Showing results by narrator "Cathy Dobson" in All Categories

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.

Edward Alexander Crowley (1875-1947) was a British writer, poet, magician and follower of the occult who wrote under the name Aleister Crowley. His works scandalised Victorian England with their diabolical and deviantly sexual themes. 'The Drug' is the story of a man who accepts a strange drug from an alchemist and goes on a terrifying psychic trip.

A glittering collection of classic stories for children, which have delighted generations and continue to appeal.

Leitch Ritchie (1800–1865) was a Scottish novelist and journalist, who is best known for "The Man-Wolf" - one of the first British werewolf stories. At the ceremony of the ducking of the fishermen, a knight is accidently pitched into the river by his servant Hugues. This humiliation, which occurs in the presence of the beautiful damsel Beatrix, causes the knight to go on a drinking spree that night, as a result of which he sets off home very late indeed. Travelling through the forest at night, he has a series of adventures which end in him being turned into a werewolf.

When Richard Hannay returns to London after an action-packed life in Rhodesia, he finds life unbearably dull. He is on the point of leaving the city in search of adventures, when mystery and intrigue turns up at his door in the shape of Franklin Scudder, Hannay’s neighbour, who turns out to be a spy trying to escape the clutches of a shady international organisation, bent on sparking a European war. When Scudder is mysteriously murdered and all the evidence seems to point to Hannay himself, he escapes to Scotland, bearing Scudder’s cryptic coded notebook, which he struggles to decipher.

Katherine Mansfield's heartbreaking story of playground bullying. The Kelvey children are excluded from the schoolyard crowd because they come from a poor family with more than a hint of disreputableness about them. When the Burnell children are given a doll's house and invite their school friends two by two to see it, only the Kelveys are excluded. Until one day, Kezia Burnell decides to invite the Kelveys in to see it....

Written in 1867, The Magic Fishbone is one of Charles Dickens' best loved fairy tales for children. It tells the story of an impoverished King who can barely manage to keep his nineteen children, and it is a long time until pay day. One day he meets a Fairy Godmother who tells him to give his eldest daughter, Princess Alicia, a piece of salmon, and after she has eaten everything but the bone, she is to dry and polish the bone carefully because it has magic powers.

A delightful anthology of great works by some of Europe's greatest short story writers....

John Galsworthy (1867 - 1933) was an English playwright and novelist who was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1932. 'Quality' is a poignant tale of a master boot maker whose quest for perfection leads to his own tragic downfall.

Herbert George Wells (1866-1946) was a prolific English writer, now best remembered for his science fiction novels and often credited as being the father of science fiction. 'The Country of the Blind' is the strange story of a mountain guide who accidently falls off a cliff ledge in the Andes. He survives the fall unhurt, and finds himself in a remote valley where a tribe lives completely cut off from the rest of the world.

'The Goldfish' is a strange tale set in the murky underworld of the London docklands. Dor, a raffish petty criminal in London, has a treasured goldfish in a bowl, which his lover, Rosa, reluctantly takes care of, although she is secretly insanely jealous of the attention he lavishes on the fish. The goldfish was given to Dor by a Chinese man who conducted a strange ceremony over the two of them and declared that Dor cannot die while the goldfish still lives.

A creepy collection of 50 classic ghost, horror and mystery stories which will keep you up all night. 1. "The Well" by W. W. Jacobs; 2. "This Is All" by Barry Pain; 3. "The Beast with Five Fingers" by W. F .Harvey; 4. "The Reticence of Lady Anne" by Saki; 5. "The End of a Show" by Barry Pain; 6. "The Dabblers" by W. F. Harvey; 7. "The Room in the Tower" by E. F. Benson; 8. "August Heat" by W. F. Harvey; 9. "The Idiot" by Arnold Bennett; 10. "The Cask of Amontillado" by Edgar Allan Poe...and many more.

The Colonel's body is discovered in the blacksmith's yard, the skull smashed like a crushed eggshell. No man for 40 miles around could have struck such a blow, except the giant of a blacksmith... and the blackmith has a cast-iron alibi. Only the reticent catholic priest Father Brown can deduce the extraordinary truth behind this bizarre murder.

A wonderful anthology of fifteen of the great classic Novellas. 1. Immensee by Theodor Storm 2. The Jew's Beech Tree by Annette von Droste-Hülshoff 3. The Secret Sharer by Joseph Conrad 4. The Withered Arm by Thomas Hardy 5. Mad Monkton by Wilkie Collins 6. The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde by Robert Louis Stevenson 7. The Lifted Veil by George Eliot 8. England my England by D. H. Lawrence

Sir Hugh Seymour Walpole (1884-1941) was a New Zealand-born English novelist famous for his skill at scene setting and vivid plots. He was a best-selling author in the 1920s and 1930s and remains popular to this day. "The Snow" is a multilayered ghost story in which the phantom of a jealous and vindictive first wife seems to haunt the new young bride of her husband. As the cracks in their relationship widen, the malevolent ghost tightens her evil grip on the second wife.

Annette von Droste-Hülshoff's dark tale of an unsolved murder, revenge and the supernatural. When the young Friedrich Mergel goes to work for his uncle, he is quickly drawn into a world of shady business dealings and a ruthless band of wood-thieves. But on the night when Friedrich quarrels with Aaron the Jew, he subsequently disappears, together with his illegitimate cousin John Nobody. Shortly afterwards, Aaron is found murdered. Friedrich's disappearance is considered suspicious

Kipling’s classic tale taken from the Just So Stories. When all the other animals become tame, the cat is reluctant to give up his independence. He devises a clever scheme to gain a seat by the fire and a saucer of cream without having to submit to man.

A gripping collection of over 50 of the greatest short stories written by great British writers. 1."The Missing Years" by Barry Pain, 2. "His Brother's Keeper" by W. W. Jacobs, 3. "A Madman's Manuscript" by Charles Dickens, 4. "The House of Cobwebs" by Barry Pain, 5. "Old Fags" by Stacy Aumonier, 6. "A Long-Ago Affair" by John Galsworthy, 7. "August Heat" by W. F. Harvey, 8. "The Dabblers" by W. F. Harvey, 9. "Rose Rose" by Barry Pain

Fifty of the world's greatest classic short stories: 1.The Necklace by Guy de Maupassant 2.The One Million Pound Banknote by Mark Twain 3.The Phantom Rickshaw by Rudyard Kipling 4.The Fly by Katherine Mansfield 5.The Black Cat by Edgar Allan Poe 6.My Favorite Murder by Ambrose Bierce 7.The Fall of the House of Usher by Edgar Allan Poe 8.One Thousand Dollars by O. Henry 9.Regret by Kate Chopin 10.The Nose by Nikolai Gogol 11.The Mezzotint by M. R. James 12.The Gift of the Magi by O. Henry

Robert Ervin Howard ( 1906-1936) was an American writer of weird stories and horror fiction. Pigeons from Hell is a classic horror story set in a deserted old planters' house in the Deep South, where something unwholesome stalks the rooms. When two young men, Griswell and Branner, happen upon the old house on their vacation road trip and decide to stay there, terrible things begin to happen. Griswell awakes from a strange and terrifying dream and hears a strange and uncanny whistling.