day. I'm not used to sitting in the garden, basking in the pleasant weather and enjoying the fruits of my labour. I spend most of my time here weeding and pruning, so I'm grateful for the opportunity to laze around for a change, watching the flower heads bob gently in the soft breeze, listening to the drowsy hum of the bees as they gorge on the comfrey blossoms.

What you have to understand, before I begin, is that I am not a gullible person. I am a scientist of a sort, an archaeologist, trained in the empirical ethos of the British higher education system.

"The Trial for Murder" is a short story written by Charles Dickens. It was originally published under the title "To Be Taken with a Grain of Salt" as a chapter in Dr. Marigold's Prescriptions in an extra Christmas volume of the weekly literary magazine, All the Year Round. It was later published in 1866 in a collection of ghost stories known as "Three Ghost Stories", along with "The Haunted House" and "The Signal-Man".

The railway signal-man of the title tells the narrator of an apparition that has been haunting him. Each spectral appearance precedes a tragic event on the railway on which the signalman works. The signalman's work is at a signal-box in a deep cutting near a tunnel entrance on a lonely stretch of the railway line, and he controls the movements of passing trains. When there is danger, his fellow signalmen alert him by telegraph and alarms. Three times, he receives phantom warnings of danger when his bell rings in a fashion that only he can hear.

'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.

The eight stories here show Wells in various moods and foreshadow his celebrity. These are uncanny tales, resonating strangely, despite arising from ordinary thoughts, interactions, and memories. Wells shows just how fantastic the everyday can be, if one only pauses to reflect on missed chances, suggestions of what might have been, bleak premonitions of blessed futures whose utopian promise is destroyed by new forms of war.

"A Dream of Armageddon" is a short story by H. G. Wells which was first published in 1901 in the British weekly magazine Black and White. The story opens aboard a train, when an unwell-looking man strikes up a conversation with the narrator when he sees him reading a book about dreams. The white-faced man says that he has little time for dream analysis because, he says, his dreams are killing him.

Herbert George Wells (21 September 1866 - 13 August 1946) was an English writer. Prolific in many genres, he wrote dozens of novels, short stories, and works of social commentary, history, satire, biography and autobiography. His work also included two books on recreational war games. THE TRUTH ABOUT PYECRAFT: He sits not a dozen yards away. If I glance over my shoulder I can see him. And if I catch his eye-and usually I catch his eye - it meets me with an expression.

Herbert George Wells (21 September 1866 - 13 August 1946) was an English writer. Prolific in many genres, he wrote dozens of novels, short stories, and works of social commentary, history, satire, biography and autobiography. His work also included two books on recreational war games. MISS WINCHELSEA'S HEART: Miss Winchelsea was going to Rome. The matter had filled her mind for a month or more, and had overflowed so abundantly into her conversation that quite a number of people who were not going to Rome, and who were not likely to go to Rome, had made it a personal grievance against her.

Herbert George Wells (21 September 1866 - 13 August 1946) was an English writer. Prolific in many genres, he wrote dozens of novels, short stories, and works of social commentary, history, satire, biography and autobiography. His work also included two books on recreational war games. Wells is now best remembered for his science fiction novels and is often called the "father of science fiction". JIMMY GOGGLES THE GOD: "It isn't every one who's been a god," said the sunburnt man. "But it's happened to me. Among other things." I intimated my sense of his condescension.