Résultats lu par "Rayner Bourton" dans Toutes les catégories

The eight stories here show Wells in various moods and foreshadow his celebrity. These are uncanny tales, resonating strangely, despite arising from ordinary thoughts, interactions, and memories. Wells shows just how fantastic the everyday can be, if one only pauses to reflect on missed chances, suggestions of what might have been, bleak premonitions of blessed futures whose utopian promise is destroyed by new forms of war.

"The Star" is an 1897 apocalyptic short story by H.G. Wells. In January (about 1900, presumably), the people of Earth awaken to the news that a strange luminous object has erupted, into the Solar System, after disturbing the normal orbit of the planet Neptune. The object is a celestial body whose luminosity is distinguishable on the sky about the constellation of Leo.

Robur the Conqueror (French: Robur-le-Conquérant) is a science fiction novel by Jules Verne, published in 1886. It is also known as The Clipper of the Clouds. It has a sequel, Master of the World, which was published in 1904. The story begins with strange lights and sounds, including blaring trumpet music, reported in the skies all over the world.

Rayner Bourton, original Rocky Horror and all 'round nice guy, has released this wonderful new book with his memories of the early days of The Rocky Horror Show. It gives a brilliant insight from the first auditions though the original Theatre Upstairs production to the Kings Road shows. For the true Rocky Horror fans, this book is a mine of information.

G.K. Chesterton was one of the towering figures of British literature in the early twentieth century. A man of massive size, massive personality, and massive appetite, Chesterton famous personality, dress, and personality gave rise to an eponymous adjective: Chestertonian. Although he is renowned for the Father Brown detective series, Chesterton also wrote volumes of nonfiction. First published in 1917, A Short History of England is exactly that, serving Chesterton's goal of publishing "a popular book of history written from the standpoint of a member of the public."

"In the country of the blind, the one-eyed man is king." Or is he? In H. G. Wells' acclaimed tale, a stranded mountaineer encounters an isolated society in which his apparent advantage, sight, since all the people are blind, proves less than valuable.

'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. A hereditary illness has meant that for 15 generations all the members of the tribe have been born blind. As a result, they now have a highly evolved sense of hearing, scent and touch. 'In the land of the blind, the one-eyed man is king,' thinks the mountaineer.

Rebekah and Mark Walker find themselves in every parent’s worst nightmare when their dazzling, talented daughter Kezia vanishes after a night out. Soon, they are propelled into the vortex of a fraught missing person inquiry. In a family torn apart by the disappearance of an apparently captivating teenager, we discover a tangled web of intrigue: mutual suspicion, sibling struggles, and the vain attempt of Kezia's parents to maintain a normal life in the face of almost unendurable pressures.

10 August, 2003, the hottest day ever in the UK, ten-year-old Molly Parker disappears without a trace in North Wales. Despite his relentless efforts, DI Bill Lennox has to release his prime suspect, Jim Roper, for lack of evidence. Still obsessed with the case, Bill is finally suspended, demoted and forced to leave. Twenty years on, another young girl is kidnapped but escapes, casting suspicion once again on Roper. But now the investigator is Bill’s niece, DI Barbara Forster. Roper is re-arrested but another girl vanishes ... the race is on to find her.

This first collection of tales by Rosalie Parker contains eight stories that explore the uncanny in the modern world. As Glen Cavaliero observes in his introduction, "like all good stories of the preternatural, these in The Old Knowledge have a subversive effect." In them, "the world of logical, predictable reality is seen to be at risk from rejected modes of knowledge which can thwart the materialist and victimise those innocents who stumble into another order of reality."

Around three and a half thousand years ago, members of a small community of Bronze Age people spent several days away from their usual activities of farming, hunting, weaving and food processing in order to construct a burial mound.

It was a pity about the weather, but even in Yorkshire it couldn't rain all the time. Geraldine pushed her hair into her rainhood and studied the thin drizzle pittering into brimming puddles.

'Today, class,' said Miss Flanders, surveying the room full of Year Ten students seated around the somewhat battered tables, 'we will be looking at the circulatory system. Please open your books at page fifteen.' There were the scrapings and scufflings of chairs being pushed back and bags being opened, and the slap of textbooks hitting the table-tops.

The taxi picked up speed as the post-industrial sprawl of Sheffield gave way to the open hills of the Peak District. Ellen could see the driver glancing at her from time to time in the rear view mirror. Weary after her long rail journey she was grateful for his silence, even though it might have been useful to hear stories of 'The Big House'.

: It has been snowing all day the trees in the garden are hung with icicles, and Graham and Simon had to shovel off some of the thick white blanket that coated the drive so that Clive Mason could inch his car up to the house.

It really is a lovely day. I'm not used to sitting in the garden, basking in the pleasant weather and enjoying the fruits of my labour. I spend most of my time here weeding and pruning, so I'm grateful for the opportunity to laze around for a change, watching the flower heads bob gently in the soft breeze, listening to the drowsy hum of the bees as they gorge on the comfrey blossoms.

What you have to understand, before I begin, is that I am not a gullible person. I am a scientist of a sort, an archaeologist, trained in the empirical ethos of the British higher education system.

Three Ghost Stories is just that: a collection of three different stories that are true Gothic classics. The three stories, The Signal Man, The Haunted House and The Trial for Murder were sensational for their time and continue to hold up well, thanks to Charles Dickens' superb skills at storytelling. The Signal Man is the most well known of the three, chronicling the haunting of a railroad signal man who is visited by a ghost just before a tragic event is to happen on the railway. If you like Dickens and tales of spectres and the supernatural, you'll love Three Ghost Stories.

"The Trial for Murder" is a short story written by Charles Dickens. It was originally published under the title "To Be Taken with a Grain of Salt" as a chapter in Dr. Marigold's Prescriptions in an extra Christmas volume of the weekly literary magazine, All the Year Round. It was later published in 1866 in a collection of ghost stories known as "Three Ghost Stories", along with "The Haunted House" and "The Signal-Man".

The railway signal-man of the title tells the narrator of an apparition that has been haunting him. Each spectral appearance precedes a tragic event on the railway on which the signalman works. The signalman's work is at a signal-box in a deep cutting near a tunnel entrance on a lonely stretch of the railway line, and he controls the movements of passing trains. When there is danger, his fellow signalmen alert him by telegraph and alarms. Three times, he receives phantom warnings of danger when his bell rings in a fashion that only he can hear.