Résultats lu par "B.J.Harrison" dans Toutes les catégories

It is Thanksgiving day. Stuffy Pete has just come out from an unexpected feast but he is now waiting for his companion, "The Old Gentleman". They only ever meet on this one day of the year, and although they do not know that much of each other, they always spend the holiday together. Stuffy Pete follows the tradition although he is so full that he cannot think of eating more food. The Old Gentleman shows up and they head out to a fancy restaurant for a delicious meal. When Stuffy Pete walks out of the restaurant, he collapses on the sidewalk.

"The Dream Woman" is a novella by Wilkie Collins, telling the story of Francis Raven, a young man who dreams that a strange woman is trying to kill him. Eventually, he marries a woman who looks exactly like the one from his dream. This novella is a cosy mystery that leaves readers with more questions than answers. A lot of guesswork is needed, and the reader is often disturbed by the occurrences, not knowing what or how it came to this.

"The physiognomy of this old woman had struck me more than once: her little green eyes, long, thin nose, the immense bouquets of flowers on her shawl, which must have been at least a hundred years old..." Soon after Christian settles in Nuremberg, he becomes aware of some strange events occuring in the city. People keep hanging themselves from the sign of a public house after having all stayed in the same room of that very house. Determined to find out why, Christian decides to stay in the room, too.

This a typical Christmas story but with a classic Leacock ironic twist and a zest of humour. "The Errors of Santa Claus" is a charming tale of gift-giving and kindness. It is Christmas time and parents are getting their children’s gifts ready.

"The Lost Phoebe" is a short story by Theodore Dreiser. Henry is so devastated by the death of his wife that cannot find peace, he finds himself constantly searching for her. He slowly yet inevitably descends into madness. Dreiser’s vivid descriptions of the couple’s happy days offer a sharp contrast to Henry's gloomy present. Set on a dilapidated Midwestern farm during the Big Depression, it as story about love, death, sanity and social inequality. B. J.

For a very long time Monsieur de Merret has been suspecting his wife of infidelity. One night he comes home earlier than usual and knocks on the door of his wife’s chamber. Right before he enters the room, he hears the door of her closet squeak. Initially, Merret thinks that this is their maid Rosalie, but he is perplexed when the maid enters the room right after him. Merret desires to open the closet so he can once and for all find out the truth about his wife.

The narrator is under the spell of Ellis - a female vampire - who takes him on series of flights to different places, such as Paris, St. Petersburg and the Isle of Wight. At these places, he becomes a witness to various incidents and becomes involves in different situations. Why was the narrator cursed by Ellis? Why did she take him to those places and what did she wanted to show him? What will the narrator learn from their journey? How will the story end? Find all the answers in Turgenev’s story "Phantoms" from 1863. B. J.

"The Thing in the Weeds" is a short story by William Hope Hodgson from his "Sargasso Sea Stories" in which he portrays a monster lurking in the darkest recesses of the unfathomable depths of the sea. An example of Lovecraft’s major principle of "fear of the unknown", the terror in this Hodgson story is a mysterious one, despite the fact that it haunts and kills the characters.

The First World War has left the world in agony. Disillusionment, hopelessness, and horror are rife when a despondent author gets a visit by Father Time and Father Christmas, who come to raise his spirits. He wishes for better days, but the war has taken everything, turning him into a hopeless and angry nihilist. Nevertheless, the Christmas spirit is here to bring hope and another chance at happiness.

Apart from the ubiquitous presence of the authors who work in the short story tradition, the Second Season introduces poems and novellas. The romantic poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge is here with his haunting and supernatural sea adventure "The Rime of the Ancient Mariner", while Rudyard Kipling tests the human condition with his famous poem "If". Perhaps the most potent addition in this second part is Joseph Conrad’s timeless novella "The Heart of Darkness", exploring the darkest recesses of the human soul. B. J.

Nicholas Nickleby is a young boy left without a father. Nicholas has to take care of his mother and sister and is forced by his uncle to work as an assistant to the schoolmaster Wackford Squeers. Squeers’ intentions are however not good and his only goal is to make Nicholas’ life miserable. At the same time Squeers’ wife convinces herself that Nicholas loves her and this gets the young boy in even greater trouble. Nicholas’ uncle is colluding with the schoolmaster and it seems like everybody is against him.

Aladdin is a boy, who lives in poverty with his mother. One day, while he is playing outside, an African magician approaches him and claims that he is Aladdin’s uncle. The mysterious man tricks the boy to work for him by promising him wealthy rewards. Aladdin agrees after having gotten his mother's permission. The African man instructs the boy to enter a dark cave and fetch him an oil lamp and Aladdin jumps into the cave to finds it. However, the boy refuses to pass it to the magician before he is helped out of the cave and back into daylight.

A three-mast Brazilian ship passes by and a man standing on the shore, waving to it. After sailing on the broad and getting back home, the man starts feeling worse with every passing day. He realizes that there is a supernatural being in his home, taking his strength and sanity away. The man tries to fight back and kill the ghost but it proves more challenging than he had expected. He realizes that he himself had invited the creature.

A meteorite crashes in an area around Arkham, Massachusetts and normally life is interrupted. The earth is poisoned, the animals are driven mad, the products that grow there become tasteless. One man decides to find out what has really happened but the townspeople are not willing to give more details about what they have gone through. The explorer however meets a man named Ammi Pierce. He looks a bit crazy but he is willing to share what he has experienced.

In this dark story by Robert W. Chambers we are introduced to a detective, who is tasked to uncover a hoax in the Pacific Northwest. There he investigates the possible existence of a terrible porpoise-skinned humanoid with an insatiable hunger for human females. If you like reading dark and weird stories, then "The Harbor Master" from 1904 is the right one for you. Do not hesitate to embark on this journey and solve the mystery of the porpoise-skinned humanoid. B. J.

A small group of friends decide to attend a seance at a local art studio. While some of them are very sceptical about the whole thing, others believe in the medium’s abilities. The group starts a discussion about a new painting of a mythical creature, when a Frenchman joins and claims that he sees a unicorn in it. Shortly after the seance begins, a strange light fills the room and the medium starts speaking in a different voice. The voice is that of a person no longer within the living.

Miles Standish and Priscilla Mullins immigrate to America, where they meet a scholar and poet named John Alden. The two men become good friends, but they also both fall in love with Priscilla and a love triangle develops between the three of them. Miles Standish is a soldier, athletic and muscular, whilst John Alden is his complete opposite. Alden struggles, wondering whether he should listen to his heart and chose love over friendship. On the other hand, Standish has lost his wife and looks forward to proposing to Priscilla Mullins.

The bombastic Professor Challenger is convinced that a sentient being lurks in the mantle of the Earth. Aided by Edward Malone and Peerless Jones, he must drill down through the Earth’s crust to alert the creature of humankind’s existence. After his debut in The Lost World, Arthur Conan Doyle went on to develop the grandiloquent Professor Challenger in four other works. When the World Screamed is the fourth in the series, and a satisfying addition to the canon.

“Have you seen the Yellow Sign?” mumbles a cadaverous hearse driver with a soft, squishy head. He’s been skulking about Scott’s painting studio, where he and Tessie have been developing a tangled relationship between artist and model. But as this ever-present watchman resembling a coffin worm begins to distract Scott, his portrait of Tessie takes on a deathlike pallor. How can they forever rid themselves of this hearse stalker? And what precisely does he mean by a “Yellow Sign”?

A wife’s indiscretion is answered with cruel estrangement. Yet when the couple meets again six years later in a train car, as two strangers traveling together, the Baron discovers the magnitude of his loss. Guy de Maupassant was a master of the short story, using every literary device and turn of phrase with masterful effect. A Meeting is an elegant tale that explores the consequences of unbridled, and bridled, passion.