Showing results by publisher "Spoken Realms" in All Categories

Mr. John Bellingham, amateur Egyptologist, abruptly goes missing, leaving behind a strangely vexatious will that cannot be executed without proof or presumption of death. Mr Bellingham's family are left virtually penniless, and under suspicion of his murder. Two years later, young Dr. Paul Berkeley in the course of his duties befriends Mr. Bellingham's younger brother, and the latter's beautiful daughter, and takes their problem to his old friend and mentor the famous medical jurist Dr. John Thorndyke. Can Thorndyke determine what really became of John Bellingham?

Mr. Mulliner, the irrepressible raconteur and sage of the bar-parlour of the Angler's Rest public house, narrates nine tales of his extraordinary family.

Katherine Mansfield was a master of the short story. With characters in psychological struggles resulting in a major life shift or revelation, her style influenced contemporary and friend Virginia Woolf as well as modern authors including Alice Munro. These stories were written between 1920 and 1921, while she was ill with tuberculosis. She died in 1923 at the age of 34. Fifteen stories are included in this recording.

A quiet, unassuming man who loves nothing more than his daughter, his music, and his violincello. His life is seriously disrupted by a zealous young man who sees a disparity between the monies paid out to the Warden and the monies paid out to the 12 bedesmen that live in the hospital of Barchester Cathedral as charity cases, according to Hiram's Will.

While exploring the beach, four adventurous children make the acquaintance of a very odd creature: a sand fairy. When they have adapted to the brusque and forthright demeanor of the fairy, they discover that he has unusual powers, which he can be persuaded to demonstrate. As a result, the children enjoy many bizarre adventures, some of which are dangerous, but all of which are entertaining. Five Children and It is the first volume of a trilogy.

Almost a decade and a half after the death of Oscar Wilde - and dealing with the fall-out of an unsuccessful and financially ruinous libel action - Lord Alfred "Bosie" Douglas for the first time gives his version of the disastrous relationship between the two men, and Wilde's eventual disgrace and imprisonment. He also examines the literary and cultural legacy of Oscar Wilde.

In the Halow system, one of Earth’s three sister star systems, tek and magic - humans and fae - are at war. Kesh Lasota is a ghost in the machine. Invisible to tek, she’s hired by the criminal underworld to carry illegal messages through the Halow system. But when one of those messages kills its recipient, Kesh finds herself on the run with a bounty on her head and a quick-witted marshal on her tail. Proving her innocence should be straightforward. Until a warfae steals the evidence she needs.

While he is most famous for his didactic fable, The Prophet, the works of Kahlil Gibran (1883-1931) address a wide range of philosophical and social issues. The overriding theme of his narratives is not the religious universalism that he is supposed to represent, but rather the inevitable conflict between human aspirations and the remorseless machinations of fate.

Jane is broke, she's just lost her job and her landlady has kicked her out. When an amorous young man approaches her on a park bench it soon becomes clear that he has mistaken her for her cousin Renata. Their mothers were identical twins and even though Jane has never met her, Renata's fiance insists they too are identical. He's desperate. It seems Renata sleepwalked into a meeting of her father's friends and overheard their criminal plans. She's lied about hearing anything but they doubt her story and are holding her prisoner.

One of the best-known collections of W. B. Yeats' prose, The Celtic Twilight explores the old connection between the Irish people and the magical world of fairies. Yeats, by traveling the land in the early 20th century and talking to the common people about their experiences with the creatures, yielded a colorful overview of Celtic fairy folklore.

This is a selection of the myths and legends of Scotland, filled with local color, from Scottish journalist, folklorist, and writer Donald Alexander Mackenzie. These stories offer not only glimpses of ancient times and of old habits of thought and life but also of the country itself at different times of the year.

Hard Times is set in and around Coketown, a fictitious, Victorian mill town in the North of England. A town of red brick, machinery, and tall chimneys. A town blackened by soot, shrouded in mist, and choked by smoke. The working men and women of Coketown, referred to generally as "Hands" as if they were merely extensions of the machinery they operate, and not individuals with loves and likes, memories and inclinations, souls to weary and souls to hope.

Lucie Manette, long believing herself to be an orphan, meets with London banker Jarvis Lorry in the Royal George Hotel in Dover and finds out her father, Dr. Alexandre Manette, is alive and has been held for the last 18 years as a political prisoner in the Bastille. The three are reunited in an attic garret in Paris, close to the wine shop run by Ernest Defarge, the doctor's former servant, and his wife, Thérèse.

Eleven adventures of PG Wodehouse's longest-serving 'hero', Stanley Featherstonehaugh Ukridge: great brain, potential millionaire—and foe of the human race. First, ten scenes of his bachelor days, as (among other things) dog trainer, mastermind of an 'accident' syndicate, boxing promoter, and political campaigner. And then, as a newly married man, embarking upon a foolproof enterprise as a chicken farmer, on a borrowed farm, with 'borrowed' hens, and an entire lack of knowledge.

Get ready to continue the real-life drama from behind the walls of one of the country's worst maximum-security facilities. Experience horrific assaults, blood-thirsty murders, and the kind of drama that needs to be heard to be believed. Simon King shares a raw and uncensored look beyond the razor wire, giving you the opportunity to see how life really runs inside a place filled with those whom society would rather forget.

R. Austin Freeman presents eight cases for his ingenious Edwardian "scientific investigator", Dr. John Thorndyke, including: a classic locked-room murder mystery; a race to find a disappeared child; a dead woman discovered on a train; the story of the vengeful ghost of a murdered Chinese mandarin; and the enigmatic Moabite Cypher. As ever, Dr. Thorndyke meticulously collects the evidence of footprints, dust, hairs, and fibres, and even a single blue sequin, to unravel the mystery and see that justice is done.

It is a black Chinese cabinet decorated with figures that once ignited little Chloe Dane's imagination. It was in the drawing-room of her family home, Danesborough. Later, it held secrets that shamed and sickened her. Poor but honest Chloe hasn't been to Danesborough for years and believed she was the last of her family. So when a distant cousin introduces himself and declares that she will be his heir, she finds herself in the huge house again. And she wants none of it.

A brilliant short story demonstrating how a truly balanced set of dilemmas can allow a reader to conclude two different endings. In this case a young man is faced with two doors. One holds a door with a ferocious tiger. The other? A beautiful lady whom he would immediately marry. The struggle comes not so much in defining a choice, but the reasons that brought the young man to the choice, and who helps him make the choice.

"In the first place, Cranford is in possession of the Amazons; all the holders of houses above a certain rent are women." This is how our guide and narrator, Mary Smith, introduces us to the small English country town of Cranford. Young, modern Mary gives us her Austen-like view of small-town customs, Victorian values, decorum, and etiquette. Mary gives us a charming, sometimes gently mocking comedy of manners.

Lady Molly of Scotland Yard is a collection of short stories about Molly Robertson-Kirk, an early fictional female detective. First published in 1910, Orczy's female detective was the precursor of the lay sleuth who relies on brains rather than brawn. As well as being one of the first novels to feature a female detective as the main character, Orczy's outstandingly successful and brilliant police officer preceded her real-life female counterparts by a decade.