Showing results by narrator "Walter Covell" in All Categories

If you look at any listing of the 10 most important books of detective stories published in the United States, chances are you will find Uncle Abner, Master of Mysteries on most of them. It is generally recognized as one of the most important contributions to American detective fiction between Poe and Hammett. In fact, there are some critics who call it the single finest collection of American detective stories ever written. This story is from that famous collection.

Wilke Collins was the author of two of the greatest mysteries ever written, The Moonstone and The Woman in White. However, like Poe before him and Conan Doyle after, he shifted easily from rational domains to the 'superrational'. Like them, he often preferred to indulge his occult predilection, a lifelong indulgence.

Charles Eastman is unique among Indian writers, whether storytellers or oral historians. He was raised traditionally, as a Woodland Sioux, by his grandmother, from 1858 to 1874, until he was 15. He thus gained a thorough first-hand knowledge of the lifeways, language, culture, and oral history. His father (thought to have been hanged at Mankato, Minnesota) reappeared and insisted he receive the white man's education.

Mr. Cave, a shop owner, finds a strange crystal egg that serves as a window into a Martian landscape. The War of the Worlds was probably H.G. Wells' best-known work, but this brief tale indicates that he had more than a passing interest in Mars.

This collection consists of the following nine stories: "Dr. Heidegger's Experiment", "The Great Stone Face", "My Kinsman, Major Molinaux", "The Minister's Black Veil", "Mr. Higgonbotham's Catastrophe", "The Ambitious Guest", "The Birthmark", "The Minotaur", and "Young Goodman Brown".

"The Old Man" rivals Sherlock Holmes in his insightfulness but is much closer to Sherlock's brother, Mycroft, in his methods. Like Mycroft, the old man reasons through mystery cases but leaves the legwork to others.

Watson visits Sherlock Holmes at Christmastime and finds him contemplating a battered old hat, brought to him by the commissionaire Peterson after it and a Christmas goose had been dropped by a man in a scuffle with some street ruffians. Peterson takes the goose home to eat it, but comes back later with a precious carbuncle that his wife found in the bird's crop.

Gaston Leroux is best known for writing the novel The Phantom of the Opera. However, he also wrote some excellent detective stories. In fact,Leroux's contribution to French detective fiction is considered a parallel to Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's in the United Kingdom and Edgar Allan Poe's in America. In this, his most popular mystery, rival detectives try to crack a case.

This collection of stories brings together the writings of some of the greatest authors of all time and contrasts ghost stories of different lands and languages.

Baroness Emmuska Orczy was a Hungarian-born British novelist, who gained fame as a writer for The Scarlet Pimpernel. She also created an archetype of popular mystery fiction: the armchair detective, as exemplified by "The Old Man in the Corner", a sleuth who is never mentioned by name and but who solves cases simply by "thinking them through", while leaving the gathering of evidence to others. "The Dublin Mystery" is one of the best of these stories.

A comet speeds toward earth, a deadly, glowing orb that soon fills the sky and promises doom. But mankind is too consumed with greed and violence to care. The Earth slips past the comet by the narrowest of margins, but all succumb to the gases in its tail. When mankind wakes up, everyone is completely and profoundly different.

Sir Arthur Quiller-Couch established a reputation as a literary critic and editor, and was also a successful novelist. Yet Quiller-Couch was also interested in the unseen and unknown, and this prompted him to turn his hand, time and again, to write supernatural stories. The Seventh Man is considered one of the best of these stories. Six men are shipwreaked in the frozen North and about to give up hope when one of them spots a mysterious seventh man, one that the others cannot see.

This Sherlock Holmes story was originally published in the Strand Magazine in 1893, and was collected later in The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes. Unlike the majority of Holmes stories, the main narrator is Sherlock Holmes not Doctor Watson, with Watson providing only an introduction.

Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu was one of the major figures of 19th-century supernaturalism. He helped move supernaturalist fiction away from the gothic's emphasis on external sources of terror and toward a focus on the effects of terror, thus helping to create the psychological basis for supernaturalist and horror literature that continues today. "The Familiar" is one of his most terrifying tales.

A drunken Englishman disgraces the consecrated effigy of Hanuman,a sacred religious figure to the Hindus. As results a leprous "Silver Man" marks him with a hideous curse. The ensuing days and nights bring strange terrors to the now repentant Englshman.

Fitz-James O'Brien was an Irish-born poet, journalist, and short-story writer who migrated to America in 1852. He died from an injury acquired during the Civil War. O'Brien was called "the preeminent writer of supernatural stories of his time", and he is best remembered for two or three widely anthologized stories that border on science fiction. Among them is this masterpiece.

The Adventure of the Greek Interpreter is one of 12 stories in the cycle collected as The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes. The story was originally serialised in the Strand Magazine in 1893. This story introduces Holmes's elder brother Mycroft who, according to Holmes, is endowed with powers of observation and deduction even better than his.

Benjamin Franklin's wide range of activities and interests opened the doors of the world to him. Printer, inventor, philosopher, ambassador, champion of liberty - his influence has been felt by every American generation. And to everything he touched, including this autobiography, Franklin brought originality and wit.

This collecton features some of Twain's best known stories as well as some lesser-known gems, such as "A Mysterious Visit", "The Facts Concerning the Recent Carnival of Crime in Connecticut", and "The Loves Of Alonzo Fitz-Clarence and Rosannah Ethelton".

Emile Zola (1840-1902) was one of the giants of French literature. This collecion of three of his most famous stories illustrates the incredible range of his writing. "Captain Burle" is a dramatic story illustrating the importance of honor in French society; "The Miller's Daughter" is a tale of romance and heroism; and "The Death of Oliver Becaille" recounts the horror of a man who wakes up to find himself buried alive!