検索キーワード： ナレーター "Cathy Dobson" すべてのカテゴリー

Vincent O'Sullivan (1868-1940), born in New York to an Irish American family, moved as a child to London. As a young man, he soon became well recognised as the master of decadent and macabre fiction. 'Will' is the macabre tale of a man who is in the process of poisoning his wife using the most deadly, untraceable and secret poison ever discovered. His wife has realized what he is doing but is powerless to prevent her own death...but she vows to exact a ghastly and morbid revenge from beyond the grave.

All roads lead to Rome. The young boy telling this story cannot quite comprehend this assertion - but of one road, he is certain it is true. The Knights' Road, as he and his friends call it. A road without hedges or ditches, a road that heads straight over the downs with a purpose. One day he will set off to Rome along this road... but for the moment his attention is arrested by an artist he meets on the Knights' Road. An artist who seems to know many strange and wonderful things...

'A New Cook' is one of Munro's hilarious tales of Para Handy, Sunny Jim and the rest of the crew of the Vital Spark. The ship is welcoming a new cook whose talents include dancing, melodeon playing, practical joking...but sadly not culinary skill.

The Giraffe Problem tells the story of an evening at the Problem Club, a secret society of gentlemen in London who meet once a month in a private room above a restaurant, where one of the waiters is the admirable Leonard. Every month Leonard sets the members a problem or challenge. The one who is able to complete the feat successfully wins that month's share of the membership fees.

'The Old Ancient Ship' is a mysterious and ghostly sea story. A strange old mariner, Bill Blood, has hitched a ride on a boat travelling to a remote set of islands in the Pacific. When they make a forced stop at one island to repair a leak in the ship, the crew are eager to go aboard the deserted island and explore. Bill Blood goes with them and leads them to an ancient ship full of skeletons lying in the middle of the tropical forest and overgrown with creepers and foliage. Blood tells them the peculiar and terrible tale of the ancient vessel and those who died in her....

'Carnation' is the evocative story of a French class in a girls' school, teenage hormones and daydreams, a heat wave, a teacher with an embarrassing penchant for romantic poetry...and a carnation....

The "Mary Russell" was a trading boat that set sail from the harbour of Cobh in County Cork on 8 February 1828, carrying a cargo of mules bound for Barbados. When it returned to Cobh on 25 June 1828, the horrified people of Cork found a cabin awash with blood and the bound and battered corpses of the ship's crew.

A poignant and profound collection of stories which explore the theme of childhood and a child's perspective on the world. "The Dabblers" by W. F. Harvey. "The Doll’s House" by Katherine Mansfield. "The Roman Road" by Kenneth Grahame. "The Sailor Uncle" by Mary Lamb. "The Egg" by Sherwood Anderson. "Gabriel-Ernest" by Saki. "A Child’s Revenge" by Paul Bourget. "The Apple Tree" by Katherine Mansfield. "A Falling Out" by Kenneth Grahame. "The Christmas Tree and the Wedding" by Fyodor Dostoyevsky

When a friend phones H. K. Hales one Christmas Eve in a panic and asks for help, he is somewhat bemused. The caller is due to be married the next day and cannot possibly get there on time. H. K. rises to the challenge of driving him at top speed to Ashby-de-la-Zouch. It seems like they might be in with a chance of getting there on time, until the car breaks down nine miles short and they are forced to try to find an alternative mode of transport.

'Gambler's Luck' tells the story of a young German baron who is enjoying a streak of beginner's luck at the gambling tables. As his winnings mount up, the young man is gradually becoming sucked into the addictive habit of gambling. One night a stranger appears at the gambling table and watches the baron intently. The stranger appears night after night, until the baron is infuriated and challenges the man. A later chance meeting between the two results in the stranger relating a most unusual and gripping tale....

Who Was She? is a romantic mystery. The narrator is on vacation and discovers what he takes to be a secluded glen unknown to anyone else. But one day, he finds a wilted bunch of flowers and a book on the flat rock where he always sits. The book contains sketches and musings, clearly by an unmarried woman. The narrator finds a way to return the book, with his own message and an unlikely and mysterious correspondence begins, from which it becomes clear that this is the start of a strange unknown quest.

Austin J. Small (1894-1929) was a popular British mystery and thriller writer who was published in the United Kingdom under the pseudonym 'Seamark'. The Man They Couldn't Arrest - written in 1925 - is a fast paced thriller about Valman Dain, an inventor who (amongst numerous other intriguing gadgets) develops a mechanism for eavesdropping on conversations using the telephone network.

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.

Charles John Cutcliffe Wright Hyne (1866-1944) was a British writer of popular adventure fiction and fantastic literature. "The Mummy of Thompson-Pratt" is a strange supernatural tale of Gargrave, a young egyptologist at Cambridge University who manages to reanimate the 3,000-year-old mummy of Menen-Ra via the man he has identified as a direct descendent of the ancient egyptian. The descendent is the young gad-about-town Thompson-Pratt.

Ernest Bramah (1868-1942) was an English author of 21 novels and numerous short stories and features. His humorous works have been ranked with Jerome K. Jerome and W. W. Jacobs, his detective stories with Conan Doyle, his politico-science fiction with H. G. Wells, and his supernatural stories with Algernon Blackwood. In his stories of detection, Bramah hit on the idea of a blind detective, Max Carrados, whose triumphs are all the more amazing because of his disability.

Alexander W. Drake (1843-1916) was a successful American wood engraver and art collector and director of the art department for Scribner’s and Century magazines. His weird tales were collected and published by his friends in 1916 to commemorate his death. 'The Yellow Globe' (1893) tells the story of a man who notices another gentleman staring at a phosphorous yellow globe in a druggist’s window on numerous occasions.

Joseph Thomas Sheridan Le Fanu (1814-1873) was an Irish writer of Gothic tales and mystery novels. He was the leading ghost-story writer of the 19th century and was central to the development of the genre in the Victorian era. "Green Tea" is an iconic gothic horror story which tells the story of a tea-drinking clergyman, haunted by a terrifying black monkey, which follows him wherever he goes, urging him to dreadful deeds and blighting his life in every way.

Max Adeler was the nom de plume of the American writer and humorist Charles Heber Clark (1841 - 1915). His tale A Desperate Adventure begins thus: "WANTED, four persons who are bent upon committing suicide, to engage in a hazardous adventure. Apply etc. to Captain Cowgill, No. 1, Blank Street after nine o'clock in the morning."

Neil Munro (1863-1930) was a Scottish journalist, newspaper editor, author and literary critic - a serious writer but now known mainly for his humorous short stories. 'Treasure Trove' is an amusing tale of a time when a whale was beached on a Scottish island just off the coast by Tobermory. The crew of a passing ship, led by the enterprising Sunny Jim, came up with a cunning plan to charge visitors to see the whale. The plan worked brilliantly - until the whale began to decay....

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 Beard' is the touching and insightful tale of a narcissistic and pompous father who is struggling to raise his pubescent son, who is enraged at and embarrassed by his father, yet the codependency between the two still exercises a magnetic pull.