Showing results by narrator "Edward E. French" in All Categories

Herbert George "H. G." Wells (September 21, 1866-August 13, 1946) was a prolific English writer in many genres. He is sometimes called the “Father of Science Fiction.” His stories have been filmed many times. His best-known classics are The Time Machine (1895), The Invisible Man (1897) and The War of the Worlds (1898).

The year is 1920. Dr. John Petrie, a physician and our narrator, meets his friend Denis Nayland Smith, who served as British police commissioner in Asia. Smith seems to know all things Asia and has the innate ability to get all the support he needs from British government officials. Smith stands for everything good, proper, and most importantly, British. Petrie is, of course, knowledgeable in medicine, forensics, and chemistry and an ace with a pistol - for good measure. Together they must thwart Dr. Fu-Manchu’s diabolical plan to restore China to its former glory.

This is a story in Victorian England of how in 1884 Frederick Treves, Surgeon and Lecturer in Anatomy at the London Hospital arranged for the "Elephant Man" (whose distorted grotesque face and deformed body made him a "freak") to visit the medical college next to the hospital for the purpose of a lecture. They would later become friends and Treves the savior of the man named John Merrick. This is Treves' memoir.

"Prisoner of war, sea captain, moral reformer, and itinerant preacher, Joseph Bates led a varied and fascinating life and, as recognized by several scholars, achieved historical significance by co-founding the Seventh-day Adventist Church". So begins Gary Land in his Introduction to this audio version of the autobiography of Joseph Bates (1792-1872). The story first appeared as a series of 51 articles in The Youth's Instructor, a Seventh-day Adventist publication, between November 1858 and May 1863.

A year has passed since the Sutter Buttes incident. Jack Dawson and Naomi Perrault, having failed to find the elusive bag of lethal New Horizons seed, are fired and the secret agency established under President Curtis to study the harvesters is shut down. As the harsh controls on biotechnology and genetics research imposed under President Curtis are rescinded by the new President, Naomi is recruited by a self-made billionaire in the pharmaceuticals industry who wants her to continue her original work in developing a food-based delivery system for vaccines.

Arthur Machen, born March 3, 1863, in Caerleon, Monmouthshire, Wales, The United Kingdom, was a leading author of the 1890s. He is best known for his influential supernatural, fantasy, and horror fiction. "The Great God Pan," published in 1894 made him famous and controversial in his lifetime.

At a genetics lab where a revolutionary strain of corn is being developed, FBI Special Agent Jack Dawson's best friend and fellow agent is brutally murdered, his body torn apart. Jack is convinced that Naomi Perrault, a beautiful geneticist and suspected terrorist, is behind the murder. But when Jack is framed for setting off a bomb that devastates the FBI lab in Quantico, Naomi becomes Jack's only hope of survival.

“In Amundsen's Tent" is short horror fiction inspired in part by various expeditions to the South Pole, beginning in the late 1890s. These culminated in the famous effort led by Roald Amundsen, who was the first to reach the South Pole on December 14, 1911. "In Amundsen’s Tent" is about a three-man expedition to Antarctica arriving at the deserted camp of an earlier trio of explorers. In the tent is the journal of Robert Drumgold, who with two other men, perished mysteriously near the South Pole....

The Ring of Thoth is a tale of fantasy, mystery, the supernatural and horror by the creator of Sherlock Holmes.

Satan-worshiping Prince Prospero in 12th-century Italy holds a macabre masked ball in the midst of a deadly plague. The hedonistic nobles believe that Prospero's castle walls will keep out not only the countrysides's peasants, but the lethal Red Death as well.

Abraham Merritt's Burn, Witch, Burn! is like a detective novel masquerading as a dark fantasy novel. It’s a cross-genre experimentation from the late '20s blending horror, fantasy, and crime drama. An unfortunate neurologist named Dr. Lowell finds himself confronted with a series of mysterious deaths. Each victim falls into a state of paralysis before later convulsing and finally expiring, stiffening into an abrupt rigor mortis. Merritt weaves a mix of creeping dread, action, and mystery of animated, demonic, murderous toy dolls.

In the ancient country of Orn an old man called the Bee-man spends his life in the company of bees. He lives humbly and contentedly until a Junior Sorcerer happens by with some disturbing news: The Bee-man, he says, has been transformed - he once was someone (or something) entirely different. But who? Or what? A giant or a prince? A dog or a dragon? The now restless Bee-man sets out on a quest to ascertain his original form, telling himself, "When I see it, I shall be drawn toward it."

Early American satire from Washington Irving author of The Legend of Sleepy Hollow and Rip Van Winkle. The classic short story “The Devil and Tom Walker” is the dark and eerie tale of a foolish man’s greed, hypocrisy and ambition. Tom is a debased man, miserly and cruel to his fellows, and even to his wife. The Devil shows him a grove of rotting trees, representing souls. They make the customary deal, with Walker becoming one of the richest men around and Walker begins to work at keeping his soul, despite a lifetime of usury and the dark deal to which he agreed.

The Most Dangerous Game, also published as The Hounds of Zaroff, is the classic horror yarn about big-game hunter Sanger Rainsford, from New York City, who falls off a yacht and swims to what seems to be an abandoned and isolated island in the Caribbean, where a sadistic Russian aristocrat hunts humans for sport. Rainsford must fight for his life.

Jerome Klapka Jerome (1859-1927) was an English writer and humorist, best known for the comic travelogue Three Men in a Boat. Other works include the essay collections Idle Thoughts of an Idle Fellow and Second Thoughts of an Idle Fellow; Three Men on the Bummel, a sequel to Three Men in a Boat, and several other novels.

Writer, poet, critic, and editor Edgar Allan Poe was born in Boston, Massachusetts on January 19, 1809 and became a literary sensation in 1845 with the publication of his poem "The Raven," considered a great American literary work and one of the best of Poe's career.

One of the first noted American authors to be highly acclaimed in Europe during his life time, Washington Irving (April 3, 1783-November 28, 1859) wrote numerous short stories, biographies, histories, and tales of his travels. The Legend of Sleepy Hollow," first published in 1820, is variously regarded as a Gothic tale and a modern folk story about the early history of the United States of America.

Author Gaston Leroux, born May 6, 1868, published his most famous work, The Phantom of the Opera, as a serial in 1909 and as a book in 1910 (with an English translation appearing in 1911). Phantom, with its occult overtones, has been made into several film and stage productions of the same name.

Howard Phillips Lovecraft, born August 20, 1890, began composing rudimentary horror tales by the age of 8. He’s best remembered for cooking up his very own genre, Cosmic Horror, featuring monsters so powerful and terrifying that just seeing them will likely drive you insane.

Lost Hearts tells the story of Stephen Elliott, an orphan aged 11 years and of an inquiring frame of mind, who is sent to stay with his much older cousin, the scholarly Mr. Abney, at a remote country mansion, Aswarby Hall, in Lincolnshire. Things get strange when Stephen is repeatedly troubled by visions of a young gypsy girl and a traveling Italian boy with their hearts missing.