Showing results by narrator "Scott Graham" in All Categories

Sylvie and Bruno was the last novel completed by Lewis Carroll and was published in two parts. The first volume, which is the subject of this recording, appeared in 1889. The story is presented by an unnamed narrator, who oscillates between two worlds: a fantasy fairyland, populated by characters similar to those in Alice in Wonderland, and the real world environs of a small village by the sea, in which the narrator has taken up temporary residence for health reasons.

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.

"[T]he longer I practise, the more I become convinced that the microscope is the sheet-anchor of the medical jurist." So declares "scientific investigator", Dr John Thorndyke, as he interprets the clues found in the likes of bloodstains, dust, ash, hairs and fibres, and broken glass, to evolve "an ordered train of evidence from a mass of facts apparently incoherent and unrelated," leading to the solution of the mystery. This book contains five tales of intrigue, murder, mutiny, pathos, and romance - including four in Freeman's then revolutionary "inverted detective story" format.

Richard Hannay, returned colonial mining engineer, is thoroughly bored with life in London, and only a day away from taking the next boat back to the Cape. But then he encounters mysterious American spy Franklin P. Scudder, on the run from foreign agents seeking to prevent him from revealing an assassination plot designed to throw Britain into war with Germany. And when Scudder is murdered in Hannay's flat, Hannay finds himself on the run from both the police and Scudder's enemies - and bound in honour to pursue the dead man's work and save his country from disaster....

James "Jimmy" Crocker - only son of a jobbing actor, former journalist, and now penitent playboy - returns to his native United States under an assumed name, after five years cutting a swathe through London Society on his rich stepmother's money. But far from picking up the threads of his peaceable pre-wealth life, instead Jimmy rapidly becomes enmeshed in plots and schemes of espionage and kidnapping.

Floyd Dell has been called "one of the most flamboyant, versatile, and influential American Men of Letters of the first third of the 20th century". Though he was primarily a newspaper and magazine editor, most prominently of the radical left-wing magazine The Masses, he also published many best-selling feminist works. As a staunch advocate of feminism, socialism, psychoanalysis, and progressive education, his writing greatly shocked the American bourgeoisie at the time, to the point where it became so controversial, he was put on trial twice for his subversive literature.

In a genteel ABC teashop on the Norfolk Road, Miss Polly Burton (of the Evening Observer) spends her lunch breaks listening to a mysterious old man, as he unravels cases of murder, blackmail, theft, and deceit that have filled the headlines, and baffled police and public alike. But to him, they are not "mysteries" at all - for Polly's brilliant but eccentric companion, "There is no such thing as a mystery in connection with any crime, provided intelligence is brought to bear upon its investigation."

Almost a decade and a half after the death of Oscar Wilde - and dealing with the fall-out of an unsuccessful and financially ruinous libel action - Lord Alfred "Bosie" Douglas for the first time gives his version of the disastrous relationship between the two men, and Wilde's eventual disgrace and imprisonment. He also examines the literary and cultural legacy of Oscar Wilde.

When Mike Jackson's father suffers a serious financial setback, all Mike's hopes of "Varsity Blue" and a career playing his beloved cricket are dashed. Instead, he must go out and earn his living - in the alien world of the New Asiatic Bank, under the management of his nemesis Mr. John Bickersdyke. At first, all seems black; but then Mike finds that he has an ally, in the immaculate form of the irrepressible Psmith, who is likewise sentenced to a career in commerce. And Psmith has plans for the reform of Mr Bickersdyke....

This classic collection of macabre tales, one of 10 such anthologies by Algernon Blackwood, was first published in 1916. It includes, "The Empty House", "A Haunted Island", "A Case of Eavesdropping", "Keeping His Promise", "With Intent to Steal", "The Wood of the Dead", "Smith: An Episode in a Lodging-House", "A Suspicious Gift", "The Strange Adventures of a Private Secretary in New York", and "Skeleton Lake: An Episode in Camp".

Eternal optimist Stanley Featherstonehaugh Ukridge conceives another foolproof scheme to make himself - and his adoring new wife, Millie - rich: chicken farming! "No expenses, large profits, quick returns. Chickens, eggs, and the money streaming in faster than you can bank it." Dragging along his long-suffering old friend, novelist Jeremy Garnet, Ukridge begins his enterprise on a borrowed farm, with "borrowed" hens and a total lack of knowledge. Things soon prove a little trickier than expected on the farm....

The first four stories were first published as a collection in 1891. The final story, "The Portrait of Mr W. H.", originally published separately in 1889, was later added to an expanded collection. All the stories deal with personal relationships and their inevitable influence on the course of a person's life.

Gilbert Keith Chesterton (1874-1936), was an English writer, poet, philosopher, dramatist, journalist, orator, lay theologian, biographer, and literary and art critic. Chesterton is best known for his fictional priest-detective Father Brown. In The Club of Queer Trades, narrator 'Cherub' Swinburne and his friends, the eccentric former judge Basil Grant, and Basil's younger brother, private detective Rupert Grant, encounter six curious mysteries, each involving someone who makes a living in an extraordinary and bizarre - in the language of the time a 'queer' - way.

Once upon a time, people wrote fables featuring untrustworthy ravens, wicked wolves, insincere monkeys, and power-hungry lions. Told repeatedly through generations and spread throughout the world, classic stories abound in which noble heroes and heroines matched wits with these typically treacherous beasts. But what's that you say? You feel as though you're surrounded by just these sorts of characters at work? Well, you're not alone.

Young ex-slave Gideon Bardsley is a brilliant inventor, but the job is less glamorous than one might think, especially since the assassination attempts started. Worse yet, they're trying to destroy his greatest achievement: a calculating engine called Fiddlehead, which provides undeniable proof of something awful enough to destroy the world. Both man and machine are at risk from forces conspiring to keep the Civil War going and the money flowing. Bardsley has no choice but to ask his patron, former president Abraham Lincoln, for help.

Nurse Mercy Lynch is elbows deep in bloody laundry at a war hospital in Richmond, Virginia, when Clara Barton comes bearing bad news: Mercy’s husband has died in a POW camp. On top of that, a telegram from the West Coast declares that her estranged father is gravely injured, and he wishes to see her. Mercy sets out toward the Mississippi River. Once there, she’ll catch a train over the Rockies. When Mercy finally arrives in St. Louis, the only Tacoma-bound train is pulled by a terrifying Union-operated steam engine called the Dreadnought.

Seven centuries in the future, the sport of American football has never been bigger, never been faster, never been more lethal. Trillions of fans from all over the galaxy watch six unique races battle in contests so violent that deaths are part of the stat sheet. Star quarterback Quentin Barnes has led his beloved Ionath Krakens to glory on the gridiron and become the most-recognized individual in history, but it is off the field where his world crumbles around him.

Seven centuries in the future, the sport of American football has never been bigger, never been faster, never been more lethal. Trillions of fans from all over the galaxy watch six unique races battle in contests so violent that deaths are part of the stat sheet. Star quarterback Quentin Barnes has led his beloved Ionath Krakens to glory on the gridiron and become the most-recognized individual in history, but it is off the field where his world crumbles around him.

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.

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.