Showing results by narrator "Cate Barratt" in All Categories

The second of four novels by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle featuring famed detective Sherlock Holmes, The Sign of the Four is set in London but has its origins in colonial India. Four men in Agra make a pact to share the proceeds of a stolen treasure, but they are deceived by a fifth, who finds and takes the loot back to England and hides it. A decade on, young Mary Morstan receives the first of several lustrous pearls in the post - a mysterious gift delivered to her on the same date for several years.

Oscar was not only a prolific author but also attracted the critical attention of many other writers. This collection contains a poem and two nonfiction works by Wilde, and three essays about Wilde by contemporary commentators.  

Ivan Alekseyevich Bunin (1870-1953) was the first Russian author to receive the Nobel Prize for literature. The theme of the title story, which describes the death of a wealthy American in the island of Capri, has distinct links with the more famous treatment of this subject - "Death in Venice", by Thomas Mann. Bunin wrote: "The idea of a story [called initially] 'Death on Capri' came to me and in four days I finished the piece.

France's master of the short story was prolific, producing 13 volumes of tales of everyday life.

Consulting detective Sherlock Holmes is first introduced to the reading and listening public in A Study in Scarlet, along with his soon-to-be fellow sleuth Dr. John Watson. First published in 1887, the novel is one of only four full-length works by the author in his original canon of Holmes cases. The murders in question are committed in London, but the actions leading up to them were perpetrated in America, calling for a transcontinental narration of this most interesting story.

André Gide met Wilde many times and was one of the small number of celebrities who maintained contact with him until his death in Paris in 1900.

New York-born John Kendrick Bangs was associate editor and then editor of Life and Harper magazines, eventually finding his way into the Humour department. Here, he began to write his own satire and humour. Ghosts I Have Met and Some Others is a delightful humorous collection of short tales relating encounters with ghosts, including "The Mystery of My Grandmother's Hair Sofa", "The Exorcism That Failed", and more.

This essay was written in 1891 after Wilde had become enamored of concepts expressive of a liberal socialism. In his view, the aim of socialism should be "to try to reconstruct society on such a basis that poverty will be impossible". Typically, Wilde stresses the vital role played by art and the imperative significance of the artist. 

Guy de Maupassant, French master of the short story, had a simple, efficient style of writing and, like Anton Chekhov, found inspiration for his stories in the daily lives of humans, which often reveal our darker nature. Many of his works also centered on the Franco-Prussian War, in which he served.  

Volume V covers France’s history from the rise of Henry IV (Henry of Navarre) in 1589 to the death of Louis XIV in 1715.

Two British members of Parliament - one an elder conservative, the other a younger man with a liberal bent (and an eye on the older man's daughter) face a difficult choice. Some stranger has left each of them a considerable fortune on condition they give up their well-respected family names and adopt that of Wurzel-Flummery.  

Edith Nesbit's trilogy about a group of children who encounter a sand fairy and, through his intercession, embark on a wild round of adventures has been a staple of juvenile literature since the first volume was published in 1902. The three books are Five Children and It (1902), The Phoenix and the Carpet (1904), and The Story of the Amulet (1906).  

This collection of verse was first published in 1920. It contains 12 poems published in an earlier collection, Prufrock and Other Observations, in 1917, together with 12 later poems, four of which are in French. Both collections were dedicated to Jean Verdenal (1889-1915).   

Guy de Maupassant, French master of the short story, had a simple, efficient style of writing and, like Anton Chekhov, found inspiration for his stories in the daily lives of humans, which often reveal our darker nature. Volume IV of his Complete Original Short Stories contains the following: "The Moribund", "The Gamekeeper", "The Story of a Farm Girl", "The Wreck", "Théodule Sabot’s Confession", "The Wrong House", "The Diamond Necklace", "The Marquis de Fumerol", "The Trip of Le Horla", "Farewell!", "The Wolf", and "The Inn".

Credited by many as the mother of the detective novel, Anna Katharine Green published her first mystery novel - The Leavenworth Case - in 1878, almost a decade before Sherlock Holmes made his appearance. Green's intrepid Ebenezer Gryce, a seasoned New York detective, takes up the case of a brutally murdered millionaire philanthropist. One of the murdered man's two nieces is set to inherit an immense fortune, and she and her cousin are high on the suspect list. 

Guy de Maupassant is widely regarded as the father of the modern short story. As his 13 volumes of short stories attest, he was a prolific writer of this form. He had a simple, efficient style of writing and, like Anton Chekhov, found inspiration for his stories in the daily lives of humans, which often reveal our darker nature. Many of his works also centred on the Franco-Prussian War, in which he served. 

The prolific Alexandre Dumas, père, first published his famous eight-volume crime series in Paris in 1845. It contained 18 stories which, as the author notes in the introduction, had “the added value of giving the modern reader a clear picture of the state of semi-lawlessness which existed in Europe, during the middle ages.” In Volume 3, Dumas relates the tragic fate of Mary Stuart, Queen of Scots, following the death of her husband, Lord Darnley.

First serialized in the French magazine Je sais tout, The Hollow Needle was released in 1909. It featured the writer’s famed gentleman burglar, Arsene Lupin, who encountered the surprisingly apt amateur-detective qualities of young Isidore Beautrelet. As fans of Lupin would come to expect over subsequent novels, the burglar nonetheless always remained at least one step ahead of his adversaries, until...

Sense and Sensibility is Jane Austen’s first published novel. It tells the much-loved story of the two, very different, Dashwood sisters. Elinor suppresses her own emotions out of a keen sense of responsibility to her family and friends, while Marianne is highly expressive and romantic. When their father dies, British law leaves everything to their half-brother and his tight-fisted wife, and Elinor and Marianne, along with their mother and younger sister, have to move to a cottage on a relative’s estate where they experience the full spectrum of romance and betrayal.  

The prolific Alexandre Dumas, père, first published his famous eight-volume crime series in Paris in 1839-40. It contained 18 stories, which, as the author notes in the introduction, had “the added value of giving the modern reader a clear picture of the state of semi-lawlessness which existed in Europe, during the middle ages.” In Volume 5, Dumas relates the lengths to which Antoine Derues will go in his pursuit of money, and the consequences of the dark works of Marie Leroux and her partner Claude Perregaud.