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

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.

Richard Barham Middleton (1882-1911) was an English poet and author who is remembered mostly for his short ghost stories, of which 'The Ghost Ship' is the most famous. It is one of the few stories in literature which combines a ghostly theme with lightening humour. Middleton suffered from severe depression for much of his life (then known as melancholia) and committed suicide by poisoning himself with chloroform at the age of 29.

Guy Boothby (1867 - 1905) was an Australian by birth, who came to England in 1894 and was quickly acknowledged as a masterly writer of thrillers and crime stories. His best work includes a series of stories which appeared in Pearson's Magazine in 1897 under the title "The Prince of Swindlers". These stories describe the exploits of Simon Carne, one of the earliest society criminals whose cunning robberies were executed with outstanding imagination and ingenuity.

Edmund Gill Swain (1861-1938) was an English cleric and author. He was a longtime friend of M. R. James, and his ghost stories show James' influence. 'The Man with the Roller' is a strange tale about a photograph in which a strange figure of a man with a roller appears and drags the roller from one part of the lawn to another. But how can this happen? Who is the man? Why is he constantly rolling the lawn?

Seven short story masterpieces by the acknowledged master of the short story, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle: 'The Parasite', 'The Mystery of Sasassa Valley', 'The Man with the Watches', 'A Pastoral Horror', 'The Slapping Sal', 'Lot No. 249','The Ring of Thoth'.

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.

Herbert George Wells (1866 - 1946) was a prolific English writer of science fiction stories and novels, and is credited as being the father of science fiction. 'In the Avu Observatory' is a story about a scientist working at a remote observatory in a remote forest in Borneo. One night, the astronomer's assistant, Woodhouse, is attacked by a huge bat-like creature in the middle of the night. In the pitch black of the observatory, he suddenly finds himself fighting for his life against...what?

May Sinclair was the nom de plume of Mary Amelia St. Clair (1863-1946), a British writer of novels, short stories and poetry and an active suffragette and spiritualist. 'The Mahatma's Story' is a strange supernatural story about an oriental magician who switches the memories of two couples, with bizarre results.

'Sparkling Biacrene' is a humorous story about a young chemist who invents a marvellous new type of nonalcoholic drink based on a marvellous Amazonian herb with astounding properties. He names his invention 'Sparkling Biacrene' and excitedly invites his uncle to dinner with his employer and a manufacturer of soda waters to discuss the commercial potential of the drink.