Showing results by publisher "The Story Circle Ltd" in All Categories

A large sum of money is stolen from Tudways Bank, and a clerk named Franklin Gale is the obvious suspect. But Gale’s father is positive his son is innocent, and hires private detective Sebastian Zambra - who finds that the key to the mystery lies with a five-pound note and a performing monkey.

When Lomax Harder accompanies John Franting to Gontle’s, purveyor of fine firearms, he finds himself in possession of a gun. This accidental acquisition leads to a situation that can have only one outcome....

On Christmas Eye, in the year 1907, Mr Batchel, who would have liked to sleep well lay hopelessly wide awake. A brilliant moon shone into his room - he heard the clocks strike the hour of midnight, and having now lost all hope of falling asleep, he rose from his bed and passed into the library, with the intention of reading himself sleepy - if he could.

A dead Colonel, a small animal and a deformed old man involve Holmes in ‘one of the strangest cases which ever perplexed a man’s brain as he and Watson investigate the mysterious death of Colonel Barclay.

A young typist drinks poison substituted for the medicine left for her by the nurse. The patient insists she was not trying to commit suicide, the nurse asserts her innocence: but no-one else could have got into the room and tampered with the glass . . .

I met a man in the Strand one day that I knew very well - though I had not seen him for years. We walked together to Charing Cross, and there we shook hands and parted. Next morning - I learnt, for the first time, that the man had died six months before.

The Leopard Man, with his sad, dreamy eyes, seems oppressed by gloom. But all attempts to get his story out of him end in frustration: he seems to lack imagination. Until, finally, he reveals the tale of the lion-tamer and the man who hated him…

Tub wants a pet but he's not happy about the strange cat shape with the staring eyes that sits outside his apartment after midnight. And his friends Skid and Lippy don't even believe that its there. But Tub will show them. That is, if the cat's ghost owner doesn't show up.... A spine-tingling story for 7-11 year old's.

A naïve, recently divorced Canadian woman travels to San Jose in Mexico, where she is embraced by a party-loving group of expatriates who, fortified by margaritas, whirl from sexual encounters to experiments in the occult. But Claire, fascinated by the Mexicans and their joyful high spirits, falls in love with the country, and with the vibrant and mercurial Lolo, the man who represents for her the soul of Mexico.

When Mr Robinson Higgins moves into the White House at Barford, he is an instant hit with society. Assured by his old friend Sir Harry that Higgins is a gentleman, old Squire Hearns decides to give his blessing to a romance between his daughter and the newcomer. But the Squire will come to regret this decision.

Settling himself in front of the station fire, a young policeman is little prepared for the account of bloody murder that will be relayed that night. For it seems that Mrs Crosscapel's lodging-house is a place of dark secrets and buried passions - emotions that will soon cloud even his own judgement. Who Killed Zebedee? is a brilliant and highly original tale of horror and the macabre.

It was at a masked ball at the Palais Royal that my fatal quarrel with my first cousin André de Brissac began. The quarrel was about a woman. The women who followed the footsteps of Philip of Orleans were the causes of many such disputes; and there was scarcely one fair head in all that glittering throng which might not have seemed bedabbled with blood.

At a party, the guests are discussing the Saint-Cloud mystery, which has been the talk of Paris for over a month. As they crowd round the judge in the case to hear his opinion, a woman remarks that the crime seemed so horrific, it verged on the supernatural. Not so, retorts the judge - and goes on to tell his listeners of a terrible affair he was once involved in where the uncanny did play a part…

Father Brown accompanies his friend Granby to Sir John Musgrave's castle - but when they arrive, they discover something is very wrong . . .

"I heard, with an unpleasant surprise, close to me, a voice that was drawling, and, I fancied, sneering, repeat the words: 'Food for worms, dead and rotten; God over all.' There was a small window in the wall, here very thick, which had been built up, and in the dark recess of this, deep in the shadow, I now saw a sharp-featured man, sitting with his feet dangling. His keen eyes were fixed on me, and he was smiling cynically...."

One day a hunter came across a pair of mandarin duck, oshidori, swimming together in a river that he was about to cross. To kill oshidori is not good; but Sonjô happened to be very hungry, and he shot at the pair. His arrow pierced the male: the female escaped into the rushes of the farther shore, and disappeared. Sonjô took the dead bird home, and cooked it. That night he dreamed a dreary dream.

A young, hard-up aristocrat decides to visit his wealthy relative in the hope of obtaining a loan. When he arrives at Greylands Court, he is warmly greeted by his cousin, but his hostess is strangely hostile. However, her husband urges the young man to pay no attention to her, and invites him to tour his menagerie. There he sees the star of his cousin’s collection: a sleek, black Brazilian puma.

A rare and strange story from a master of Victorian horror fiction, this enthralling tale of terror will send chills down the spine and thrill anyone who loves to be terrified.

Sixteen thrilling and chilling stories by some of the greatest writers of horror and the supernatural.

A doctor is sitting by his fire one evening when his peace is disturbed by a visitor: a tall woman, dressed in mourning and wearing a thick black veil. It is clear that she is in distress, and she tells him that she has come in a desperate bid to save someone dear to her who is in deadly peril. But she will not let the doctor attend to the patient immediately, insisting that he must wait until nine o’clock the following day - and the dreadful reason becomes apparent when the doctor arrives the next morning.