Showing results by narrator "John Rayburn" in All Categories

The story you’re about to hear is the second Charlie Chan novel, and it features a parrot named Tony who is witness to a crime. The unusual bird spoke Chinese and had a less-than-perfect use of English grammar but was killed by the criminals as a precaution. Chan himself was a friend of a family selling jewels and agreed to deliver them on his first trip to mainland California. While there he masquerades as a pidgin-speaking cook during his undercover investigation. His profound and original intelligence offers genial humor and witty dialogue.

Humor and overall literary style have changed a lot in the 132 years since this book was published in 1889. However, the information remains informative, primarily because there is a certain amount of truthfulness about it that manages to disregard the passage of time. It takes in some unusual events that either did happen, or could have. It involves three men and a dog that is sometimes smarter than any of them. Between them, they come up with some depth of thought and at least a minor ability to understand human nature.

There were times when Bertie Wooster, the fictional narrator of these stories, was thought of as being at least a trifle feather-brained. However, he had a valet who seemed to know everything about everything. These are among more than 300 short stories written by a man who began a short-lived career in banking after his college days. However, it didn’t take long for P. G. Wodehouse to decide he didn’t like that kind of job, and he began writing in whatever spare time he had.

The character of Bertram “Bertie” Wooster told the stories in first person style. He had a valet who stole some of his silk sox and was discharged. The agency sent replacement Reginald “Reggie” Jeeves. He arrived, mixed a hangover cure that was much needed and accepted, and the two were together from then on. Bertie, rich and toil-free, disliked hard work, some bossy women, and most children. He had a somewhat dingbat friend, Bingo Little, who fell in love with every girl he met.

This the story of the unplanned adoption of an eleven-year-old girl orphan by an elderly brother and sister farm couple: Matthew and Marilla Cuthbert. They had requested a young boy orphan to help with farm chores, so the girl was unwanted at first. However, she was very intelligent, imaginative and quite a chatterbox. She gradually made her way into the unexpected adoption that brought love and respect, creating a warm and wonderful association. This delightful classic takes place in the Canadian province of Prince Edward Island.

A 17th-century writer named Charles Perrault was sometimes called Mother Goose, an imaginary author of fairy tales. His early material was inspired and derived from earlier folk tales that he greatly embellished and improved. This collection includes "Cinderella", along with other such known favorites as “Sleeping Beauty", “Little Red Riding Hood”, “Blue Beard”, and “Puss in Boots”, along with such lesser known fairy tales as “The Ridiculous Wishes”, “Little Thumb”, “Ricky of the Tuft", “Griselda,” and “Donkey Skin”.

It was a clear, apple-green evening in May, and Four Winds Harbour was mirroring back the clouds of the golden west between its softly dark shores. The sea moaned eerily on the sand-bar, sorrowful even in spring, but a sly, jovial wind came piping down the red harbor road along which Miss Cornelia’s comfortable, matronly figure was making its way towards the village of Glen St. Mary. Miss Cornelia was rightfully Mrs. Marshall Elliott, and had been Mrs. Marshall Elliott for thirteen years, but even yet more people referred to her as Miss Cornelia than as Mrs. Elliott.

Teenagers Joe and Frank Hardy had ample mental ability to reach conclusions and act accordingly. Some of that ability was handed down by their former police detective Fenton Hardy, and the overall concept was enhanced by their perceptive cleverness. If you want to be tense with excitement, here’s a chance. They discover a counterfeiting operation in an old mill, are trapped and face a struggle to escape. Eventually, they overcome the misdeeds and wind up with some of the phony money.

It seems very unreal but the author is not only top-notch with his plot handling but he never strays from the bounds of reason. It isn’t easy to fool someone like detective sergeant Blick of Scotland Yard, but he does it. Blick is called in by an archeologist named Mr. Fransenmery to help solve the killing of Guy Markenmore, who had been away from the area for seven years and had returned because of the expected death of his father.

Here is a meeting with George and Marion Kerby, a couple of free-wheeling ghosts, who meet up with respectable banker Cosmo Topper. This was noted by the New York Times, claiming: “Thorne Smith created the modern American ghost story, ghosts with style and wit; ghosts that haunt us still.” Others pointed out, “Smith was a master of urbane wit and sophisticated repartee.” The overall mood has a touch of silliness, but it provides lighthearted reading and listening, a matter of nonsensical escapism. For Topper it meant relief from a nagging wife with ongoing indigestion.

The author’s birth name was Alan Alexander Milne, but his pen name used only the initials A. A. Milne. He eventually won worldwide acclaim for his renowned youth-oriented stories about Winnie-the-Pooh. However, he tried something different a few years before that, a story based on parental devotion.

The contents of this book stem from a series of short stories originally in Cosmopolitan magazine in the early twentieth century.

The idea that the extraordinary narrative which has been called the Joyce-Armstrong Fragment is an elaborate practical joke evolved by some unknown person, cursed by a perverted and sinister sense of humor, has now been abandoned by all who have examined the matter. The most macabre and imaginative of plotters would hesitate before linking his morbid fancies with the unquestioned and tragic facts which reinforce the statement. Though the assertions contained in it are amazing and even monstrous, it is nonetheless forcing itself upon the general intelligence that they are true.

Here is a story of a young man of eighteen who wandered for years after an accidental shooting of his brother. He felt as though he was a counterpart of the Biblical killing by Cain of his brother Abel. It was written by Zane Grey, one of the greatest Western novelists. It takes us through a lonely land of prospectors and hermits as it tells of surviving searing Death Valley heat, an area that many consider the deadliest land in the world. Listen now and hear a highly surprising finish.

Bull Hunter was a young Western boy of unusual size who eventually became known as the “Gentle Giant”. Because of his stature and prodigious strength, along with a sort of natural timidity, Bull was often derided, even by his cousins, as being “slow” mentally. Eventually, he met and was befriended by a famous gunfighter who taught him how to use a gun. That changed a lot of derogatory opinions about him, and he didn’t get bullied any more.

In truth the mastery of flying was the work of thousands of men—this man a suggestion and that an experiment, until at last only one vigorous intellectual effort was needed to finish the work. But the inexorable injustice of the popular mind has decided that of all these thousands, one man, and that a man who never flew, should be chosen as the discoverer, just as it has chosen to honor Watt as the discoverer of steam and Stephenson of the steam-engine.

French author Jules Verne earned recognition as one of the founders of science-fiction tales. Although, as one of those called “fathers of science fiction”, Verne often said he had not aimed at seeming scientific, claiming, “I have invented nothing." However, he did feel, “Anything one man can imagine, other men can make real.” As one of those “other” men he did exactly that in his marvelous description of Phileas Fogg and his remarkable journey Around the World in Eighty Days, a trip done without any modern transportation.

The words of Kahlil Gibran give his book The Prophet a broad range of inspiration and philosophy. They provide exceptional insight into human desires and understanding. The vivid observations are vibrant with feeling and acceptance of life’s many questions and hopes. One review saluted the story as being untouched by the harshness of life. Gibran’s other two books, The Forerunner and The Madman, are of deep assistance in the same manner.

This book marks an epoch in my literary career. It is written in blood. It is the outpouring of a soul as deeply seared by Fate’s unkindness as the fairway on the dog-leg hole of the second nine was ever seared by my iron. It is the work of a very nearly desperate man, an 18-handicap man who has got to look extremely slippy if he doesn’t want to find himself in the 20s again.

It would be easy to call it a case of naivete on the part of Richard Hannay, but there was much more to the story. He had just returned to London after living in Rhodesia, so he wasn’t fully versed in the intrigue going on in England. That wasn’t much of a reason for Hannay allowing a man he met to live in his flat. However, that’s what he did, even though Franklin Scudder claimed to be a spy with involvement in an anarchist plot to assassinate the Greek Premier. Hannay got into a major problem when Scudder was found murdered in the apartment.