Publisher: Fantastica
The novel tells the life story of Roderick Random, who was born to a Scottish gentleman and a lower-class woman and is thus shunned by his father's family. His mother dies soon after giving birth and his father is driven mad with grief. Random's paternal grandfather coerces a local school master into providing free education for the boy, who becomes popular with his classmates.
This triumphant final volume of Spinechillers begins with Doug Bradley's personal guide to the writers and the history of the stories.M.R. James' classic Number 13 starts off this volume with a mystery about a disappearing and reappearing hotel room, can you guess the room number?Story two is the tale of a cat that can not only talk, but spills secrets that should have been truly left behind.Next, we present one of the most famous stories by H.P. Lovecraft, The Call of Cthulhu. Doug transports you into Lovecraft's world of indescribable horror, accompanied by Alistair Lock's outstanding orchestral score.Edgar Allan Poe's well-known allegory on our mortality, The Masque of the Red Death, follows.Then Jeffrey Combs reads the concluding part of Lovecraft's Herbert West: Reanimator series, The Tomb Legions.Finishing up Volume 13 is Poe's 1843-penned poem, "The Conqueror Worm".Show book
A new reading of Robert Louis Stevenson's classic gothic tale, a study in evil set in the mist-shrouded streets of Victorian London.Unorthodox medical man, Dr Henry Jekyll appears to have it all: a large fortune, a big house, a fine reputation He doesn't have a wife or children but that doesn't seem to be a concern. He looks back at the deeds of his misbegotten youth not so much with regret, but with a lingering hope he can do them all again, and more.Experimenting with home-made drugs, he finds a way to have his cake and eat it too. He splits off the nasty part of his personality and goes wandering in the misshapen body of Mr Hyde to enjoy his sins all over again, but this time Jekyll can keep his reputation and pious demeanour, because no one knows he's the vile Hyde.That is, until the drugs don't work anymore, This Victorian classic is well worth a listen. Stevenson uses some luscious language, conjures the fog ridden midnight streets of London, and presents us with the dilemma of evil, and how to get away with it. Read by Tony Walker, producer of the Classic Ghost Stories Podcast.Show book
Harry Graham (1874 - 1936) made a great name for himself as a writer of light verse and humorous stories, including the inimitable Ruthless Rhymes for Heartless Homes.Bats in the Belfry is a humorous short story in the tradition of the Victorian bedroom farce. Percy Biffin, an awkward house-guest at the summer residence of Sir Borwick Trout, is unexpectedly called on in the middle of the night to remove a bat from the beautiful young Julia Trout's bedroom. His presence in the young lady's bedroom is misinterpreted by every person who learns of it...and the more Biffin tries to extricate himself, the worse the situation becomes.Show book
The Adventure of the Creeping Man (1923) is one of 12 Sherlock Holmes short stories by Arthur Conan Doyle collected in The Case-Book of Sherlock Holmes (1927). The story was first published in the Strand Magazine in the UK and Hearst's International in the US in March 1923.A man named Trevor Bennett comes to Holmes with a most unusual problem. He is Professor Presbury's personal secretary, and Mr Bennett is also engaged to the professor's only daughter, Edith. Professor Presbury is himself engaged to a young lady, Alice Morphy, a colleague's daughter, although he himself is already 61 years of age. Their impending marriage does not seem to have caused a great scandal, so that is not Mr Bennett's problem. Nonetheless, the trouble seems to have begun at about the time of Professor Presbury's and Alice's engagement. First, the professor suddenly left home for a fortnight without telling anyone where he was going. He returned looking rather travel-worn, and it was only through a letter from a friend sent to Mr Bennett that the family learnt that Professor Presbury had been to Prague. Upon returning from Prague, Presbury told Mr Bennett that certain letters would arrive with a cross under the stamp, and that he was not to open these. Until this time, Mr Bennett had enjoyed the professor's implicit trust and had opened all his letters as part of his job. As the professor said, such letters did arrive, and he gave them straight to the professor. Whether any replies were sent Mr Bennett does not know, as they never passed through his hands. The professor also brought a small carved wooden box back with him from Prague. One day, as Mr Bennett was looking for a cannula, he picked the box up, and the professor became very angry with him. Mr Bennett was quite shaken by the incident...Famous works of the author Arthur Conan Doyle: A Study in Scarlet, The Sign of the Four, The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes, The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes, The Hound of the Baskervilles, The Return of Sherlock Holmes, The Valley of Fear, His Last Bow, The Case-Book of Sherlock Holmes, Stories of Sherlock Holmes, The Lost World.Show book
Winifred Holtby (1898 – 1935) was an English novelist, short story writer and journalist."Escape - Three and Sixpence" is a haunting short story which opens with a Yorkshire housewife putting her head into the gas oven to commit suicide to escape her unbearable life of drudgery. We are swept along with the thoughts and emotions which go through her mind... and the roller-coaster of emotions as events unfold.Show book
Elizabeth von Arnim, who is best known for her later novel The Enchanted April, married a Prussian aristocrat and, with their five children, lived in Nassenheide, Pomerania. Elizabeth and Her German Garden is a semi-autobiographical novel about the joy that the protagonist finds in the delights of her Pomeranian garden, which provides relief from the stifling environment of her household. The novel was originally published anonymously because von Arnim feared that her husband, whom she satirised in the book, would disapprove.Each season of the year is wittily recorded, bringing new events and visitors, conveyed through von Arnim’s idiosyncratic perspective, while the ‘kingdom of heaven’ of the garden provides a calm place where the author finds solace.Show book
