Showing results by narrator "Jack Benson" in All Categories

Stephen Crane's fascinating story "The Blue Hotel" is seen by many as a study of fear. Crane used the stereotypical 1890's American West as his setting, and the story uses a card game to show how fear feeds upon itself. There are both inner fears and fears existing in reality, and the ways that they interact with each other make for a fascinating tale.

The Four Million was written in 1906 when roughly four million people lived in New York City. It opens with a reference to Ward McAllister's "assertion that there were only "400" people in New York City who were really worth noticing.

A Christmas Carol is undoubtedly the most famous supernatural story in English. However, it was not the only supernatural story of the season that Charles Dickens wrote. In Victorian England, Christmas was the time to explore the supernatural in stories, and Charles Dickens was one of the best at it. Included in this volume are a full-cast dramatization of A Christmas Carol, plus three more of Dickens' best stories of the season.

A gentleman decides to take a sea voyage to calm his nerves. But he encounters an eerie creature on board that has anything but that effect.

Abraham "Bram" Stoker was a Victorian Irish writer. He moved to London and became the business manager for Irving's Lyceum Theatre, a post he held for 27 years. He also wrote novels and short stories to supplement his income. Stoker is best remembered as the author of the hugely influential horror novel Dracula. However, he also penned a number of chilling horror and supernatural short stories. This tale contains elements of both and is one of his best.

This second delightful collection of children's stories contains the following titles: "The Three Goblins", by Mabel G. Taggart; "Alladin and the Wonderful Lamp", edited by Andrew Lang; "Cinderella", by the Brothers Grimm; "The Griffon and Minor Canon", by Frank Stockton; "Beauty and the Beast", by Madame de Villeneuve; "The Frog Prince", by The Brothers Grimm; "Goody Two Shoes", a traditional tale; "How Fear Came", by Rudyard Kipling; "Jack and the Beanstalk", a traditional tale; and many more.

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".

Two friends decide to meet again after a 20-year separation - with very unexpected results.

During the American Civil War, a man stands on a railroad bridge about to be hanged. At the last minute, the rope breaks - or does it? This much-anthologized short story was adapted into one of the most popular episodes of The Twilight Zone.

A motley crew, banished from a Western town, find strength, and weakness, in each other.

When it comes to short stories, Edgar Allan Poe is considered by many to be the master of terror and the macabre. This is one of his most famous stories. A man visits a friend but finds something very strange is going on with him - and his house.

Two wealthy gentlemen decide to give a poor stranger a million-pound bank note to see what he will do with it. The results are very unexpected.

Here is Anderson's timeless tale of the ugly duckling that became a beautiful swan.

This unique presentation combines classic children's favorites with an anthology of stories, poems, and songs of the holiday season.

Satirical humor from the master. A group of congressmen are trapped in a snowbound train for two months. When they run out of food, they do what congressmen do - they form a committee to decide who among them should be eaten first.

A town that prides itself on its honesty finds itself severely tested. One of the demons Mark Twain always set out to slay was the myth that the citizens of the American republic are inherently more virtuous than others. By the invention of an elaborate hoax, a kind of giant practical joke, Twain has his hero turn the town of Hadleyburg inside out and, in the process, teach the hypocrites who dwell there a lesson in humility and moral realism.

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".

Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley was an English romantic and gothic novelist who is most famous as the author of Frankenstein, or The Modern Prometheus. She was married to the notable Romantic poet Percy Bysshe Shelley. She also wrote a number of shorter "tales of the unnatural", of which "The Mortal Immortal", a story of a man who will not die, is the most famous.

Old Dr. Heidigger calls a few of his friends together to try a new "elixer of life" designed to make them all young again. The results are not what any of them had bargined for and, as is often the case with Hawthorne, the story teaches a valuable lesson.

Frank Stockton was an American writer and humorist, best known for a series of innovative children's fairy tales that were widely popular. His most famous fable is "The Lady or the Tiger?" (1882), about a man sentenced to an unusual punishment for having a romance with a king's beloved daughter. Other memorable tales are "The Griffin and the Minor Canon", "Old Pypes and the Dryad", and "Mr. Tolman".