This classic 1922 fantasy novel brings you to a strange and lovely world where a young lord wrestles King Gorice for his land’s freedom, where unscalable mountains can only be conquered by stubbornness and hippogriffs, where the great explorer Lord Gro finds himself continually driven to betrayal, where sweet young women occasionally fall for evil wizards, and where the heroes actually win their hearts’ desire.

Ernst Theodor Wilhelm Hoffmann (1776 – 1822), better known by his pen name E.T.A. Hoffmann (Ernst Theodor Amadeus Hoffmann), was a German Romantic author of fantasy and horror, a jurist, composer, music critic, draftsman and caricaturist. Hoffmann's stories were very influential during the 19th century, and he is one of the major authors of the Romantic movement.He is the subject and hero of Jacques Offenbach's famous but fictional opera The Tales of Hoffmann, and the author of the novelette The Nutcracker and the Mouse King, on which the famous ballet The Nutcracker is based...

This recording includes both volumes of E. T. A. Hoffmann's Weird Tales, a collection of gothic novellas set in Germany, Italy, and some of the wilder parts of Europe. What there is of the supernatural in these tales is introduced with great subtlety if at all; most of the stories draw their "weirdness" from extraordinary characters, circumstances, or coincidences rather than from the paranormal, working out dark passions in dark settings. There are two themes dominating almost every one of these stories: not only the passion of young tragic love, but also a passion for Art in its every manifestation...

The original story of the Nutcracker, weird and wonderful by one of the masters of horror and weirdness.

Prepare yourself for a journey, full of adventures and plot twists which will keep you guessing until the very end. This is psychological romance at its best. In the war of 1814, an American heiress falls in love with a British officer. This ill-fated marriage brings together a large group of interesting people who would never have met in other circumstances.

“If you will listen to this book, you will meet a cast of unforgettable characters, as different from one another as the sun and moon. But they have one thing in common – all of them hide many, many secrets. The plot of this book is full of twists which may leave you guessing until the end. Bridget’s lively reading adds much to the joy of listening to this book.” (Summary by Stav Nisser)

Uncontrolled, terribly violent Atomic Vortices are slowly destroying civilization on every human planet throughout the galaxy. Nothing can contain or stop them despite the lensmen's best efforts until one destroys the home and family of "Storm" Cloud, brilliant atomic physicist. The tragedy triggers actions on his part that pit him one-on-one against the horrible vortices. Introducing "storm" Cloud as THE Vortex Blaster

“Doc” E.E. Smith pretty much invented the space opera genre, and Triplanetary is a good and well-known example. Physics, time, and politics never stand in the way of a plot that gallops ahead without letup. Having earned a PhD in chemical engineering, it’s understandable that the heroes of Smith’s story are all scientists. He didn’t want to be constrained by the limits of known science, however, so in his hands the electromagnetic spectrum becomes a raw material to be molded into ever-more amazing and lethal forms, and the speed of light is no bar to traveling through the interstellar void...

Silver footed, fair haired Thetis, Ares the God of War, Nike the Goddess of Victory, The Furies and The Muses, Zeus the presiding deity of the Universe and the magical, mysterious Olympus, are some of the amazing, mythical Greek and Roman deities you'll encounter in this book. Myths and Legends of Ancient Greece and Rome by EM Berens was originally intended for young readers. Written in an easy and light style, the author attempts to bring the pantheon of gods into a comprehensible format....

Davy's Bend was a dying, lonely, uncared for river town. So when a stranger showed up one day and bought the old unoccupied house called 'The Locks' one dreary day, the inhabitants of the town were naturally very curious about the stranger, and very curious about his reasons for buying the old house. The Locks had been known for years to display at nighttime a single light showing up in one room, and there was one room in the house which was strictly off-limits to anyone. What was the history behind...

English romantic adventure starring a young American in London and inspired by the personal ads (agony columns) in the London papers. In this treacherous tale of murder and intrigue young American Geoffrey West tracks a killer from the posh dining room of the Carlton Hotel to the opium dens of London’s Limehouse district in search of the truth and the heart of his true love only to find the culprit all too close to home. Earl Derr Biggers is better known as the author of numerous Charlie Chan novels. The Agony Column was released as a movie under the name Second Floor Mystery in 1930. While this movie was in production, its two stars, Loretta Young and Grant Withers, eloped.

Giles Dudley is called upon by his cousin Henry Wilton to assist him in San Francisco, but the reason for the summons is not at all clear. Dudley answers the summons, only to find himself immediately wrapped in the middle of mystery and intrigue, the roots and ends of which he is utterly unaware. He has been given to care for a mysterious young boy whom he hasn't even seen. His cousin has mysteriously disappeared. Dudley's role in the mystery has him convinced that as he goes about trying to assist his cousin with whatever it was he wanted to accomplish, he does so completely blindfolded.

The flint heart is a stone of heart shape, forged in prehistoric times, that changes whoever owns it into a wicked person. The story of the flint heart's ultimate defeat involves multiple trips into fairyland by Charles and Unity, children of one of the heart's victims. Along the way the reader meets lots of fun characters such as the king of fairyland, a talking (and wounded) hot water bottle, and the mysterious Zagabog. Occasional references to British words and concepts may require some explanation for American readers, but the story is perfectly understandable without such explications. The droll narration makes the story as much fun for adults as for children.

A Deal with the Devil is a classic tale with a humorous twist. We find that on the night preceeding his 100th birthday Grandpapa, a cantankerous yet loveable sort, has made a deal with the devil, which his granddaughter, in part, will pay. - Summary by Angelique G. Campbell

This story opens with a mother and daughter found brutally murdered inside a locked room in an upstairs apartment on a street in Paris. The police are baffled by both the ferocity of the crime and the lack of clues. Neighbors give conflicting evidence. Two friends are intrigued by the entire situation as reported in the newspapers. They decide to do a little investigating on their own. What they come up with is one of the most shocking and strangest of conclusions. The Murders in the Rue Morgue by Edgar Allan Poe is perhaps the first modern detective tale, though similar stories by Voltaire and ETA Hoffman did appear a few decades earlier...

Published in 1838, The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym of Nantucket is Poe’s only complete novel and concentrates on several sea adventures gone awry. The novel follows Arthur Gordon Pym, who finds himself in the center of gloomy occurrences on board numerous vessels, as his anticipated sea adventure takes a drastic shift in the wind. Shipwreck, starvation, mutiny, near death experiences and cannibalism are just some of the issues endured in the gripping, and at times gruesome novel. The adventure...

Edgar Allan Poe is best known for his famous short horror stories; however, horror is not the only genre in which he wrote. How To Write a Blackwood Article and its companion piece A Predicament are satirical works exploring the pieces of the formula generally seen in short horror stories (”articles”) found in the Scottish periodical “Blackwood’s Magazine” and the successful misapplication of said formula by – horrors! – a woman author! – respectively.

Come and hear some of the wonderful, magical, fantastic and macabre works of the inestimable Edgar Allan Poe. This collection contains the world famous poems Annabel Lee, The Bells, Eldorado and The Raven. Also included is his masterful short story, the horror classic The Tell-Tale Heart. Poe's vocabulary and ability to rhyme and 'turn a phrase' have made him one of the most celebrated and well regarded writers of all time!

The Journal of Julius Rodman, Being an Account of the First Passage across the Rocky Mountains of North America Ever Achieved by Civilized Man is an unfinished serial novel by American author Edgar Allan Poe published in 1840. Six installments of the novel were published in Burton's Gentleman's Magazine's January through June issues in 1840. At the time, Poe was a contributing editor of the journal. He was fired from the job in June 1840 by William Burton and refused to continue the novel.