Showing results by narrator "Graham Scott" in All Categories

Seven stories of mystery and adventure from R Austin Freeman; including an audacious theft from London's National Gallery; the sudden self-confidence of a normally timid curate; a very remarkable funeral; a ghostly lawyer's repentance; a lucky find for a rural bricklayer; and two investigations for the celebrated forensic detective Dr. John Thorndyke...

Zuleika Dobson, internationally famous prestidigitator visits her grandfather, the Warden of Judas College, Oxford. But Zuleika, "though not strictly beautiful" is a devastatingly attractive young woman, and proves utterly irresistible among the all-male undergraduate body - including the snobbish and trend-setting young Duke of Dorset. Thus begins a chain of events that culminates in a very watery end to the Eights Week boat races... 

Mr. John Bellingham, amateur Egyptologist, abruptly goes missing, leaving behind a strangely vexatious will that cannot be executed without proof or presumption of death. Mr Bellingham's family are left virtually penniless, and under suspicion of his murder. Two years later, young Dr. Paul Berkeley in the course of his duties befriends Mr. Bellingham's younger brother, and the latter's beautiful daughter, and takes their problem to his old friend and mentor the famous medical jurist Dr. John Thorndyke. Can Thorndyke determine what really became of John Bellingham?

This audiobook contains the first three adventures of A. E. W Mason’s enigmatic and mercurial Sûreté detective, Inspector Hanaud—a key inspiration for Agatha Christie’s celebrated sleuth Hercule Poirot. First, Hanaud investigates the murder of wealthy Mme Dauvray at the fashionable French resort of Aix-les-Bains. Then, during a visit to London, Hanaud unravels a case of theft and murder following a costume party at a prestigious hotel.

One of the best-loved collections in English poetry, A. E. Housman's A Shropshire Lad deals in simple, gently accessible language, with universal themes of life, death, love, and loss, set against the backdrop of the timeless Shropshire countryside.

Queen Marguerite de Navarre was one of the most powerful women of her age. Her masterpiece, The Heptameron, is a collection of some 72 stories told by five gentlemen and five ladies who find themselves stranded in an abbey. Proposed as an edifying way of passing the time while a bridge is being repaired, the tale-telling - as well as the conversations that follow each story - quickly becomes a battle of wits between the sexes, with tales concerning illicit lovers, romantic conquests, lecherous monks, manly honor, and women's virtue.

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?

Tales of blood, magic, and steel by masters of the craft!

A complete collection of R Austin Freeman's short stories of his great scientific investigator, Dr John Thorndyke. Including every story from John Thorndyke's Cases (1909), The Adventures of Dr Thorndyke (1912), Dr Thorndyke's Case-book (1923), The Puzzle Lock and Other Stories (1925), and The Magic Casket (1927); along with the two stand-alone stories Percival Bland's Proxy (1913), and The Missing Mortgagee (1914) (collected with others in The Great Portrait Mystery and Other Stories (1918)).

In Historic Doubts of the Life and Reign of King Richard III, Walpole defends Richard III against the common belief that he murdered the Princes in the Tower, and many of the other crimes laid at his door by the Tudor dynasty which followed Richard’s defeat at the Battle of Bosworth in 1485. In this he has been followed by a number of other writers, including Josephine Tey in her classic 1951 mystery novel The Daughter of Time.

As Christmas approaches, Mr. Percival Bland finds his criminal enterprises unraveling. Fortunately, though, his plan of escape requires little beyond a set of human bones and a quantity of shin of beef. But will his scheme deceive the great forensic investigator Dr. John Thorndyke?

In a court of law, it takes 12 jurors to convict a killer. Two of them are Jensens. It all started when those Jensen boys, Ace and Chance, got roped into jury duty. It should have ended when justice was served with the killer dancing on the end of a rope. But no. This is just the beginning of the death sentence for Ace, Chance, and the other 10 terrified jurors.

Thomas Love Peacock was a linguist, scholar and East India Company official. He had a wide circle of literary friends, including Coleridge and Shelley, and his early works were poems, some of a considerable length. In 1815 his first novel, Headlong Hall, was published, and between that year and 1831, he published a further five novels. His final completed novel, Gryll Grange, was written in 1860 and published the following year. Peacock also produced a number of articles on literary and historical subjects, and some other long poems, which have faded into obscurity.

On the eve of the Civil War, Kirby Jensen is the youngest of three children living on a hardscrabble ranch in Southwestern Missouri. But in 1861, shots were fired in Charleston harbor, and Kirby's father and brother went to war. Smoke Jensen: The Beginning follows the Jensen clan during these volatile years, from Civil War battles to border state raids to the kind of frontier justice achieved only by bullets and blood.

Oliver Twist is the well-loved tale of an orphan, who starts life in a workhouse and finds himself embroiled in London's criminal underworld, before being saved by a kind gentleman who knows something of his surprising family history. A satire and social commentary as well as a page-turning yarn, full of grit, wit, and some of the most memorable characters in English Literature. The second published serialised novel by Charles Dickens, The British Library remarks that "it has proven to be one of the best-loved novels in the history of literature".

Amiable but stolid peer Bill, Lord Dawlish, possessor of a slender income and a querulous fiancée, resolves to seek his fortune in America. But before he can even get on the boat, he discovers that the eccentric American millionaire whom he cured of slicing his approach-shots on the links at Marvis Bay a few months earlier has unexpectedly left him five million dollars, as a reward for his altruistic action. But to Bill, noblesse more or less obliges him to share the fortune with the old man's disinherited niece, Elizabeth.

Persuasion was the last novel completed by Jane Austen and was first published posthumously in December, 1817. The story represents an interesting configuration of Austen’s characteristic narrative patterns. The heroine, Anne Eliot, is something of an old maid—she is twenty-seven years old, still single and is considered by family and friends to have lost her youthful beauty. Several years earlier, her engagement to Captain Frederick Wentworth had been broken off, due to the insistence of her family that the Captain lacked the wealth and status needed for a suitable husband.

Just days after the wedding of Valeria Brinton and Eustace Woodville, a series of strange incidents causes Valeria to believe her husband is hiding a dark secret. She discovers he has been living under a false name, and when questioned, Eustace refuses to discuss it. Upon further digging, Valeria finds Eustace had been on trial three years ago for the murder of his wife. However, the verdict had come down as the scotch verdict of not proven. This implied his guilt, but there was not enough evidence for a conviction nor did it exonerate him.

Every story of Chesterton's unassuming little priest detective, from the first four published collections: The Innocence of Father Brown (1911), The Wisdom of Father Brown (1914), The Incredulity of Father Brown (1926), and The Secret of Father Brown (1927).

Aspects of the Novel is compiled from a series of lectures delivered in 1927 by E. M. Forster at Trinity College, Cambridge, in which he discussed the English language novel. By using examples from classic texts, he explores the seven universal aspects of the novel: story, characters, plot, fantasy, prophecy, pattern, and rhythm.