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Audiobooks Narrated by Roy Macready
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E. Nesbit is rightly best known for her children's books but she also wrote works for adults including short stories in the genres of the uncanny, macabre and supernatural. There are five of these in this collection. They are:
"The House of Silence"
"The Power of Darkness"
"The Ebony Frame"
"The Pavilion"
"The Detective"
THE TOYS OF PEACE AND OTHER PAPERS by "Saki" (H. H. Munro) is a collection of 33 "papers" or short stories, which were originally published separately in various journals and later issued in one volume in 1919, three years after the writer's death in the Great War.
They are some of the most delightful of literary miniatures.
They are:
The Toys of Peace
Louise
Tea
The Disappearance of Chrispina Umberleigh
The Wolves of Cernogratz
Louis
The Guests
The Penance
The Phantom Luncheon
A Bread and Butter Miss
Bertie's Christmas Eve
Forewarned
The Interlopers
Quail Seed
Canossa
The Threat
Excepting Mrs. Pentherby
Mark
The Hedgehog
The Mappined Life
Fate
The Bull
Morlvera
Shock Tactics
The Seven Cream Jugs
The Occasional Garden
The Sheep
The Oversight
Hyacinth
The Image of the Lost Soul
The Purple of the Balkan Kings
The Cupboard of the Yesterdays
For the Duration of the War
Note: A number of these stories are contained in "The Best of Saki" (3 volumes) narrated by Roy Macready.
Nicholas Goade, the Scotland Yard detective, takes a well-earned rest after his recent work in arresting single-handed a notorious criminal who had for five years defied the police forces of New York and London. He has been awarded a cheque for 25,000 dollars and six months leave of absence and is enjoying a touring holiday in the West of England in his ancient Ford car with his companion Flip, a small, fat, white dog. But his holiday soon becomes "a busman's holiday", as he himself puts it, as at each turn he is called upon to deal with crimes of murder, blackmail, theft, extortion and and other reprehensible acts which somewhat tend to spoil his (and Flip's) vacation!
Henry Seton Merriman was the pen name of Hugh Stowell Scott (1862-1903) He was a successful and popular Victorian novelist. He wrote many novels in his short life (he died at the age of 41) including best sellers. His only book of short stories "Tomaso's Fortune" was published posthumously in 1904, the stories having appeared originally in various magazines. This recording contains a selection of seven stories from that volume. They are:
"Tomaso's Fortune"
"Sister"
"For Juanita's Sake"
"In a Crooked Way"
"The Tale of a Scorpion"
"The Prodigal's Return"
"Stranded"
Barry Pain was noted for his humorous tales of "Eliza" and her husband but his tales of the weird and supernatural are equally noteworthy. This volume of More "Tales in the Dark" contains eight of them. They are:
"The Gray Cat"
"Post-Mortem"
"Linda"
"The Unfinished Game"
"The Widower"
"The Unseen Power"
"The End of a Show"
"This is All"
"Reginald in Russia and other sketches" was published in 1910 and was the second of Saki's collections of short stories following "Reginald" (1904). It consists of 15 stories or "sketches" as the author calls them and contains two of his most famous tales "Gabriel Ernest" and "The Reticence of Lady Anne." The stories are:
Reginald in Russia
The Reticence of Lady Anne
The Lost Sanjak
The Sex that Doesn't Shop
The Blood-Feud of Toad-Water
A Young Turkish Catastrophe
Judkin of the Parcels
Gabriel Ernest
The Saint and the Goblin
The Soul of Laploshka
The Bag
The Strategist
Cross Currents
The Baker's Dozen (A Playlet)
The Mouse
Fitz-James O'Brien was born in Cork, Ireland in 1826. After studying at the University of Dublin where he showed a talent for writing poetry, he moved to London. In 1852 he emigrated to America and settled in New York where he earned his living by journalism and publishing stories in leading magazines, becoming an influential figure in the city's bohemian set. In 1861 at the outbreak of the Civil War he enlisted in the New York National Guard. The following year he was wounded and died from tetanus. He was 35. He is considered an important early writer of science fiction. His three probably best known stories are included in this volume. They are:
"The Diamond Lens"
"What Was It?"
"The Lost Room"
Edgar Allan Poe (1809-1849) is celebrated for his tales of the macabre and the supernatural. "The Cask of Amontillado" is one of his terrifying tales of premature burial. In it the narrator Montresor has suffered from "insults and injuries" from his "friend" Fortunato and plans to murder him while he is drunk at the carnival by luring him to a wine tasting in the cellars of his palazzo. He chains him to the wall in a niche which he seals up with mortar thus entombing him alive.
Edgar Allan Poe (1809-1849) is celebrated for his tales of the macabre and the supernatural. "The Tell-Tale Heart" is one of his most famous. In it the narrator tells how, without any motive, but merely because he is obsessed with his eye ("The eye of a vulture"), he murders an old man, and of the consequences when the murdered man's heart seeks revenge.
Edgar Allan Poe (1809-1849) is celebrated for his tales of the macabre and the supernatural.
In this example of the genre the narrator tells of his adored wife Ligeia, of her tragic death, and of his remarrying another beautiful woman Rowena who after a short and loveless marriage also dies but returns from the dead metamorphosed into his true love Ligeia.
Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu (1814 - 1873) was born in Dublin, Ireland and is acknowledged as an influential writer in the genre of gothic and supernatural fiction of the nineteenth century. Many of his short stories were originally published severally in various magazines. Here are six of them:
"The White Cat of Drumgonnial"
"Dickon the Devil"
"The Drunkard's Dream"
"The Secret of the Two Plaster Casts"
"The Vision of Tom Chuff"
"An Authentic Narrative of a Haunted House"
There was a verse writer named Lear
Who said "in the future I fear
That the verses I write be recorded (they might)
for all who desire so to HEAR"
(R.M. with apologies to E. L.)
Edward Lear is justly renowned as a writer of humorous verse. His "Nonsense Songs"were published in 1871 and includes probably his best known and most loved poem "The Owl and the Pussycat". "Laughable Lyrics " (1877) contains other popular rhymes including "The Dong with a Luminous Nose", "The Courtship of the Yonghy-Bonghy-Bo", "The Pobble Who Has No Toes" and more.
