Showing results by narrator "David Thorn" in All Categories

American poet, critic, and short-story writer Edgar Allan Poe is universally recognized for his cultivation of the macabre in fiction. His stories are characterized by an original kind of supernatural horror, often using the awareness of death as a catalyzing force in its own right. His tales and poems brim with psychological depth and intense imagery, made vivid through his musical language and hypnotic rhythms, which are especially captivating when heard aloud.

Henry James' short but much acclaimed suspenseful novel, set in Venice, concerns an American editor's determination to acquire a collection of unpublished letters to the former mistress of a famous deceased poet. This Miss bordereau is now very elderly, living modestly in a dilpidated old palazzo with her shy, awkward and uncomely niece Tita, an unwitting "pawn" in the plot.

Welcome to the French Revolution, where a dashing English aristocrat risks his life to enter France and save innocents from the guillotine.

The League of the Scarlet Pimpernel is a secret society of English aristocrats who are determined to rescue their French counterparts from execution. Their leader is the mysterious Scarlet Pimpernel, whose name comes from the drawing of a red flower he uses to sign his messages.

These entertaining stories of nature, with a moral lesson thrown in for good measure, are fun as well as thought provoking.

Sir Richard's family has spent years waiting for him to die, but despite his weak heart, the old man simply refuses to cooperate. In the meantime, he makes their lives miserable by changing his will every few months, depending on which of his strange brood he favors that moment. Now he calls them together to announce his most diabolical revision yet: complete disinheritance of all the wastrels who bear his name. But he never gets a chance to sign the papers—by morning, he's dead. Scotland Yard sends Inspector Cockrill.

Claimed as the first detective story in the English language, Wilkie Collins weaves his classic mystery through a series of often "meandering" narratives by various characters in the book who had first hand knowledge surrounding the disappearance of a large valuable yellow diamond (the Moonstone) from the room of it's young owner, Rachel Verinder.

This Series, in seven parts, tells the story of America from the earliest founding through the days of Woodrow Wilson and The Great War (World War I). You'll hear stories of great explorers and pioneers.

Essential learning for any young student of American History, biographies of George Washington, Benjamin Franklin, Daniel Webster and Abraham Lincoln. These stories help us get to know the gentleman as people and then take us through their great accomplishments that make us appreciate their place in American history.

A Golden Deed must be something more than mere display of fearlessness. Grave and resolute fulfilment of duty is required to give it the true weight. For the true metal of a Golden Deed is self-devotion. Selfishness is the dross and alloy that gives the unsound ring to many an act that has been called glorious. And, on the other hand, it is not only the valor, which meets a thousand enemies upon the battlefield, or scales the walls in a forlorn hope, that is of true gold....

A collection of classic Christmas stories, including:

• 1. "The Royal Truffle Hunt" by Anthony Thorn
• 2. "A Christmas Dream and How it Came True" by Louisa Mae Alcott
• 3. "The Sabots of Little Wolff" by Francois Coppee
• 4. "A Christmas Guest" by Selma Lanerlof
• 5. "The Christmas Goblins" by Charles Dickens
• 6. "At Christmas Time" by Anton Chehkov
• 7. "The Heavenly Christmas Tree" by Fydor Dostoyevsky

This Series, in seven parts, tells the story of America from the earliest founding through the days of Woodrow Wilson and The Great War (World War I). In this volume, you'll hear stories of: "The Struggle for Liberty... The Boston Tea-Party"; "Paul Revere's Ride"; "The Birth of a Great Nation"; and much more.

The book chronicles - sometimes dramatically, sometimes poignantly - the king's imprisonment after his defeat in the civil war, the events and paliamentary debates leading up to the charges of high treason being brought against the king, and a virtual transcript of the trial itself - bringing into our living-rooms the spirited arguments between Charles and the president of the court, Lord Bradshaw.

In the setting of what is present-day Kazakhstan, Tolstoy examines two psychological problems. The first dilemma is that of a young man who desires both fulfilling love and a place as a respected member of society. The other is the difficulty of a primitive society to accept domination by a higher culture that has no understanding of the traditions it asks its colonists to cast aside.

Dick Heldar is a war correspondent and an artist, well known for the drawings he sends home to the London papers from wars in exotic places like Sudan. When he returns to London, he attempts to make a career for himself as a serious artist and re-encounters his childhood sweetheart, Maisie. He then learns that a minor problem with his eyes is actually the onset of an incurable blindness, the result of a head injury during the war.

Chaison Fanning, the admiral of a fleet of warships, has been captured and imprisoned by his enemies, but is suddenly rescued and set free. He flees through the sky to his home city to confront the ruler who betrayed him. And perhaps even to regain his lovely, powerful, and subversive wife, Venera, who he has not seen since she fled with the key to the artificial sun at the center of Virga, Candesce.

This extraordinary account of Wolsey's rise and fall from power was written between 1554-1558 by his gentleman usher, George Cavendish. This rare document was edited by former Royal Holloway College (University of London) faculty member and Tudor period authority, Roger Lockyer.

Set and written in 1726, This is a marvelously imaginative tale of the four voyages of Lemuel Gulliver. He finds himself shipwrecked and the prisoner of captors ranging in size from 6 inches tall to 60 feet tall and of various other persuasions. But this is just the beginning of a story written, strangely enough to satirize the foolishness and vices of modern men as they were perceived at the time. No one, young or old, can ever forget the Lilliputians and the Yahoos that starred in these wonderful and riveting stories of long ago.

The wonderful adventure story of two boys, one the son of a mysterious impoverished grandee and the other a handicapped son of a n'eer-do-well drunkard, who together travel through Europe on a secret mission to save Samavia from its wicked rulers.

The story opens in the country parsonage of Dr. Primrose, a kindly man who has a good heart, a good family, and a good income. Suddenly, his idyllic life is cruelly devastated by a series of misfortunes, and he ends up in prison. Yet, despite all this calamity and injustice, the vicar never loses sight of Christian morality, a conviction which lends him genuine nobility and, in the end, also brings justice and the restoration of his family and fortune.

The gentle story of a Labrador puppy (Dollypogs) and her two pals (big old Jetset and little Snuggles) both orphaned but adopted by Dollypog's loving Master, David Thorn. How they all came together and their adventures as a loving family. Very sweet and touching.