Showing results by author "G.K. Chesterton" in All Categories

With his black hat, huge umbrella, unworldly simplicity and 'beaming but breathless geniality', Father Brown is one of fiction's best-loved amateur detectives. Short and tatty, but with the wisdom and insight to unravel the most wayward of criminal minds, he has entertained generations. In this collection of 13 full-cast dramatisations, the high priest of detection becomes involved in seven intriguing cases that will tax even his mental powers to the limit.

Chesterton's allegorical masterpiece is a surreal, psychologically thrilling novel that centres on seven anarchists in turn of the century London who call themselves by the names of days of the week. The story begins when poet Gabriel Syme is recruited as a detective to a secret anarchist division of Scotland Yard by a shrouded, nameless person. Syme infiltrates a secret meeting of anarchists who are intent on destroying the world and becomes known as 'Thursday', one of the seven members of the Central Anarchist Council.

A collection of thrilling tales from the Golden Age of Detective Fiction, including six full-cast dramas and a short story read by Benedict Cumberbatch In the first half of the 20th century, the detective story exploded in popularity. Innovative authors penned whodunits, whydunits and...

In Heretics, G.K. Chesterton delivers a sharp, witty, and unapologetically bold critique of the intellectual movements and cultural trends of the early 20th century. With his signature blend of humor, paradox, and piercing insight, Chesterton examines the philosophical “heresies” of his time...

Step into one of the most brilliant works of Christian apologetics ever written. In Orthodoxy, G.K. Chesterton unleashes his wit, paradox, and razor-sharp intellect to defend the enduring power of faith against skepticism, materialism, and modern chaos. First published in 1908, this timeless...

Shabby and lumbering, with a face like a Norfolk dumpling, Father Brown makes for an improbable super-sleuth. But his innocence is the secret of his success: refusing the scientific method of detection, he adopts instead an approach of simple sympathy, interpreting each crime as a work of art, and each criminal as a man no worse than himself… Here you will find the complete Father Brown stories in the chronological order of their original publication. The Innocence of Father Brown Starts at Chapter 1, The Wisdom of Father Brown Starts at Chapter 13.

In The Everlasting Man, G. K. Chesterton paints the full panorama of human history in light of Christian tradition. Highly influential in C. S. Lewis' conversion from atheism to Christianity, this book continues to inspire new generations of listeners.

Both by calling and conviction Father Brown knew better than most of us that every man is dignified when he is dead. But even he felt a pang of incongruity when he was knocked up at daybreak and told that Sir Aaron Armstrong had been murdered. There was something absurd and unseemly about secret violence in connection with so entirely entertaining and popular a figure. For Sir Aaron Armstrong was entertaining to the point of being comic; and popular in such a manner as to be almost legendary.

Certain of the great roads going north out of London continue far into the country a sort of attenuated and interrupted spectre of a street, with great gaps in the building, but preserving the line. Here will be a group of shops, followed by a fenced field or paddock, and then a famous public-house, and then perhaps a market garden or a nursery garden, and then one large private house, and then another field and another inn, and so on.

Mr. Edward Nutt, the industrious editor of The Daily Reformer, sat at his desk, opening letters and marking proofs to the merry tune of a typewriter, worked by a vigorous young lady. He was a stoutish, fair man, in his shirt-sleeves; his movements were resolute, his mouth firm and his tones final; but his round, rather babyish blue eyes had a bewildered and even wistful look that rather contradicted all this. Nor indeed was the expression altogether misleading.

The Absence of Mr Glass: "But What about the two voices?" asked Maggie, staring. - "Have you never heard a ventriloquist?" asked Father Brown. "Don't you know they speak first in their natural voice, and then answer themselves in just that shrill, squeaky, unnatural voice that you heard?" - There was a long silence, and Dr Hood regarded the little man who had spoken with a dark and attentive smile. "You are certainly a very ingenious person," he said; "it could not have been done better in a book.

"The Perishing of the Pendragons" by G.K. Chesterton is a Father Brown story where Father Brown is invited on a boat trip around the Cornish coast, where he encounters a family called the Pendragons, who are plagued by a mysterious curse tied to a local legend about a Spanish prisoner and a treacherous coastline.

"The Flying Stars" is one of Chesterton's mysteries featuring Father Brown. It's actually the first of these short stories I've read and I picked it up more because it's a Christmas mystery than to meet Father Brown, even though he is a character I'd like to read more of. The story takes place at an English manor home on Boxing Day. A young lady and the young man who lives next door are present, as is the girl's father, Colonel Adams, a newly arrived uncle and a quite rich godfather.

Father Brown (Chesterton's sharp-witted detective priest) and Flambeau (the reformed master-thief and Brown's constant companion) are on a little vacation in Norfolk, invited to visit the mysterious Prince Saradine. It doesn't go well. Sure, Flambeau gets some good fishing in, but there's also a duel with rapiers, a couple of murders, a hanging, a case of mistaken identity, an awkward family reunion, and a gang of surly Sicilians.

The Head of Caesar is a short story by Gilbert Keith Chesterton: There is somewhere in Brompton or Kensington an interminable avenue of tall houses, rich but largely empty, that looks like a terrace of tombs. The very steps up to the dark front doors seem as steep as the side of pyramids; one would hesitate to knock at the door, lest it should be opened by a mummy. But a yet more depressing feature in the grey facade is its telescopic length and changeless continuity.

The Duel of Dr. Hirsch is a short story by Gilbert Keith Chesterton: M. Maurice Brun and M. Armand Armagnac were crossing the sunlit Champs Élysées with a kind of vivacious respectability. They were both short, brisk and bold. They both had black beards that did not seem to belong to their faces, after the strange French fashion which makes real hair look like artificial. They were both young. They were both atheists, with a depressing fixity of outlook but great mobility of exposition.

"The Invisible Man" is a detective story written by G. K. Chesterton which concerns the nature of the crimes committed by one James Welkin, who had been harassing Laura Hope and menacing his romantic rival, Isidore Smythe (whom he would later murder), all without ever being seen.

Father Brown, a modest, mild-mannered priest with a sharp intellect and even sharper sense of the human condition, is thrown into a series of mysteries which often baffle both his peers and the authorities. Despite his humble appearance, Father Brown can easily detect falsehoods, see through disguises and defy tampered logic to get to the truth. From cases of theft, fraud and murders with no apparent weapon, Brown remains calm in the face of evil time and time again, utilising compassion, empathy and keen intuition.

Father Brown is an eccentric priest with his own particular ways of dealing with crime. David Timson, having completed the whole of Arthur Conan Doyle's Sherlock Holmes canon, a remarkable achievement, turns his hand to the genial but certainly not innocent priest! This collection contains a group of stories from the Innocence of Father Brown, told unabridged.

Chesterton's compilation of essays in Heretics discusses the difference in Orthodoxy and Heretics, rational vs. irrational, and denial vs. affirmation. He questions the reason for the existence of man and the universe and calls out many prominent figures in the artistic and literary fields for their unorthodox ideas; thus labeling them heretics. He will have you thinking of favorite authors like Rudyard Kipling, Oscar Wilde, and H.G. Wells in a new light, challenging their ideals and morals.