Showing results by author "Stacy Aumonier" in All Categories

James Wilbraham Waite is living in a bedsit in Praxton Street, London, and feels trapped. Trapped by his life, his job...and particularly by the depressing room he rents. He sees it as his personal hell. His only escape is through reading books and imagining adventures. When he unexpectedly inherits a substantial sum of money from an uncle in Canada, he resolves to take off and live his dream.... He wants to experience life in the desert.

Stacy Aumonier's famous depiction of human nature in action. An eight-part series of snapshots, starting with a tramp who feels pangs of envy when he sees someone with a more settled and domesticated life. The focus of the story shifts to this individual, who we discover is jealous of someone else... who in turn is envious of another person and so on.

Fifty great classic short stories selected from the works of the best writers of the last century.

Stacy Aumonier was described by John Galsworthy as "one of the best short-story writers of all time". Odd Fish gives a keen insight into why the Nobel Prize winner believed Aumonier would outlive the writers of his day. In this collection of sketches of London Characters, Aumonier amply exhibits his genius for characterisation, his keen wit and his ruthless ascerbity.

A spine-tingling collection of weird and wonderful horror stories, featuring ghosts, curses, strange phenomena, ghouls, black magic, and demonic apparitions. Do you dare to listen?

An absorbing set of stories set in Victorian and Edwardian London. Old Fags by Stacy Aumonier, The One Million Pound Bank Note by Mark Twain, The Omnibus by Sir Arthur Quiller-Couch, A Circular Tour by W. W. Jacobs, The Hired Baby by Marie Corelli, Juxtapositions by Stacy Aumonier, Mixed Relations by W. W. Jacobs, The Inconsiderate Waiter by J. M. Barrie, The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde by Robert Louis Stevenson, The Talking Horse by F. Anstey Guthrie, London Street Markets by Henry Mayhew,

Stacy Aumonier was a British writer, best known for his outstanding short stories. Nobel Prize-winner John Galsworthy described Aumonier as "one of the best short story writers of all time" and predicted that he would "outlive all the writers of his day." Aumonier wrote over 85 short stories in his lifetime. He has been described as the "British Maupassant" owing to his captivating plots and his ability to create complex characters with just a few lines of carefully selected prose.

One of Stacy Aumonier's best-loved short stories, telling the story of a surprising evening with Colin St Clair Chasseloup: "the kind of man who always looked as though he had just had a cold bath, done Swedish drill, and then passed through the hairdresser’s on his way to your presence." Chasseloup and the narrator are dragged along by their wives to a concert which interests neither of them. Both men make their escape from the concert, and decide to go for a drink, forgetting that it is a Sunday night and the pubs are closed.

The small minded and prudish sister of an English clergyman travels on her own to a hotel in Bordeaux. When she closes the door of her room after returning from a bath, she finds a man asleep on the bed. She realises then she is in the wrong room, but the door handle has come off in her hand, and she can’t get out. Then she discovers the man is dead. To be found in a strange man’s bedroom in the night is bad enough, but to be found in a dead man’s bedroom was even worse.

Everybody remembers Wych Street, a road in London which no longer exists. But nobody can agree on exactly where it used to run. Stacy Aumonier's classic story follows the catastrophic events sparked by a dispute over the location of the elusive street, from pub brawls and murders, to the infamous siege of Aztec Street, to the ignominious ending of a promising young lawyer's career, a broken engagement and a foreign policy fiasco.

Nobel Prize winner (and Forsyte Saga author) John Galsworthy described Stacy Aumonier as ‘one of the best short-story writers of all time’ and predicted that, through the best of his stories, he would ‘outlive all the writers of his day’. Old Fags is one of Stacy Aumonier's most memorable stories. Set in a miserable and overcrowded block of flats in London, whose inhabitants struggle daily against poverty and starvation, Old Fags is the pariah of the building.

The story of two brothers, who could not be more opposite, experience the Great War in different ways. Giles, the elder, popular, sporty brother enlists as a soldier. Robin, the younger, sickly brother is rejected when he tries to join up. Yet a mysterious bond exists between the brothers. When Giles leaves for the trenches, it is as though Robin goes with him. He experiences all the sights, sounds, smells and emotions of his elder brother.

Nobel Prize winner (and Forsyte Saga author) John Galsworthy described Stacy Aumonier as ‘one of the best short-story writers of all time’ and predicted that, through the best of his stories, he would ‘outlive all the writers of his day’. A Source of Irritation is one such story. Sam Gates, an elderly and somewhat irritable agricultural labourer, is thinning a field of turnips in Norfolk one morning during the Great War. Suddenly he sees an ‘airyplane’ behaving oddly in the sky.

"Stacy Aumonier was profoundly in love with life, and impregnated through and through by curiosity about life and its manifestations. All types were fish to his net; and he has given us the fruits of his passion for existence with a deft and always interesting fidelity. He is never heavy, never boring, and never really trivial and can't he write?" John Galsworthy. The stories are: Miss Bracegirdle Does Her Duty, "Face",

A superb collection of classic ghost stories from the world's great storytellers. 1. "Lot No. 249" by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. 2. "The Phantom Rickshaw" by Rudyard Kipling. 3. "The Haunted Dolls’ House" by M. R James. 4. "Ligeia" by Edgar Allan Poe. 5. "The Monkey’s Paw" by W. W. Jacobs. 6. "The Finest Story in the World" by Rudyard Kipling. 7. "The Apparition of Mrs. Veal" by Daniel Defoe. 8. "Metzengerstein" by Edgar Allan Poe. 9. "They" by Rudyard Kipling. 10. "Labadoyere’s Doom" by Lord Halifax. 11. "Lost in a Pyramid" by Louisa May Alcott. And more...

The world since earliest times has always had spies. Information is a valuable commodity and even more so in times of war or tension. Many authors and poets have had real life incarnations as spies from Christopher Marlowe and Aphra Behn to Daniel Defoe. But it’s a dangerous game. Working in a murky, secretive world where any trust given could be at the expense of your life.