Résultats lu par "Cathy Dobson" dans Toutes les catégories

Amyas Northcote (1864-1923) was an English writer and a contemporary of M. R. James. He is best known for his ghost stories. 'The Young Lady in Black' is an eerie tale of a woman who died, leaving one crucial task in her life unfinished. The tale poses at the outset the question of whether the dead can return to earth to bring incomplete tasks to their conclusion...and the weird circumstances of this story appear to confirm the theory.

Honoré de Balzac (1799-1850) is arguably the greatest European novelist in terms of the range and power of his writing. Most of his short stories predate his long novels and are written in a different style. One of the earliest is An Episode of the Reign of Terror in which two nuns and a priest in hiding from the mob are visited by a stranger with a very peculiar request, and even odder motives behind it.

Joseph Smith Fletcher (1863 – 1935) was a British journalist and author. He wrote more than 230 books on a wide variety of subjects, both fiction and non-fiction. He was one of the leading writers of detective fiction in the Victorian "Golden Age" of the short story. "The Earl, the Warder and the Wayward Heiress" is the story of a ten thousand pound bet between young gentlemen in their club.

Herbert George Wells (1866-1946) was a prolific English writer of short stories and novels and is frequently credited as being the father of science fiction. 'The Reconciliation' is the story of two old enemies who had quarrelled as students, but who are now attempting to reconcile by spending an evening together. But as they drink more whisky, the old antagonism raises its head again...and then one man suggests a boxing match....

Robert O'Hara Burke (1821-1861) was one of the great Victorian explorers. In 1860 he was appointed to lead the Victorian Exploring Expedition, which aimed to cross the Australian continent from south to north. The expedition left Melbourne on Monday, 20 August 1860 with a total of 19 men, 27 (rum fuelled) camels, and 23 horses. The expedition was dogged by disputes and poor leadership decisions from the start. Even at the first staging post the second in command and the medical officer resigned.

When Vi and Amos go diving for the first time in the West Indies, they hope to explore the recent wreck of a smuggling ship. Once underwater, Vi struggles to remember who the man up on the surface, pumping air down to their diving suits, reminds her of. Suddenly she realizes. He is Nana's son! Nana, the housekeeper who Amos sacked for stealing. And Nana's son had vowed to get even with them. Vi searches frantically among the coral for Amos and struggles to make him understand what has happened.

The narrator receives a mysterious envelope in the post containing a single theatre ticket for that evening. There is no note or return address, and he has no idea who could have sent it. When he attends the performance, in the third act a mysterious lady takes the seat next to him and asks him to come with her to see her brother George after the performance. They are whisked away by car to a sinister upper floor apartment in Jermyn Street, where the affair becomes more and more enigmatic.

The Cry of a Century is a short story about a gifted 11 year old who supports his mother by performing great feats of memory and general knowledge every night on the stage in the Brixton Theatre of Varieties. One night after his performance, his mother does not come to pick him up from the theatre. The young Marvel catches a ride on the back of a passing motor car. But the exhausted boy drifts off to sleep and when he awakes he is far outside London at a mysterious house whose inhabitants are holding a very strange and eerie celebration.

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.

Anatole France (1844 - 1924) was a leading French poet and writer who was awarded the Nobel Prize for literature in 1921. "In the Reign of Terror" is a short story describing a daring spur of the moment escape by an aristocratic woman, when the mob appears at her door, seeking a neighbour who they wish to drag off to the guillotine.

When the body of the eccentric painter Sir Owen Cram is found on a deserted beach next to his easel, a murder enquiry is launched. It is clear that the injury which has killed him could not have been self-inflicted. Nor is the murder weapon anywhere to be found. But most mysterious of all, there is only one set of footprints in the sand leading up to the body, and these are Sir Owen's own. Even the scientists and police investigators are struggling to conceive how the murder has been committed.

Ambrose Gwinnett Bierce (1842 - 1914) was an American writer famous for his dark and cynical writings, which earned him the nickname Bitter Bierce. He is famous also for his mysterious demise. He wrote a letter to a friend, which he closed by saying, "As to me, I leave here tomorrow for an unknown destination," and then he vanished without a trace, his disappearance becoming one of the most famous in American literary history.

When Ralph, the new cabin boy joins the schooner ship Susan-Jane, which is carrying a cargo of gunpowder, he finds to his surprise that he has not signed up for a life as a swashbuckling pirate. Instead of romance and adventure, he finds himself having to scrub decks and wash dishes. Worse still, any subordinance is punished harshly by the crew and the skipper. Ralph decides to take his revenge on the Skipper and his crew, and devises an ingenious plan...

'My Enemy and Myself' is a superbly sinister and gory tale of insanity, a love triangle, revenge, murder and supernatural retribution.

Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (1859-1930) was the pre-eminent figure in late nineteenth century detective fiction. A physician by profession, he soon found such popularity as a writer of detective stories that his writing was far more profitable than his medical practice. "The Adventure of the Blue Carbuncle" is a classic Sherlock Holmes story in which the Commissionnaire brings Holmes a hat and a goose which have been dropped by a man on the street, during an attempted mugging.

O. Henry was the pen name of William Sydney Porter (1862-1910), an American writer of outstanding short stories, known for their wit, wordplay, warm characterization, and surprise endings. In The Cop and the Anthem, a New York tramp, Soapy, is determined to be arrested and sent to jail on 'The Island' for three months during the coldest part of the winter. But it proves astoundingly difficult to get arrested...however hard he tries, no policeman seems inclined to take him into custody.

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...

Edward Frederic Benson (1867-1940) was an English novelist, biographer, memoirist, archaeologist, and short story writer, best known for his evocative and beautifully narrated ghost and horror stories. 'The Bed by the Window' is the story of a man who takes himself off to a remote guest house so as to be free of distractions while he finishes a project. While he is there, he begins to have odd dreams and visions...and the calendar on the desk seems to keep showing him the wrong date...always May 8th.

Perceval Gibbon (1879-1926) was an author and journalist working on the Rand Daily Mail in South Africa and several other publications. He is best remembered for his masterly short stories, which were often characterized by an ironic twist at the end. The Victim tells the tale of César Savinien, a French poet who finds himself enjoying a terrifying streak of good fortune. Everything he does turns out brilliantly....

Basil Murray (1902 - 1937) was a prominent British journalist and prominent anti-Fascist during the Spanish civil war. Alongside his short stories, he was well known for his radio broadcasts from Valencia. He died in Spain, officially of pneumonia. According to a memoir by journalist Claud Cockburn, however, Murray was bitten to death by his pet ape while lying in a drunken stupor in a Valencia hotel. 'Three Pennyworth of Luck' is the story of a superstitious man who puts three coins in a penny in the slot fortune telling machine and becomes increasingly alarmed at the pronouncements of the mechanical soothsayer.