Showing results by narrator "Rayner Bourton" in All Categories

Rosalie Parker runs the independent UK publishing house Tartarus Press with R. B. Russell. Her previous collections include The Old Knowledge (Swan River Press 2010) and Damage (PS Publishing 2016). "In the Garden" was selected for Best New Horror 21 (2010), and "Random Flight" for Best British Horror 2015. Rosalie lives in Coverdale, North Yorkshire, the magnificent landscape of which inspires and sometimes provides the settings for her writing.

Around three and a half thousand years ago, members of a small community of Bronze Age people spent several days away from their usual activities of farming, hunting, weaving and food processing in order to construct a burial mound.

It was a pity about the weather, but even in Yorkshire it couldn't rain all the time. Geraldine pushed her hair into her rainhood and studied the thin drizzle pittering into brimming puddles.

'Today, class,' said Miss Flanders, surveying the room full of Year Ten students seated around the somewhat battered tables, 'we will be looking at the circulatory system. Please open your books at page fifteen.' There were the scrapings and scufflings of chairs being pushed back and bags being opened, and the slap of textbooks hitting the table-tops.

: It has been snowing all day the trees in the garden are hung with icicles, and Graham and Simon had to shovel off some of the thick white blanket that coated the drive so that Clive Mason could inch his car up to the house.

The taxi picked up speed as the post-industrial sprawl of Sheffield gave way to the open hills of the Peak District. Ellen could see the driver glancing at her from time to time in the rear view mirror. Weary after her long rail journey she was grateful for his silence, even though it might have been useful to hear stories of 'The Big House'.

It really is a lovely day. I'm not used to sitting in the garden, basking in the pleasant weather and enjoying the fruits of my labour. I spend most of my time here weeding and pruning, so I'm grateful for the opportunity to laze around for a change, watching the flower heads bob gently in the soft breeze, listening to the drowsy hum of the bees as they gorge on the comfrey blossoms.

What you have to understand, before I begin, is that I am not a gullible person. I am a scientist of a sort, an archaeologist, trained in the empirical ethos of the British higher education system.

"The Trial for Murder" is a short story written by Charles Dickens. It was originally published under the title "To Be Taken with a Grain of Salt" as a chapter in Dr. Marigold's Prescriptions in an extra Christmas volume of the weekly literary magazine, All the Year Round. It was later published in 1866 in a collection of ghost stories known as "Three Ghost Stories", along with "The Haunted House" and "The Signal-Man".

Three Ghost Stories is just that: a collection of three different stories that are true Gothic classics. The three stories, The Signal Man, The Haunted House and The Trial for Murder were sensational for their time and continue to hold up well, thanks to Charles Dickens' superb skills at storytelling. The Signal Man is the most well known of the three, chronicling the haunting of a railroad signal man who is visited by a ghost just before a tragic event is to happen on the railway. If you like Dickens and tales of spectres and the supernatural, you'll love Three Ghost Stories.

'The Beautiful Suit' is a haunting allegorical tale of a man who has a beautiful suit of clothes which he is never allowed to wear. But one night he decides to put on the suit and wear it as it should be worn.

"A Dream of Armageddon" is a short story by H. G. Wells which was first published in 1901 in the British weekly magazine Black and White. The story opens aboard a train, when an unwell-looking man strikes up a conversation with the narrator when he sees him reading a book about dreams. The white-faced man says that he has little time for dream analysis because, he says, his dreams are killing him.

Out for a walk in London one day, Gip and his father happen upon a magic shop. At Gip's urging, the two go in - and things grow more and more curious by the minute. Counters, store fixtures, and mirrors seem to move around the room, and the shopkeeper is most mysterious of all. Gip is thrilled by all he sees, and his father is at first amused, but when things become stranger and sinister father is no longer sure where reality ends and illusion begins.

Towards mid-day the three pursuers came abruptly round a bend in the torrent bed upon the sight of a very broad and spacious valley. The difficult and winding trench of pebbles along which they had tracked the fugitives for so long, expanded to a broad slope, and with a common impulse the three men left the trail, and rode to a little eminence set with olive-dun trees, and there halted, the two others, as became them, a little behind the man with the silver-studded bridle.

Herbert George Wells (21 September 1866 - 13 August 1946) was an English writer. Prolific in many genres, he wrote dozens of novels, short stories, and works of social commentary, history, satire, biography and autobiography. His work also included two books on recreational war games. MISS WINCHELSEA'S HEART: Miss Winchelsea was going to Rome. The matter had filled her mind for a month or more, and had overflowed so abundantly into her conversation that quite a number of people who were not going to Rome, and who were not likely to go to Rome, had made it a personal grievance against her.

Herbert George Wells (21 September 1866 - 13 August 1946) was an English writer. Prolific in many genres, he wrote dozens of novels, short stories, and works of social commentary, history, satire, biography and autobiography. His work also included two books on recreational war games. THE TRUTH ABOUT PYECRAFT: He sits not a dozen yards away. If I glance over my shoulder I can see him. And if I catch his eye-and usually I catch his eye - it meets me with an expression.

Herbert George Wells (21 September 1866 - 13 August 1946) was an English writer. Prolific in many genres, he wrote dozens of novels, short stories, and works of social commentary, history, satire, biography and autobiography. His work also included two books on recreational war games. Wells is now best remembered for his science fiction novels and is often called the "father of science fiction". JIMMY GOGGLES THE GOD: "It isn't every one who's been a god," said the sunburnt man. "But it's happened to me. Among other things." I intimated my sense of his condescension.

The New Accelerator features a fascinating depiction of the invention of what sounds a lot like an amphetamine (though technically they had already been invented a dozen years earlier). It will also remind Star Trek fans of the episode called Wink of an Eye.

Mr. Coombes was sick of life. He walked away from his unhappy home, and, sick not only of his own existence but of everybody else's, turned aside down Gaswork Lane to avoid the town, and, crossing the wooden bridge that goes over the canal to Starling's Cottages, was presently alone in the damp pine woods and out of sight and sound of human habitation. He would stand it no longer. He repeated aloud with blasphemies unusual to him that he would stand it no longer.

Herbert George Wells (21 September 1866 - 13 August 1946) was an English writer. Prolific in many genres, he wrote dozens of novels, short stories, and works of social commentary, history, satire, biography and autobiography. His work also included two books on recreational war games. MATCHING'S EASY AT EASE: It was the sixth day of Mr. Direck's first visit to England, and he was at his acutest perception of differences. He found England in every way gratifying and satisfactory, and more of a contrast with things American than he had ever dared to hope.