Showing results by narrator "Graham Scott" in All Categories

Twelve early stories from the comic master, including the romantic truth behind the odd success of a Soho restaurant; the mysterious ways of a lucky black cat; a tale of three exiled baseball fans; a private detective in love with an actress in a touring company; a policeman in love with a parlor maid in the Battersea Park Road; Mr. Henry Wallace Mills of the two left feet; and the first appearance of Bertie Wooster and Jeeves, as Bertie is sent to New York to rescue his cousin from the clutches of a Vaudeville starlet...

Seven centuries in the future, the sport of American football has never been bigger, never been faster, never been more lethal. Trillions of fans from all over the galaxy watch six unique races battle in contests so violent that deaths are part of the stat sheet. Star quarterback Quentin Barnes has led his beloved Ionath Krakens to glory on the gridiron and become the most-recognized individual in history, but it is off the field where his world crumbles around him.

Described by Virginia Woolf as "a little masterpiece", in Seven Men, Beerbohm tells the stories of six men from the world of the 1890s - Beerbohm himself is the seventh man - with such an air of realism and so much circumstantial detail as to blur the boundary between fact and fiction, so that the listener is lulled almost into acceptance of the fantastic events that he describes.

Gilbert Keith Chesterton (1874-1936), was an English writer, poet, philosopher, dramatist, journalist, orator, lay theologian, biographer, and literary and art critic. Chesterton is best known for his fictional priest-detective Father Brown. In The Club of Queer Trades, narrator 'Cherub' Swinburne and his friends, the eccentric former judge Basil Grant, and Basil's younger brother, private detective Rupert Grant, encounter six curious mysteries, each involving someone who makes a living in an extraordinary and bizarre - in the language of the time a 'queer' - way.

Solitary and mechanical clubman Mr Phileas Fogg, accepting a challenge from fellow members of the Reform Club, wagers the fantastic sum of £20,000, half of his total fortune, on an attempt to travel around the world in only 80 days. Setting out that very day with his newly-employed French valet Passepartout - and a carpetbag containing the entire balance of his fortune in cash - Mr. Fogg and his companion cross four continents, by every means at hand, in the face of endless surprises....

After a tragic accident kills their father and their mother perishes during childbirth, sisters Norah and Magdalen discover their parents had only been married a matter of months and therefore the girls were actually illegitimate. Their uncle inherits the entirety of the family fortune, refusing to provide the girls with anything as they make their way out into the world. Using her love of the stage and all things dramatic, Magdalen enlists the help of her distant relative, Captain Wragge, a known professional swindler, to regain her inheritance and the right to her name.

Fresh off his victory at The Battle of Lodi, Napoleon is planning to enjoy his lunch when a lieutenant arrives with the bad news that the dispatches he had been carrying were stolen. Infuriated, Napoleon threatens him with being court-martialed unless he can recover them. A woman appears who claims to know about the theft. Unconvinced of her story, Napoleon and the woman enter into a battle of wits in true Shaw style. Will the conqueror of worlds end up conquered by a woman?

In their first case together, "scientific investigator" Dr. John Thorndyke and his assistant, Dr. Jervis, work to clear young Reuben Hornby, accused of stealing a parcel of diamonds from his uncle's safe - and of leaving behind him a bloody thumbprint. Can Thorndyke prove that the new science of fingerprints is not quite the magic bullet that the authorities believe and clear his young client? And in the meantime, can he frustrate the attempts against his own life by some ingenious unknown adversary?

Meet the indomitable lady detective Loveday Brooke. Able to assume a multitude of disguises and possessed of analytical powers rivaling those of the great Sherlock Holmes, she masters every baffling situation and solves each perplexing crime in these seven atmospheric and entertaining Victorian mysteries.

In the pretty little town of Sibley, NY, the court has adjourned for lunch, and Judge Evans and some of the leading lawyers of the district stand outside the courthouse discussing the limitations of the criminal classes. A stranger describes to them just how a man might commit a murder and avoid detection - and only minutes later, the widow Clemmens is discovered struck down in her parlor by an unknown hand in circumstances eerily similar to those described by the stranger.

A year after the adventure of The Thirty-Nine Steps, Major Richard Hannay is plucked from the trenches of the Western Front, and sent on a perilous journey through the very heart of the German empire, to Constantinople. There, he and his small band of missionaries must frustrate a plot to ferment an uprising in the Islamic world aimed at dealing a crushing blow to Britain's interests in the East, and winning the war for Germany.

Seven stories of mystery and adventure from R Austin Freeman; including an audacious theft from London's National Gallery; the sudden self-confidence of a normally timid curate; a very remarkable funeral; a ghostly lawyer's repentance; a lucky find for a rural bricklayer; and two investigations for the celebrated forensic detective Dr. John Thorndyke...

Sam'l Flintlock has been hired to protect an innocent man who narrowly escaped the noose but everyone still seems to want dead. The murder of a school teacher sets in motion a battle to the death that pits Flintlock against the hidden man who pulls the strings in the town of Open Sky. But first Flintlock must find out who that man is, what he wants and why. As people start dying, the pieces start to fall together and Flintlock knows that for every evil deed there must be a reckoning....and Flintlock is that reckoning.

Mr Marcus Pottermack, an ingenious and meticulous gentleman, of quiet habits, is in a desperate situation: wrongfully convicted of fraud, he escaped from prison and established a new life, only to find himself in the clutches of a ruthless blackmailer. With no recourse to the law, Pottermack can see no way out—until a happy discovery within the walled garden of his home offers the means to rid himself of his tormentor forever.

Headlong Hall was the first of his seven novels, all of which display the same structure. There is a faint semblance of a plot, which is merely a device to bring together a bunch of voluble eccentrics, who converse on a wide range of topical issues. Headlong Hall is the rural seat of the ebullient Squire Headlong, who invites a number of philosophers, a clergyman, a musician, a novelist, and a phrenologist, to dine with him and share their views.

Idealistic parson's son Jim goes to sea thirsting for adventure as the mate of the pilgrim ship Patna. However, when disaster looms, Jim is persuaded by his crewmates to abandon the ship, leaving the vessel and hundreds of passengers to their fate. But with his life in ruins, Jim alone has the courage to face up to the public censure which follows, piquing the interest of Captain Marlow, who befriends Jim and relates the tale of the young man's attempts to come to terms with his guilt and make an honorable future for himself.

Country doctor Kennedy tells the story of Amy Foster, a tender-hearted country girl, who alone takes pity on a starving and bewildered foreign castaway, feared and shunned by the rest of her community. The castaway proves to be amiable and intelligent, but this is not enough to overcome the prejudice aroused by his alienness.

A young sea captain, struggling with the problems of his first far-Eastern command, is befriended by Hermann, commander of a German ship moored nearby in a treacherous river. But when the monopolistic tugboat captain Falk perceives him as a rival for Hermann's beautiful niece, the young man's problems suddenly increase—until he offers his diplomatic assistance in Falk's courtship. But Falk is haunted by an incident in his past, which he feels he must confess.

Ogden Ford, a spoiled child of stupidly wealthy divorced parents, is "the Little Nugget"—the El Dorado of the American kidnapping industry. When Peter Burns, the gentleman of leisure, agrees to spirit the boy away from an English preparatory school to reunite him with his doting mother, he finds himself up against professional competition from across the Atlantic. And when penitent ex-playboy Jimmy "Piccadilly Jim" Crocker covertly returns to his native United States, the Nugget is once more involved as Jimmy finds himself enmeshed in plots and schemes of espionage and kidnapping.

In Ukridge, the inimitable Wodehouse gives us 10 stores from the early career of Stanley Featherstonehaugh Ukridge: great brain, eternal optimist, perpetually on the very verge of making a massive fortune from his latest get-rich-quick scheme, and, according to his friend and chronicler long-suffering writer "Corky" Corcoran, more or less of a foe of the human race. Ukridge is the longest-serving of all Wodehouse's heroes, appearing in stories across 60 years.