Showing results by narrator "Peter Coates" in All Categories

"The Lost Mine" immerses readers in a compelling short story featuring the brilliant detective Hercule Poirot, created by the renowned Agatha Christie. In this narrative, Poirot is confronted with the mystery of a missing map leading to a valuable gold mine, owned by the eccentric prospector Mr. Richard John Emsworth.

Asleep in Armageddon delves into the recesses of human imagination as Ray Bradbury crafts a mesmerizing narrative set against a backdrop of impending cataclysm. In this thought-provoking short story, Bradbury explores the complex interplay between dreams and reality, challenging conventional notions of existence. As the world hurtles toward an uncertain fate, the protagonist grapples with the surreal landscape of their own subconscious, blurring the lines between nightmare and actuality. Bradbury's poetic prose and evocative imagery converge in this tale, creating a vivid exploration of the human psyche in the face of existential turmoil.

The Colour Out of Space is a science fiction/horror short story by American author H. P. Lovecraft, written in March 1927. In the tale, an unnamed narrator pieces together the story of an area known by the locals as the "blasted heath" in the wild hills west of the fictional town of Arkham, Massachusetts. The narrator discovers that many years ago a meteorite crashed there, poisoning every living being nearby; vegetation grows large but foul tasting, animals are driven mad and deformed into grotesque shapes, and the people go insane or die one by one.

The Charmides is a dialogue of Plato, in which Socrates engages a handsome and popular boy named Charmides in a conversation about the meaning of sophrosyne, a Greek word usually translated into English as "temperance," "self-control," or "restraint." When the boy is unable to satisfy him with an answer, he next turns to the boy's mentor Critias. In the dialogue, Charmides and then later Critias champion that Temperance is "doing one's own work" but Socrates derides this as vague.

Morgue Ship by Ray Bradbury is a science fiction short story, which appeared in the summer 1944 issue of Planet Stories and is therefore eligible for the 1945 Retro Hugos. Morgue Ship is short, only six pages long, but Bradbury perfectly manages to capture the atmosphere aboard the morgue ship with its clinical interior, its shelves full of dead soldiers, the churning blood pumps and whirring machinery, in such a short space. Bradbury also manages to pack the horrors of war in space, the exploding ships and spinning dead bodies among the wreckage, into just a few paragraphs.

"The Submarine Plans" immerses readers in a captivating short story featuring Agatha Christie's renowned detective Hercule Poirot. In this narrative, Poirot is drawn into a case involving espionage, international intrigue, and the theft of top-secret submarine plans.

On Life and Death is a work of the Greek philosopher and scientist Aristotle, which was included in the collection Parva Naturalia ("short treatises on nature"). The collection consists of seven essays discussing various natural phenomena related to the body and soul. The culmination of Aristotle's "Parva Naturalia" is the definition of the stages of the life cycle, from the birth of a new living being to death.

Lysis is a dialogue of Plato which discusses the nature often translated as friendship, while the word's original content was of a much larger and more intimate bond. It is generally classified as an early dialogue. The main characters are Socrates, the boys Lysis and Menexenus who are friends, as well as Hippothales, who is in unrequited love with Lysis and therefore, after the initial conversation, hides himself behind the surrounding listeners.

The Heathen is a short story by the American writer Jack London. It was first published in Everybody's Magazine in August 1910. In the story, two people, from different cultural and racial backgrounds, are the only survivors of a ship that encounters a hurricane in the Pacific, and they remain together. The narrator, a pearl buyer named Charley, is a cabin passenger on a schooner, the Petite Jeanne, sailing from Rangiroa to Tahiti with a Kanaka crew, at the end of the pearling season in the Paumotas. The boat, having eighty-five deck passengers, is overloaded.

The Strange High House in the Mist is a short story by H. P. Lovecraft. Written on November 9, 1926, it was first published in the October 1931 issue of Weird Tales. An H. P. Lovecraft Encyclopedia suggests that the story may have been inspired by Lord Dunsany's Chronicles of Rodriguez, in which strange sights can be seen from a wizard's house on a crag.

Champagne is a short story by Anton Pavlovich Chekhov, written in 1887. The story is written in the first person. The young head of a remote railway stop lived with his wife and without children in solitude, amusing himself with vodka and watching passing trains. Life was boring. One day before celebrating the New Year, he sat with his wife at the festive table, drank enough and thought about boredom. We waited for the clock to show the arrival of the New Year. At five minutes to twelve he uncorked the bottle, the cork flew out, and the bottle slipped out of his hands and fell to the floor.

The Nameless City is a horror story written by American writer H. P. Lovecraft in January 1921 and first published in the November 1921 issue of the amateur press journal The Wolverine. It is often considered the first Cthulhu Mythos story. The Nameless City of the story's title is an ancient ruin located somewhere in the deserts of the Arabian Peninsula, and is older than any human civilization.

The Adventure of the Stockbroker's Clerk is one of the 56 short Sherlock Holmes stories written by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. It is the fourth of the twelve collected in The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes in most British editions of the canon, and third of eleven in most American ones (owing to the omission of the "scandalous" "Adventure of the Cardboard Box"). The story was first published in Strand Magazine in March 1893 and featured seven illustrations by Sidney Paget.

The Cat that Walked by Himself is one of the most well-loved of Kipling's Just So Stories. This is a story about a cat who liked to walk wherever he wanted. Everything happened at those times when the animals were wild. They lived separately from people. The man was also wild. But he met the woman. She found a nice dry cave and made it their house. They were happy there. One evening the wild dog came to the cave. The woman promised the dog tasty bones for guarding her cave. Later the wild cow and the wild horse also came.

In "A Nervous Breakdown", Vasilyev feeling distressed after his visit to few brothels for the first time. Guilt, disgust and shame and of that little voices debating inside his mind that lead him to a symptom of a nervous breakdown. A quirky storytelling, quite distressing but entertaining.

Bored in a semi-deserted Italian hotel, the narrator of this short story spends his days observing the other residents. However, his routine changes when he finally finds a companion: a mysterious elderly gentleman who is willing to share an idea for an exciting novel... Throughout his writing career, Stefan Zweig showed great interest in psychology and, in particular, in the work of Sigmund Freud. This fascination with human nature led Zweig to create complex portraits of his characters and, as a result, works that continue to captivate readers for generations.

"The Story of Philosophy: Friedrich Nietzsche" by Will Durant provides an insightful exploration into the life, ideas, and enduring influence of Friedrich Nietzsche, one of the most provocative and impactful philosophers of the 19th century. Durant presents Nietzsche as a complex thinker whose revolutionary concepts challenged conventional morality, religion, and the nature of human existence.

Moonshine springs - is a satirical story by Mikhail Afanasyevich Bulgakov (1891 - 1940), an outstanding writer, playwright and theatre worker. Bulgakov was a Soviet playwright, novelist, and short story writer best known for his humor and penetrating satire. Because of their realism and humor, Bulgakov's works enjoyed great popularity, but their trenchant criticism of Soviet mores was increasingly unacceptable to the authorities.

Rocket Summer by Ray Bradbury propels readers into a world of speculative wonder, where the arrival of a rocket marks not just a seasonal change, but a transformative shift in human consciousness. Set against the backdrop of Bradbury's trademark blend of nostalgia and futuristic intrigue, the short story captures the collective imagination of a community as they witness the advent of space exploration. With vivid imagery and poetic prose, Bradbury explores the impact of technological advancement on human aspirations and the bittersweet dance between progress and the preservation of the past.

Kashtanka — Anton Chekov's short story about a dog with two masters — is a fable about the conundrum of the creative life. The dog Kashtanka belongs to a drunken carpenter who takes her out one day, but on the way home loses her in the confusion of a military parade. The story is told by an omniscient narrator who privileges Kashtanka's point of view, so we follow the dog's subsequent adventures largely from her eyes.