Showing results by narrator "Bryan Godwin" in All Categories

One of the masterpieces of classical literature, the "Histories" describes how a small and quarrelsome band of Greek city states united to repel the might of the Persian empire. But while this epic struggle forms the core of his work, Herodotus' natural curiosity frequently gives rise to colorful digressions - a description of the natural wonders of Egypt; an account of European lake-dwellers; and far-fetched accounts of dog-headed men and gold-digging ants. With its kaleidoscopic blend of fact and legend, the "Histories" offers a compelling Greek view of the world of the fifth century BC.

Baron Trump's Marvellous Underground Journey by Ingersoll Lockwood was published in 1893. The novel recounts the adventures of the German boy Wilhelm Heinrich Sebastian Von Troomp, who goes by the name "Baron Trump", and his dog Bulger, as they discover fantastic underground civilizations, offend the natives, escape from their involvements, and repeat this pattern until arriving back home at Castle Trump. The novel was part of a trend in American children's literature that responded to the demand for fantastic adventure stories created by Lewis Carroll's Alice's Adventures in Wonderland.

Five Weeks in a Balloon, or, Journeys and Discoveries in Africa by Three Englishmen (French: Cinq semaines en ballon) is an adventure novel by Jules Verne, published in 1863. It is the first novel in which he perfected the "ingredients" of his later work, skillfully mixing a plot full of adventure and twists that hold the reader's interest with passages of technical, geographic, and historic description.

The Confidence-Man: His Masquerade was the last major novel by Herman Melville, the American writer and author of Moby-Dick. The novel portrays a Canterbury Tales-style group of steamboat passengers whose interlocking stories are told as they travel down the Mississippi River toward New Orleans. The novel's title refers to its central character, an ambiguous figure who sneaks aboard a Mississippi steamboat on April Fool's Day.

The Happy Prince and Other Tales (or Stories) is a collection of stories for children by Oscar Wilde first published in May 1888. It contains five stories: "The Happy Prince", "The Nightingale and the Rose", "The Selfish Giant", "The Devoted Friend", and "The Remarkable Rocket".

This story is more or less a story within a story. It begins with a water-rat commenting to a duck about her ducklings, who are refusing to obey her. When he mentions friendship, a linnet flies down from a tree, and begins the story, intended to explain to the water-rat what true friendship is. Hans was a little man who owned a beautiful garden, where he grew flowers of all kinds and colours which were sold in the market to make some money.

A Modern Utopia is a 1905 novel by H. G. Wells. Because of the complexity and sophistication of its narrative structure, A Modern Utopia has been called "not so much a modern as a postmodern utopia." The novel is best known for its notion that a voluntary order of nobility known as the Samurai could effectively rule a "kinetic and not static" world state so as to solve "the problem of combining progress with political stability".

Ten Years Later is a novel by Alexandre Dumas. It is the third and last of The d'Artagnan Romances, following The Three Musketeers and Twenty Years After. It appeared first in serial form between 1847 and 1850.

The Last of the Mohicans: A Narrative of 1757 is a historical novel written by James Fenimore Cooper in 1826. - It is the second book of the Leatherstocking Tales pentalogy and the best known to contemporary audiences. The Pathfinder, published 14 years later in 1840, is its sequel. The Last of the Mohicans is set in 1757, during the French and Indian War (the Seven Years' War), when France and Great Britain battled for control of North America.

Ion is a very short Platonic dialogue between Socrates and a rhapsode by the name of Ion who specializes in reciting the poetry of Homer. The dialogue explores the nature of poetic and artistic inspiration in a most playful way.

This story takes place in the ancient valley of Nis, in vegetation-covered stone ruins described by Lovecraft in great detail. These crumbling blocks of monolithic stone now serve only for grey toads and snakes to nest under. Interspersed in the ruins are large trees that are home to little apes. Through the bottom of this valley runs the great, slimy red river called Than. "Memory" involves only two characters: "the Genie that haunts the moonbeams" and "the Daemon of the Valley".

The story revolves around a Bostonian painter named Richard Upton Pickman who creates horrifying images. His works are brilliantly executed, but so graphic that they result in the revocation of his membership in the Boston Art Club and he is shunned by his fellow artists. The narrator is a friend of Pickman, who, after the artist's mysterious disappearance, relates to another acquaintance how he was taken on a tour of Pickman's personal gallery, hidden away in a run-down backwater slum of the city.

"The Complete Works of H.P. Lovecraft contains all the original stories which Lovecraft wrote as an adult. It begins in 1917 with "The Tomb" and ends in 1935 with his last original work "The Haunter of the Dark." The book is ordered chronologically by the date the story was written.

The Sea-Wolf is a 1904 psychological adventure novel by American writer Jack London. The book's protagonist, Humphrey van Weyden, is a literary critic who is a survivor of an ocean collision and who comes under the dominance of Wolf Larsen, the powerful and amoral sea captain who rescues him. Its first printing of forty thousand copies was immediately sold out before publication on the strength of London's previous The Call of the Wild.

"The Doom That Came to Sarnath" (1920) is a fantasy short story by American writer H. P. Lovecraft. It is written in a mythic/fantasy style and is associated with his Dream Cycle. It was first published in "The Scot", a Scottish amateur fiction magazine, in June 1920.

"Facts concerning the Late Arthur Jermyn and His Family" is a horror short story written by H.P. Lovecraft. As Lovecraft's both parents died in a mental hospital, it is believed that Lovecraft handled some of his own family issues in this very story.

Twenty Years After is a novel by Alexandre Dumas, first serialized from January to August 1845. A book of The d'Artagnan Romances, it is a sequel to The Three Musketeers and precedes The Vicomte de Bragelonne (which includes the sub-plot Man in the Iron Mask). The novel follows events in France during the Fronde, during the childhood reign of Louis XIV, and in England near the end of the English Civil War, leading up to the victory of Oliver Cromwell and the execution of King Charles I.

"The Festival" is a short story by H. P. Lovecraft written in October 1923 and published in the January 1925 issue of Weird Tales.

Charles Dexter Ward is a young man from a prominent Rhode Island family who has disappeared from a mental asylum. He had been incarcerated during a prolonged period of insanity, during which he exhibited minor and inexplicable physiological changes. His empty cell is found to be very dusty. The bulk of the story concerns the investigation conducted by the Wards' family doctor, Marinus Bicknell Willett, in an attempt to discover the reason for Ward's madness and physiological changes.

"History of the Necronomicon" is a short text written by H. P. Lovecraft in 1927, and published in 1938. It describes the origins of the fictional book of the same name: the occult grimoire Necronomicon, a now-famous element of some of his stories. The short text purports to be non-fiction, adding to the appearance of 'pseudo-authenticity' which Lovecraft valued in building his Cthulhu Mythos oeuvre. Accordingly, it supposes the history of the Necronomicon as the inspiration for Robert W. Chambers' The King in Yellow, which concerns a book that overthrows the minds of those who read it.