Publisher: Charles River Editors
Wilkie Collins was a British author best known for his mystery novels. Some of Collins’ classics include The Moonstone, Armadale, and No Name. This edition of The Fallen Leaves includes a table of contents.
Robert Murray Gilchrist (1867 – 1917) was an English novelist and author of short stories often set in the Peak District. He is best known today for his Gothic short horror stories, which earn him a deserved position alongside the likes of Stevenson, Stoker, Wilde and Stenbock.A Witch in the Peak tells the story of a money-lender trying to recover a debt from an old woman who has been recently widowed. She throws him out of her house with a curse... and what happens next terrifies the man almost to death.Show book
The Death of Ivan Ilyich is the story of a high court judge who has never given the certainty of his dying much of a thought. But one day, death comes to him in the shape of abrupt illness, and to his shocked agony and surprise, he is now forced to deal with his own mortality. This novella by Tolstoy plunges us into the gloom of death but also raises us up into the light of life and spiritual transcendence: "He sought his former accustomed fear of death and did not find it. 'Where is it? What death?' There was no fear because there was no death. In place of death there was light."Show book
Hard Times is unusual in several respects. It is by far the shortest of Dickens' novels, barely a quarter of the length of those written immediately before and after it. Also, unlike all but one of his other novels, Hard Times has neither a preface nor illustrations. Moreover, it is his only novel not to have scenes set in London. Instead the story is set in the fictitious Victorian industrial Coketown, a generic Northern English mill-town, in some ways similar to Manchester, though smaller. Coketown may be partially based upon 19th-century Preston. One of Dickens's reasons for writing Hard Times was that sales of his weekly periodical, Household Words, were low, and it was hoped its publication in instalments would boost circulation - as indeed proved to be the case. Since publication it has received a mixed response from critics. Critics such as F. R. Leavis, George Bernard Shaw, and Thomas Macaulay have mainly focused on Dickens's treatment of trade unions and his post-Industrial Revolution pessimism regarding the divide between capitalist mill owners and undervalued workers during the Victorian era.Show book
'The Miner at Home ' was written by D H Lawrence in 1912. Lawrence is at his best in this story, taken from the scenes of his childhood and based on characters he knew intimately. The scene can hardly be called a story in the traditional sense, being the altercation between a miner and his wife over an impending strike but as a picture of a working miner’s family, rich in detail and the Nottinghamshire dialect, it has a fascination and vividness.Show book
Helen Stoner worries her stepfather may be trying to kill her after he contrives to move her to the bedroom where her sister had died two years earlier, shortly before her wedding. Stoner is herself now engaged, and Holmes learns that her stepfather's annuity (from the estate of his wife - Stoner's mother) would be greatly reduced if either sister married. During a late-night investigation of the bedroom, Holmes and Watson discover a dummy bell-pull near a ventilator. As they lie in wait a whistle sounds, then a snake appears through the ventilator. Holmes attacks the snake with his riding crop; it retreats to the next room, where it attacks and kills Stoner's stepfather.Show book
The AudioFile Earphones Award-winning narrator of Frankenstein and Dracula, BBC actor Clive Hayward brings Doyle’s legendary and beloved characters Holmes and Watson to sparkling new life in this utterly compelling new production. This whirlwind murder-mystery of intrigue, betrayal and stolen treasure is a whodunit of epic proportions, read by a master narrator. "Clive Hayward’s pitch and cadence serve to push the narrative along in a manner that leaves the listener begging for more." AudioFile Magazine, Earphones Award Winner (Dracula)“...an once terrifying and heartbreaking... deeply satisfying listen." AudioFile Magazine, Earphones Award Winner (Frankenstein)Show book
