Résultats lu par "Cathy Dobson" dans Toutes les catégories

When Roderick Usher sends a letter begging his old schoolfriend to visit him, it becomes apparent that he is suffering from a severe mental illness caused by an extreme overload of his senses. His sister too is very ill, suffering from cataleptic deathlike trances. When Roderick announces that his sister has died, and they place her coffin in the vaults of the House of Usher for two weeks prior to burial, neither of them can imagine the horror which is to follow.Poe at his most macabre.

Elia Wilkinson Peattie (1862-1935) was a prolific American author, journalist and critic. Although she left school at 14, she was enormously talented, and by her 20s she was well established as a writer of short stories. 'Story of the Vanishing Patient' is a ghostly tale of the strange happenings when a young doctor is summoned next door to attend a dying woman one night....

'Jerry Bundler' is a ghost story with a twist. We open in a tavern where travellers are telling ghost stories late one night. One gentleman tells a tale about a ghost haunting the very house where they are all sitting. His story frightens all the company gathered around the fire...and when the old gentleman retires to bed, one of the others proposes to take revenge by pretending to be the ghost. But what happens next is very far from a joke.

Herbert George Wells (1866-1946) was a prolific English writer of science fiction stories and novels and is frequently credited as being the father of science fiction. The Sea Raiders is a gruesome tale of a rapacious shoal of cephalopods which attack the coast of Southern England.

Hughie Erskine has a problem. He is madly in love with Laura Merton, but both of them are flat broke. Laura's father will only give his consent to their marriage if Hughie can prove he has a thousand pounds to his name. When Hughie drops in on his friend, the artist, Alan Trevor, he finds him painting a portrait of a ragged beggar. Sympathising with the poor man's plight, Hughie gives the old man a sovereign he can little afford. But the beggar is not all he seems, and Hughie's fortunes are about to change dramatically...

Anton Chekhov (1860-1904) is generally considered to be among the greatest writers of short stories in history. The Bet is the story of a banker and a lawyer who embark on an insane bet. The banker bets the lawyer two million roubles that he cannot endure 15 years of incarceration. The lawyer agrees and the terms of the imprisonment are set. But during the 15 years each of the characters undergoes various changes and the outcome of the bet is an extraordinary twist in the tale.

Amyas Northcote (1864-1923) was an English writer and contemporary of M. R. James who was best known for his ghost stories. 'The Downs' is a classic ghost story which demonstrates Northcote's understated genius. The story starts out as a regular tale, but with a few understated clues as to the nature of the horror that is to come - perfectly setting the atmosphere of creepy tension.

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.

'Alone on a Wide, Wide Sea' is the tale of two enemies abandoned on a deserted island. Pierre Rochelle, a convict escaped from a French penal colony, has been living alone on a remote Pacific island for the past three years, with no means of escape. Then one day he finds a man asleep on the beach on the far side of the island. The new arrival has just been marooned by his mutineering shipmates. Even as he still sleeps, Rochelle recognizes him as Gaston Charette - his own mortal enemy, the man whose false testimony had sent him to the penal colony in the first place.

The magic Psammead is back! This time the four children, Cyril, Robert, Anthea and Jane are stuck in London for the Summer, when they come across the Psammead (or wish-giving sand-fairy), imprisoned in a pet shop. They manage to free him, and he tells them where they can get hold of a magic amulet which will bring them their hearts' desire. Unfortunately when the amulet is secured, it is incomplete. They and the Psammead must travel back into ancient history to see the part of the amulet which was lost.

Frank Norris's intriguing and atmospheric tale of an old forgotton crime, a tragedy, an ancient derelict ghost ship... and the very bizarre reaction of the modern tramp steamer whose bows she crosses.

The much loved chronicler and observer of all that is unusual, John Timbs describes a selection of the oddest sights and anecdotes of the 18th and 19th centuries.

Howard Phillips Lovecraft (1890-1937), who wrote as H. P. Lovecraft, was an American author who achieved posthumous acclaim for his outstanding and influential works of horror fiction. Dagon is the story of a shipwrecked sailor who comes face to face with an ancient and terrible sea-god, Dagon. So horrifying is his ordeal that he spends the rest of his life trying to escape the awful clutches of Dagon. In the end there is only one way out.

Count Eric Stenislaus Stenbock (1860-1895) was an aristocrat of German-Estonian origin who lived in England. He wrote weird, macabre fantasy fiction and was a favorite of H. P. Lovecraft. He was well known for his eccentric lifestyle, keeping snakes, salamanders, and toads in his bedroom, and owned a bear, a reindeer, and a fox. He had a life-size doll with him at all times which he claimed was his son.

Herbert George Wells (1866-1946) was a prolific English writer of science fiction stories and novels and is frequently credited as being the father of science fiction. 'The Magic Shop' is the story of a small boy and his father who go into a shop which appears to sell magic tricks. But the proprietor insists that all the tricks are really genuine magic, and the longer they stay in the shop the stranger the tricks become. Then the shopkeeper performs one truly terrifying trick...and what happens next is very peculiar....

Kipling’s classic tale taken from the Just So Stories. The stickly prickly hedgehog and the slow solid tortoise devise an exercise regime which will enable them to avoid becoming lunch for the painted jaguar. The effects surprise everyone, especially the painted jaguar.

Mary Wilkins Freeman (1852-1930) was an American writer best known for her stories reflecting the world of women fighting for dignity and independence from men. Her tales typically describe domestic settings and intimate relationships and are told with sensitivity and a poignancy which illuminates a bygone era in vivid detail. 'The Lost Ghost' is a supernatural story told by one woman to another about a child ghost who wanders around an old house in search of her mother.... The story has an extraordinary ending.

Arthur Gray (1852-1940) wrote under the pseudonym Ingulphus for several years, and it was only in 1919, when his stories were collected as Tedious Brief Tales of Granta and Gramarye under Gray's own name, that the identity of the author was discovered. The Necromancer is a strange tale set in Jesus College Cambridge in the time of Cromwell. A strange, reclusive fellow who specialises in mathematics and astronomy is suspected of necromancy and black magic.

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.

"Fingers of a Hand" is an eerie tale in which strange and urgent written warnings appear to a family telling them to leave the house where they are staying immediately. These writings materialise mysteriously even when family members are present in the room. One of the family, Grace, decides to set a trap and find out who the writer is. But she is not prepared for what happens when she does see the next message written...and when the true meaning of the warnings becomes clear the mystery deepens further.