Showing results by narrator "Gabrielle de Cuir" in All Categories

Sixteen-year-old Pelly has a master plan: After years of therapy, medication, and even a stint in a mental hospital, she’s finally ready to re-enter the world of the living. Pelly has been suffering from severe panic attacks ever since her best friend, Tara, disappeared from a mall six years ago. And her plan seems to be working, until an unkempt girl accompanied by an older man walks into the coffee shop where she works. Pelly thinks she’s seen a ghost, until the girl mouths “help me” on the way out, and Pelly knows she’s just seen Tara.

Agatha Webb and her cook are found dead in the early hours of the morning after a successful party, and it seems just about anyone could be the killer. Some suspect her aging husband; others think it a robbery gone too far. A few nosy villagers draw a connection between this murder and the deaths of her six children so many years prior: Was she truly a victim, a grieving mother? Or did she play some role in these deaths? The list of suspects grows when a certain wealthy townsmen is blackmailed by someone who believes he murdered Agatha Webb and her cook.

Rita Van Arsdale, a member of the high society in New York, is invited to an elegant party where she falls in love with a gentleman called Mr. Durand, who returns her feelings and proposes to her. But their plans are derailed after Mrs. Fairbrother, who has arrived at the party wearing a spectacular diamond, is discovered murdered in an alcove. The prime suspect is none other than Mr. Durand, so Miss Van Arsdale gets down to work to reconstruct the true course of events and prove that her love is indeed innocent.

During its heyday, the Chelsea Hotel in New York City was a home and safe haven for Bohemian artists, poets, and musicians such as Bob Dylan, Gregory Corso, Allen Ginsberg, Janis Joplin, and Dee Dee Ramone. This oral history of the famed hotel peers behind the iconic facade and delves into the mayhem, madness, and brilliance that stemmed from the hotel in the 1980s and 1990s.

Old Roger Melton has died, leaving behind one of the greatest fortunes in Europe. His arrogant relative Ernest Melton expects to be the heir, but, much to the family's surprise, Roger leaves his vast estate to his obscure young nephew, Rupert Sent Leger. But Rupert's newfound wealth comes with strange conditions attached, one of which is that he must inhabit the old castle of Vissarion in the remote Balkan nation known as the Land of the Blue Mountains.

Two tales from the golden age of supernatural fiction.

Algernon Blackwood, a journalist and broadcast narrator, was one of the most prolific writers of ghost stories in the history of the genre. The title story, "The Touch of Pan", explores the lingering presence of myth in everyday life. In "The Glamour of the Snow", Blackwood winds a tale about a man's infatuation with a supernatural winter beauty. In "The Attic", the ghost of an usurer haunts the old Chateaux and, on the anniversary of a young boy's death, the boy's cat brings the family together. "The Willows" follows two campers who are on a canoe trip down the Danube.

Best known for his masterpiece of horror, Dracula, Bram Stoker wrote a number of other novels and many short stories, all with supernatural themes or filled with a physical terror reminiscent of Poe. The title story, "Dracula's Guest", was originally part of the great novel but was excised and published separately. The accompanying stories, such as "The Squaw", "The Judge's House", and "The Burial of the Rats", are classic tales of the macabre in their own right.

At first blush, Widdershins is a conventional haunted house story involving an unsuccessful writer who moves into an empty house in hope that isolation will help his failing creativity. His sensitivity and imagination are enhanced by his seclusion, but his art, his only friend, and his sanity are all destroyed in the process. It can be interpreted as narrating the gradual possession of the protagonist by a mysterious, possessive feminine spirit, or as a realistic description of a psychotic outbreak culminating in catatonia and murder, told from the psychotic subject’s view.

Guy de Maupassant was a master of the short-story genre, producing more than 300 during his lifetime. These concise stories contain twists and shocking turns, and range from the fantastic and supernatural, with characters descending into madness....

Originally published pseudonymously in 1893, Maggie: A Girl of the Streets follows the tragic tale of Maggie and her life in the harsh streets and tenements of the New York City Bowery district. Initially rejected by publishers for being viewed as too brutal and accurate in its descriptions of poverty and female sexuality, Stephen Crane published the work at his own expense. In Maggie's struggle to find love, acceptance, and economic security, Crane creates a portrait which mirrors the struggle of all the women of America at the end of the 19th century.

In book one of the Shooting Stars series, Catch a Falling Star, best-selling author Leah Downing introduces Lauren St. Germain, a federal investigator accused of assisting the Taliban in a homeland terrorist attack targeting her husband. Scandal, mystery, and one of Hollywood’s leading men refuse to let her fade from the public’s eye. Her relationship status? It’s complicated...and that’s not even the half of it.

Psychologist Loche Newirth becomes hunted when he sees a painting that opens a window onto the afterlife. An ancient order of men seeking to control the art pursue him across the world, through centuries, into madness, and beyond. The first part of Michael B. Koep's the Newirth Mythology The Invasion of Heaven is mystery, adventure, myth, betrayal, murder, and madness. Loche Newirth wonders if it was his fall: The 50-foot drop from the rocky cliff to the icy water below. Is this why he has been hallucinating?

In the spring of 1338, young William of Leaves knows only of remedies, herbs, and his mother’s kindness. When he is forced to watch as she is dragged to a witch’s pyre by a mob led by the bishop of London, the mysterious immortal apothecary Albion Ravistelle promises the boy a chance at vengeance. In the summer of 1972, Helen Storm is a stoned groupie on the Sunset Strip with a very special condition: She is immortal. When her life intersects with a famous guitar player, she is introduced to her future as a deadly and remorseless assassin.

Michael B. Koep’s final installment in the Newirth Mythology trilogy brings a psychologist face to face with his greatest fear: madness. On the other side of the world, a professor of mythology struggles to interpret a sudden shift in the historical timeline, the mysterious discovery of the ruins of an ancient city, and the anomalous nature of Loche’s writing.

Skyboat Media presents The Best of Katherine Mansfield, an original compilation of stories from one of the defining writers of modernist fiction. Katherine Mansfield’s stories shine a light on the duality and the overpowering nature of psychology through her delicate, nuanced, and often stream-of-consciousness narration style. None of her stories seem to settle on just one theme; like life they encompass the intersectional nature of all moments, from the most minute and mundane to the most terrific and tragic.

In this darkly comic parable of sin and sainthood, a fifteenth-century peasant girl, Joan of Domrémy, must secure an audience with the derelict Dauphin of France, that he might unite his armies under her leadership against ongoing English invasion. But with her angelically inspired project seeming doomed to failure and ridicule, and with no royal meeting in sight, the girl strikes a dangerous bargain with an old acquaintance—a spirit of uncertain motives—leading to an existential showdown between piety and personal pride which may cost Joan not only her soul but the future of her nation.

In A Room of One’s Own, Virginia Woolf’s classic six-part essay, the iconic Modernist writer takes on the misogyny of writing, publishing, and creativity in her time. Through the imagined sister of William Shakespeare, who in her argument possesses the same talent and intellect as the famous playwright, Woolf lays out the fundamental truth that one requires room to express creativity and time to explore and see it through. Genius unexpressed is genius nonetheless, and had Shakespeare’s sister the means to make her own art, she would have had the same lasting legacy as her brother.

Between repairing boat engines and caring for her teenage daughter, Irena Fishbone is always on the run. Still owed ten years child support by her ex-husband, she’s made her own way and built a thriving business. But when she and her ex join a shipboard celebration with a close-knit group of old high school friends, she’s furious when the stubborn man refuses to wear a lifejacket and the two of them are swept away by a rogue wave.

A small town. Two secret sisters with troubled pasts. Long-buried lies. Two books in a psychological suspense series collection.