Showing results by narrator "Mitchley Richard" in All Categories

Montague Rhodes James is cited as perhaps the greatest English writer of ghost stories, an opinion few would disagree with. Many of his elegant yet terrifying tales were created by discarding the prevailing gothic clichés and placing his characters and narrative in a realistic setting. Thereby the stories gained atmosphere and menace on a grand scale and he was famed as the originator of the antiquarian ghost story. Although story-telling and writing these 30 or so tales was a hobby, when published their effect transformed the genre and still chill the bones in our more modern times.

In this collection of short stories some of our most popular and well-known authors are grouped together with an unfortunate tag: dead at 44. These authors are not run-of-the-mill or ten a penny; they are literary leviathans who left enduring works of literature and sadly may have left us many more had they lived. We will never know.

Anton Pavlovich Chekhov was born on 29th January 1860, in Taganrog, on the south coast of Russia. Chekhov wrote over 500 short stories, which included many, many classics, including ‘The Kiss’ and ‘The Lady with a Dog’. His collection ‘At Dusk’ won him the coveted Pushkin Prize when was only 26. He was also a major playwright beginning with the huge success of ‘Ivanov’ in 1887.

Isobel Violet Hunt was born on 28th September 1862, in Durham. As a young child her family moved to London and Hunt was brought up amongst the Pre-Raphaelite circle of artists. As a writer she was comfortable and talented enough to write across several forms, including short stories, novels, memoir, and biography. Her short story ‘The Coach’ is an excellent example of her black comedy writing. This cramped setting turns into a macabre tour de force delivering literary punch and emotional heft.

The creation of a human hybrid with our closest living relative, the chimpanzee, has not been ruled out as an impossibility, but would any laboratory want to be involved? Why invite global condemnation and raise social, moral, and legal storms? It was certainly not the intention of the Strickland family, who are innocently involved with research and a veterinary practice in rural England.

Robert FitzStephen is a warrior down on his luck. Arrogant, cold, but a brilliant soldier, FitzStephen commands a castle despite his checkered lineage. When a Welsh rebellion brings defeat and a crippling siege, FitzStephen's highborn comrades scorn him, betraying him to the enemy. A hostage of his cousin, Prince Rhys, FitzStephen is disgraced and seemingly doomed to a life of obscurity and shame.

Ifor is the gardener at Nanagalan, a manor house on the Welsh borders. When he falls in love with Ella, the daughter of the house, Ifor must stifle his passion for the lines between social classes are rigidly drawn. He marries local librarian Jenny, but his love for Ella casts a shadow over the relationship. When war breaks out, Ifor enlists and is one of the small number of soldiers left in France after the evacuation at Dunkirk. The Lancastria is sent to recover them but is bombed by the Germans.

Bennett School is celebrating its hundredth birthday - and thinking about the next hundred years. There's a prize for the best idea, and Barny, Spag and Clipper are sure they're going to win. They're planning something better than Spotty McGrew's Slang Dictionary. Better than Soppy Elaine's Fashions of the Future. They're going to let people peep into the twenty-first century...

There are rude slogans daubed all over the school minibus. And that's not all. The whole thing has been smashed up and it needs mending. Fast. But there's no money. As usual, Barny Gobbo comes up with a plan. He challenges Thrasher Dyson and his friends to a swimathon and he is counting on Clipper and Spag to help him win. But then he discovers that Clipper can't swim. Can Barny and Spag teach her in time?

Ark lives a mile up from the ground - in the last trees in the world. But Ravenwood faces a new threat by the empire that wants its precious wood. Ark and his friends must travel deep into enemy heartland to find out what evil is planned. Awaiting them is a glittering forest of glass skyscrapers, a twisted echo of home.

In the Scottish canon, to be placed alongside Burns is high praise indeed, but it’s a rightful place for Robert Louis Stevenson, one of Scotland’s finest novelists. Born in 1850, he crammed much into his 44 years travelling widely to France, the United States, Samoa, and the South Seas. Of course he is widely feted for his classics Dr. Jeckyll & Mr. Hyde, Treasure Island, and poetry volumes such as A Child’s Garden Of Verses. Here we have his short stories "Olliah" and "The Body Snatchers".

Daniel Defoe is most well-known for his classic novels Robinson Crusoe and Moll Flanders. Born circa 1659, he was also a journalist, a pamphleteer, a businessman, a spy … and a writer of short stories. His life was long and colourful, and the breadth of his work, still highly regarded, is infused with similar vigor. In these short stories, Defoe succinctly emblazons his style upon subjects as diverse as apparitions, pirates, and politics.

If ever a writer needed an introduction, Arthur Conan Doyle would not be considered that man. After all, Sherlock Holmes is perhaps the most well-known literary detective of any age. Add to this canon his stories, his historical novels, his political campaigning, and his efforts in establishing a Court Of Appeal, and there is little room for anything else. Except he was also a poet. Not perhaps the finest but his distinctive voice is certainly evident amongst his lines and verses. And it’s a voice worth listening to; something very different from what you might expect.

Dickens is a name that dominates the landscape of English novelists. His works are masterpieces and he is held everywhere in the highest regard. In his fairly short life of 58 years he accomplished an extraordinary number of classic novels, especially in light of his humble and poor beginnings. Here we collect together his slim number of poems. Concise it may be, but from the mind of the master it most certainly reveals some insights of great interest.

Something moved at an upstairs window.... Nothing ever happens in the tiny village of Coney Cley. At least, that's what eleven-year-old Josh and his sister, Jinty, think. Until their trip down Shadows Lane. For there, within the walls of an isolated, crumbling cottage, something - someone - is hiding. Josh and Jinty are about to discover a shocking secret, which they must keep hidden at all costs.... A tense, fantastically gripping tale from Carnegie Award-winning author Robert Swindells.

Jackson Fortune has always followed the lead of his tough older sister, 11-year-old Tracey. Then he receives the first of a series of secret messages and he suddenly has a mystery to solve all by himself. Without Tracey. But the messages to Jackson are not the only mystery. Who is the stranger on a motorbike seen hanging around their cousin Tessa's house? And why does Tracey suddenly decide she wants to wear a dress?

When Taters sneaks into an unknown garden to search for a tennis ball, he meets Skipper, a handicapped boy who, like Taters, is mad about cricket. Skipper invites Taters to play a game of miniature Test cricket that has been set up on the lawn and Taters finds a whole new world is opened up to him as the two become fast friends. But things start to go wrong. What is the mysterious secret surrounding Skipper’s father? Will Sawbridge, the school bully, succeed in destroying the friendship between the two boys? And just how ill is Skipper?

September - the ninth month of the year in our Gregorian calendar and with it arrives the autumn equinox and the first glimpses of the new season. there is much for our poets, including Browning, Kingsley, Yeats, Lanier, and Lindsay, to say and write about.

June - the sixth month of the year in our Gregorian calendar and the official byginning of summer. The days stretch to their longest, and many subjects and thoughts fill the minds of our poets, such as Dryden, Levy, Raleigh, Blunt and Dickenson, as they describy the warming days.

February - the second month of the year in the Gregorian calendar brings not only the shortest month but, for lovers everywhere, Valentine's Day. On this and other themes, our poets, including Nesbit, Teasdale, and Coleridge, have much to say.