Showing results by narrator "Graham Scott" in All Categories

While visiting his old friend Flambeau, Father Brown attempts to explain to an inquisitive American the 'secret' of his detective method, by means of eight stories of crime, murder, and obsession, including: a poet accused of the murder of a magistrate; stolen jewels and stolen fish; a theatre manager dead in a locked room; a mourner shut away in a castle; and the case of the worst crime in the world.

Written by 18-year-old Mary Shelley, the novel follows scientist Victor Frankenstein as he recounts his story to Captain Walton, who found a gravely ill Victor adrift at sea. Victor tells of his creation of a being so horrible that he abandoned the Creature, much to his own shame. Not to be forgotten, the Creature's quest for revenge and understanding from its master leaves a trail of devastation in its wake.

Between 1895 and 1901 H. G. Wells wrote six science fiction novels, which have become among the most celebrated examples of the genre. In this collection, Wells explores a number of topics that have since become very common subjects in science fiction, including time travel, celestial beings, eugenics, alien invasion, and space exploration.

The Green Carnation is Robert Hichens' scandalous satire of the relationship between Oscar Wilde and his friend Lord Alfred "Bosie" Douglas. It was one of the works used against Wilde in his prosecution. Socialite Mrs. Windsor embarks upon her annual "Surrey week", a week of "perfect rusticity" in the country, with her cousin the widowed Lady Locke (and her young son Tommy), her French chef, her coachman and two tall footmen - and her three "wits": Madame Valtesi, Esmé Amarinth (Wilde), and Lord Reginald "Reggie" Hastings (Douglas).

Sally Meredith is in deadly danger after her mercurial uncle Fritzi, the genius chemist and inventor M. Frederic Lasalle, disappears into the night. He leaves her as the only person who knows how to open the Chinese puzzle box in which he has concealed the formula for his latest invention: a new gas, sudden, swift, and deadly beyond anything ever before devised. Soon, Sally is in the clutches of sinister foreign agents, and her former fiancé Bill Armitage, of the War Office, with the aid of a Scotland Yard detective, desperately searches for her …

A man apparently sends an incriminating letter to his solicitor, by the simple mistake of placing it into the wrong envelope, and then he abruptly disappears—this, immediately following a sailing trip from Sennen Cove to Penzance with an old friend, the last person known to have seen the missing man alive. But when Dr. John Thorndyke agrees to investigate the disappearance on behalf of the man's wife, he soon begins to question the circumstances and to suspect a more sinister outcome...

Antonio, a wealthy and popular merchant, is in financial difficulty. He approaches a Jewish money lender, Shylock, who agrees to provide 3000 ducats, with a very curious bond – a pound of the merchant’s flesh, to be levied if Antonio fails to make a timely repayment. Feeling confident that his argosies will arrive in time to cover the debt, Antonio agrees to this bizarre transaction.

Four classic stories by Joseph Conrad, of the sea and those who live by the sea: First, phlegmatic and unimaginative Captain MacWhirr pits his ship and his own indomitable will against the fury of a tropical typhoon. Then, tender-hearted country girl Amy Foster takes pity upon a shunned and bewildered foreign castaway; and a young sea captain becomes embroiled in the courtship of tugboat captain Falk, a man haunted by an incident in his past.

After a tragic accident kills their father and their mother perishes during childbirth, sisters Norah and Magdalen discover their parents had only been married a matter of months and therefore the girls were actually illegitimate. Their uncle inherits the entirety of the family fortune, refusing to provide the girls with anything as they make their way out into the world. Using her love of the stage and all things dramatic, Magdalen enlists the help of her distant relative, Captain Wragge, a known professional swindler, to regain her inheritance and the right to her name.

The plot follows the usual trajectory of a young girl falling in love and the relationship becoming compromised by unforeseen circumstances. In this case, Austen’s heroine is a naïve country girl, Catherine Morland, who has an addiction to reading the Gothic horror novels which were so popular in the Regency period. When she is invited to stay at the family seat of her love interest and discovers it to be a vast and ancient castle, her romantic imagination runs riot. What secrets lie hidden in this vast pile over which the widowed head of the house exercises an iron control?

Meet the indomitable lady detective Loveday Brooke. Able to assume a multitude of disguises and possessed of analytical powers rivaling those of the great Sherlock Holmes, she masters every baffling situation and solves each perplexing crime in these seven atmospheric and entertaining Victorian mysteries.

In his second collection of stories about the deceptively unassuming Father Brown, Chesterton give us another 12 tales of misunderstanding, deception, theft, murder, mystery, and suicide, unravelled with modesty and compassion by the little priest-detective....

Mr Marcus Pottermack, an ingenious and meticulous gentleman, of quiet habits, is in a desperate situation: wrongfully convicted of fraud, he escaped from prison and established a new life, only to find himself in the clutches of a ruthless blackmailer. With no recourse to the law, Pottermack can see no way out—until a happy discovery within the walled garden of his home offers the means to rid himself of his tormentor forever.

Since retiring from business, the chief obsessions of American millionaire J. Preston Peters are his dyspepsia and his collection of Egyptian scarabs. So, when fluffy-minded peer Lord Emsworth - father of Freddie Threepwood, fiancé of Mr. Peters' daughter, Aline - absent-mindedly pockets the gem of Mr. Peters' collection, and puts it on display in the museum at Blandings Castle, Mr. Peters offers rich rewards to anyone who can get the precious scarab back for him...without causing a scandal. Two impecunious young American exiles in London rise to the challenge.

Three gentlemen not wholly useless to their country—a lawyer, a banker, and a cabinet minister—have suddenly fallen into a state of profound ennui. Each seeks to rediscover the comfort of their lives through ‘the tonic of difficulty': adopting the nom de guerre of ‘John Macnab', they take to poaching in the Highlands of Scotland, issuing challenges to three landowners and declaring their intention to take a salmon or a stag on their lands between specific dates. But can they overcome the challenges they have set themselves, and escape with their reputations intact?

R. Austin Freeman presents eight cases for his ingenious Edwardian "scientific investigator", Dr. John Thorndyke, including: a classic locked-room murder mystery; a race to find a disappeared child; a dead woman discovered on a train; the story of the vengeful ghost of a murdered Chinese mandarin; and the enigmatic Moabite Cypher. As ever, Dr. Thorndyke meticulously collects the evidence of footprints, dust, hairs, and fibres, and even a single blue sequin, to unravel the mystery and see that justice is done.

Twenty-two more tales of murder and mystery featuring HC Bailey's golden age detective Mr Reginald 'Reggie' Fortune: surgeon and general practitioner, a man of limitless interests and vast knowledge, and the ideal advisor to the Criminal Investigation Department of Scotland Yard. Includes all stories from Mr Fortune, Please (1927), Mr Fortune Speaking (1929), and Mr Fortune Explains (1930).

Set in a lethal American professional football league seven centuries in the future, The MVP puts huge humans on the field with four alien races, creating a game that is faster, stronger, and deadlier than anything we know today. Star quarterback Quentin Barnes has spent three seasons putting together a hard-hitting, hard-fighting team that combines rookies, rejects, discarded free agents and seasoned veterans from all five species. He has fought against racism and bound his team together through shared sacrifice, blood, tragedy, and victory.

This collection offers three novels of adventure and suspense from Patricia Wentworth, each with its own plucky and independent young heroine. First, Jane Smith is incognito at stately Luttrell Marches, in the middle of a mystery of secret formulae, political plots, and secret passages. Then, Sally Meredith is entrusted with the red lacquer case containing the formula for her uncle’s new and deadly gas, and is soon in the clutches of sinister foreign agents.

Three Men in a Boat is one of the most popular and enduring comic novels of any age, and remains as fresh and witty as ever: Narrator "J", and friends George and Harris, diagnose themselves to be suffering from "overwork", and resolve that they, along with J's anarchistic fox terrier, Montmorency, will take a boating holiday up the River Thames, from Kingston-upon-Thames to Oxford. The story describes the incidents of their river journey, along with a multitude of humorous digressions and anecdotes, and musings upon the historical associations of passing towns and landmarks.