Showing results by publisher "Spoken Realms" in Fantasy

Stories from the masters of the fantasy genre, George MacDonald, Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu, Edgar Allan Poe, and Thomas Hood. Tales of fairies, ghosts, and hauntings. These stories have never lost their magic.

In 1896, H.G Wells was stimulated to compose this dystopian fantasy about an obsessed scientist and his efforts to artificially accelerate the intellectual development of animals using bizarre medical procedures involving vivisection. Wells described the book as "an exercise in youthful blasphemy."

Lamia is a tragic narrative poem in two parts. It was written in 1819 and first published in 1820 with "Isabella" and "The Eve of St. Agnes". The Greek god Hermes has left Olympus in search of a beautiful nymph. He comes across Lamia, a woman trapped in the form of a snake, who promises to reveal the nymph to him if he, in exchange, restores her human form so she may seek the love of Lycius, a youth of Corinth.

When I Was a Witch is a short story written by Charlotte Perkins Gilman in 1909. What would you do if you could right all the wrongs that annoy you in this world?

The Wonderful Visit tells the story of an angel who finds himself unexpectedly marooned on Earth. Wells used John Ruskin's remark that an angel appearing on earth in Victorian England would be shot on sight as the inspiration for this tale of a celestial being who is completely out of place in human society. Ironically, the angel's first confidant and protector is a clergyman, who never recovers from the eventual and inevitable disappearance of the angel. Wells dwells in detail on the contrast between the idealism of the celestial visitor and the discourtesy of his hosts.

This is the first of Tennyson's poems to be based on Sir Thomas Malory's Morte d'Arthur. The first draft was composed in 1834, and the finished work was published in Poems (1842). Later Tennyson incorporated the poem into the Idylls of the King (1870) under the title of "The Passing of Arthur". The narrative of this poem was drawn from the third, fourth, and fifth chapters of the 21st book of Thomas Malory's romance.

Set in a fairy-tale version of medieval Spain, the story follows Ramon Alonzo's initiation to the "Dark Arts" with a magician in order to procure the gold necessary for his sister's dowry. He befriends his master's charwoman, an old, despairing figure who has given up her shadow in exchange for immortal life. Ramon vows to help her while staying true to his initial purpose of helping his sister who, as it turns out, is willing to embrace her shadows in order to choose her own destiny...

Unlike most of Peacock's novels, The Misfortunes of Elphin has a distinct plot, built around the adventures of prominent figures of Arthurian legend, like Taliesin, the bard, the princes Elphin, and Seithenyn and King Arthur himself. The drama comes to a satisfactory resolution when Arthur's wife, Gwenyvar, who has been kidnapped by the ambitious King Melvas, is restored to her husband, after some skilful negotiation by Seithenyn and a cunning abbot.

Sent forth on a quest to bring magic to the Vale of Erl, the young lord Alveric obtains a sword of thunderbolt iron, and crosses the twilight border into Elfland, returning with the beautiful Princess Lirazel as his bride. But, for two people from different worlds, however much in love, happiness is not guaranteed, and in the fields, we know, where all things are subject to the remorseless march of time, nothing truly lives happily ever after.

The Jumblies and Other Nonsense Verses by Edward Lear. Narrated by Denis Daly, Sarah Bacaller, and Lucy Bacaller. These 14 poems have been drawn from the Nonsense Books of Edward Lear.

Dorothy Scarborough was an academic and author who had a particular interest in the supernatural. The following collection, first published in 1921, features stories that have a strong comical or satirical focus.

Khaled is a genie who has fallen in love with the beautiful Zehowah, the only child of the powerful Sultan of Nejed. Zehowah is courted by suitors from far and wide. When she seems inclined to accept the proposal of a handsome Indian prince, Khaled, with his special powers, recognizes the prince's deceitful nature and whisks him into the desert to kill and bury him. In consequence, Khaled is punished by losing his rank as a genie and is given the body of a human, though without a soul, which he can obtain only if he wins the love of the proud and headstrong princess Zehowah.

The parable "A Handful of Clay" by Henry Van Dyke tells us much about human potential. Read by award-winning audiobook narrator Mike Vendetti, this is a very good inspirational piece.

In the latter part of the 19th century, a wayward comet strikes the Earth in Algeria and carries away a small group of French and British soldiers from their posts. They are forced to endure a two-year journey around the solar system and back. Famed early science fiction writer Jules Verne chronicles the challenges that confront the reluctant castaways as they attempt to survive on this small body of rock while they await possible return and transfer back to their dearly missed home planet.

Certain Personal Matters is a selection by the author from among his vast output of humorous and insightful short essays and ephemeral pieces written during the 1890s. Many are whimsical and domestic, adopting the persona of an aspiring young writer, living in modest gentility with wife Euphemia. Others explore scientific themes that Wells would later develop as one of the acknowledged fathers of the science fiction genre.

In this volume we meet the novelist, Felix Kennaston, who lives in parallel worlds. One of these is with his wife in their suburban Virginia home and genteel society. The other is with the beautiful Lady Ettarre, who shares his travels through space and time to meet, among many others, Oliver Cromwell, Napoleon, and the Emperor Tiberius. Lusty and magical, romantic and rueful, subtly erotic and laced with sardonic humor, this absorbing book is highly regarded as a masterwork of Fantasy literature.

It was August 19, 2037. The United Nations was just 50 years old. Televisors were still monochromatic. The Nidics had just won the World Series in Prague. Com-Pub observatories were publishing elaborate figures on moving specks in space which they considered to be Martian spaceships on their way to Earth....

During an expedition in the Canary Islands, an archeologist discovers a cave containing tablets with unknown writing. When translated, they tell the tale of decline and fall of Atlantis, which for centuries had been the center of the world. The tablets' author, Deucalion, chronicles the usurpation of Atlantis' throne by force, the oppressive rule of Empress Phorenice, the inevitable rebellion and ultimate destruction of Atlantis, the Lost Continent.

Five years after the Rise of the Furies, the walking dead are dying out. Bites don't infect...but anyone who dies, turns. Skilled outdoorsman Tom Vanicek wants a future for the two children he's protected so fiercely through years of living hell. Now a part of the reconstruction efforts in the decaying ruins of Columbus, Ohio, the Vanicek family see the risks (and the rewards) of their new life. Tom tries to keep to himself so he and his children can get ahead. But in the aftermath of the bloody Uprising by the City's dissident Lefthanders paramilitaries, life will never be the same.

McCauley is a secret agent of Tri Planetary Justice, the only law for almost 30 inhabited worlds. His assignment is to visit the asteroid world of Palas, a lump of rock floating through space with no apparent value. However, not all is as it seems on the underground world of Palas. A narcopeen drug trade flourishes among the con men and thieves that populate Palas.