Risultati letto da "B.J.Harrison" in Tutte le categorie

"Her arms rested on a table beside her, and her head on her hands; but her face was turned full forward, and her eyes met those of the spectator bewilderingly." One day, a man who has recently enherited his aunt's house, discovers a portait of a woman in the attic. He brings it downstairs and becomes so infatuated by the woman it portrays that he prays she will come to life. By some mysterious power she does, and he learns that the two of them have a daunting history.

A man’s beloved woman suddenly dies of pneumonia. He cannot cope with the loss and spends a whole night wandering around the cemetery searching for her. However, what he finds and sees there is far from what he expected. Would you feel fear after reading "Was It A Dream?"? Then it may be interesting for you to find out what the characters in Maupassant’s short story "Fear" have to say about it as well. B. J. Harrison started his Classic Tales Podcast back in 2007, wanting to breathe new life into classic stories.

Mr. John Smith is a British student of Egyptology who travels to Paris. The main purpose of his trip is to visit the Louvre and research some papyri. Unfortunately, tired from going round the museum, Smith falls asleep in one its the many corners. When he wakes up, he sees an Egyptian-looking man performing a ritual on a mummy. Things get even stranger as the Egyptian man unwraps the mummy, uncovers a beautiful woman and hugs her.

One night during his regular rambles, Mérimée stumbles upon a mysterious woman who invites him home to her place. They enter a big, dark but luxuriously furnished room and they spend the whole night having dinner and talking. However things take a turn to the strange when the eery lady starts talking about death and tombs. Mérimée realises that his companion is not an ordinary woman and that he is in danger. Will he get himself out of there alive or will Xélucha drag him with her to the underworld? B. J.

B.J. Harrison breathes life into one of Oscar Wilde’s first short stories, "The Canterville Ghost". The American Hiram B. Otis and his family move to a castle in Canterville Chase in the English countryside. They soon discover that they are not alone in the castle and that the ghost of an old tenant, Sir Simon de Canterville, is with them. Yet the family is not so easily scared, even if the ghost can take many shapes and forms. The short story from the late 19th century mixes humor with the macabre.

"You won't know till afterward. You won't know till long, long afterward." When Ned and Mary Boyne hear that their new house is haunted, they laugh it off and joke that every good house in the countryside must have a ghost for it to be worth purchasing. They move in and forget all about its supposed supernatural quirks. But when Mary notices a strange change in her husband's behaviour, she begins to suspect a not so friendly ghost is indeed at play.

A young woman named Mary Sutherland is engaged and about to marry Hosmer Angel, when he unexpectedly disappears. In her despair and anxiety, Mary decides to ask Sherlock Holmes for his help. This seems to be a simple case for the great detective. After a short exchange of letters with Mary’s stepfather, Mr. Windibank, Sherlock finds out what the truth is.

B.J. Harrison reads "The Purloined Letter" by Edgar Allan Poe, which is a story of an unusual mystery that needs to be solved. A sensitive letter has been stolen from the queen's boudoir, and the famous amateur detective C. Auguste Dupin has been called to the rescue. The guilty one is the lover himself, Minister D-. What ensues is a match between the detective and the thief, two equally brilliant minds.

Lucy Honeychurch and her cousin are on a vacation in Florence. The girls are given a room looking into the courtyard, but they would rather have one with a view over the river. George Emerson and his father offer the two girls to change rooms and this is how George and Lucy meet for the first time. George grows fond of Lucy but she is not sure of her feelings towards him. She returns home to England where she accepts to marry Cecil Vyse, a man who had already proposed to her three times.

Victor Frankenstein is a young scientist who artificially creates a human being. His expectations are however far from reality as is Creation is so monstrous that it cannot fit into human society. This leads to dreadful consequences as the monster decides to take it revenge his creator. Will Frankenstein manage to control his creature or will he loose everything? "Frankenstein" is Mary Shelley’s best-selling work and is a vivid combination of genres with gothic, philosophical and early science-fiction elements. B. J.

Lieutenant-General von Rabbek is a local aristocrat, who invites the officers of the Reserve Artillery Brigade to a cup of tea with brandy. Of all the guests, Ryabovitch is the most unpleasant one. While doing his best to avoid talking to people, Ryabovitch enters a dark room, where he an unknown woman surprises him by kissing him, then running away. The unexpected kiss awakes Ryabovitch's curiosity and passion, and the man spends the rest of the evening searching for the mysterious woman.

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.

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.

B. J. Harrison does not tire of the adventurous and mysterious settings in his choice of narratives. This time, the horror element is a bit subdued, though Edgar Allan Poe makes up for the lost thrills with his haunting poems "The Raven", "Annabel Lee", and "The Sleeper". P. G. Wodehouse appears with four works, scoring points for his humor.

The great detective, Sherlock Holmes, is dying from a highly contagious tropical disease called Tapanuli fever. Dr. Watson is shocked when he hears about his friend’s illness. He travels to examine him, but Holmes refuses his help. Instead, a man called Culverton Smith arrives after being called by Watson. He is not a professional doctor but knows more about the disease than anyone else.

"The Furnished Room" is a short story about love and dedication, about exhaustion and despair. A young man is searching for a girl he fell in love with. He rents a room near the theatre where she could sometimes be seen and he devotes his days to the dream of finding her. When all of a sudden the sweet fragrance of her perfume fills his room... Has he finally found her? Or is this an evil ghost from the past? Will he get to embrace the girl he loves or she will drag him to the verge of madness? B. J.

"I hope you feel things you never felt before. I hope you meet people with a different point of view. I hope you live a life you're proud of. If you find that you're not, I hope you have the strength to start all over again." When Benjamin Button is born he looks oddly like an old man. He's not interested in playing with other kids and he's too low on energy to participate anyway. When Benjamin turns 20 it dawns on his family that he is aging backwards. The younger he grows, the more he learns to embrace life.

While hosting a party, a banker makes a bet with one of his guests, who is a lawyer. The topic of the bet is capital punishment and whether it is worse or better than a life sentence. The banker sees the capital punishment as more humane than life imprisonment, whilst the young lawyer completely disagrees. The bet is as follows: if the lawyer spends fifteen years in complete isolation, the banker will give him two million rubles. As the years pass, the banker realizes that he will go bankrupt if he loses the bet.

Forty-two years old Marlow is drinking with four other Englishmen. They have known each other since the beginning of their working lives. Some of them have other jobs now, but they still gather to recall the good old days. Marlow tells his friends a story of his early life, when he travelled to the East as a young man in search of adventure. He shares his experience and impressions of the different cultures he came across with the four men.

Quiquendone is a small town in West Flanders, whose citizens are the wisest, most sociable and hospitable people. The town’s mayor, Van Tricasse, claims that the one if a person dies without having decided anything in his life then he has attained perfection. One day, Dr. Ox comes to the mayor with an offer. He wants to build a gas lightning system, at no cost for the city. However, Ox's intentions are completely different and this seemingly noble deed is just a facade. Will Van Tricasse accept the proposal? And what is Dr.