In The Adventure of the Copper Beeches, Violet Hunter asks Holmes, whether she should accept a job with very strange conditions. She has been offered £120 per year as a governess, but only if she will cut her long hair short. This is only one of many peculiar conditions to which she must agree. The employer, Jephro Rucastle, seems pleasant enough, yet Miss Hunter obviously has her suspicions. After a fortnight, Miss Hunter beseeches Holmes to come and see her in Winchester, as the situation has become even stranger. This is the last of the twelve stories collected in The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes.
In The Adventure of the Beryl Coronet, a banker, Mr. Alexander Holder, makes a loan of £50,000 to a socially prominent client, who leaves a beryl coronet – one of the most valuable public possessions in existence – as collateral. Feeling that he must not leave this rare and precious piece of jewelry in his personal safe at the bank, he takes it home with him. Awakened by a noise in the night, he is horrified to see his son playing with the coronet and apparently trying to bend it. Three beryls are now missing from it. In a panic, Mr. Holder travels to see Holmes, who agrees to take the case.
In The Adventure of the Noble Bachelor, Miss Hatty Doran, after several strange episodes on the day of her marriage to Lord St. Simon, disappears from the reception. St. Simon tells Holmes that he noticed a change in the young lady's mood just after the wedding ceremony, having been uncharacteristically sharp with him. Also unusual: she dropped her wedding bouquet and a gentleman in the front pew handed it back to her. For Holmes, it proves rather an elementary case, though it causes considerable confusion for Dr. Watson and Inspector Lestrade. This is the tenth of the twelve stories collected in The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes.
In “The Adventure of the Empty House”, Sherlock Holmes reappears in London after a 3-year absence, shocking Dr. Watson who believed his good friend had been killed in a confrontation with Professor Moriarty at Reichenbach Falls. Holmes is compelled to outwit the “second most dangerous man in London” who has a good reason to hope for Holmes’ demise. From the 1905 collection “The Return of Sherlock Holmes”.
Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s The Return of Sherlock Holmes is a collection of 13 mysteries that were originally published in the Strand Magazine and Collier's in Great Britain and the United States. Published in 1905, the book was the first Holmes collection since 1893, when Holmes died in a confrontation with his arch-nemesis Professor Moriarty in The Final Problem. The success of “The Hound of the Baskervilles” published in 1901–1902, and set before Holmes' death, created great pressure on Doyle to revive his famous character. This collection was followed by two more short novels and a final collection called “The Reminiscences of Sherlock Holmes”.
Here in one recording are both of L. Frank Baum's Santa Claus stories: The Life and Adventures of Santa Claus, and A Kidnapped Santa Claus. In The Life and Adventures of Santa Claus, Baum gives us a glimpse into the magical history that surrounds the life story of Santa Claus. In A Kidnapped Santa Claus, we find out what happens when Santa is kidnapped shortly before Christmas.
Robinson Crusoe is the classic tale about one man's lust for adventure. Crusoe leaves his parents and hometown for the open sea in the year 1651. But the ocean can be unforgiving and Crusoe, unfortunately, learns this the hard way. Through a series of wild events he ends up shipwrecked on a shore in South America, being forced to salvage what he can in order to survive. Overcoming his despair, Crusoe begins a new life on this island searching for meaning and eventually finding redemption. This tale of adventure into the unknown during a time of exploration will find listeners on the edge of their seat as Crusoe encounters multiple shipwrecks, pirates, and even cannibals on his wild journey.
In The Adventure of the Speckled Band, Sherlock Holmes and Watson come to the aid of Helen Stoner, who has reason to fear her life is being threatened by her abusive stepfather, Dr. Grimesby Roylott. Her sister, who died two years before, spoke of a “speckled band” right before she died in mysterious circumstances. To solve the mystery of the “speckled band”, Holmes and Watson stake out Miss Stoner’s room and make a momentous discovery. The eighth of the twelve stories collected in The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes, Doyle considered it the best of the Holmes stories.
One of the earliest feminist works in American literature, The Awakening tells the story of Edna Pontellier. Unsatisfied with societal expectations and unhappy with her family life, she begins to fall in love with the dapper Robert Lebrun. Lebrun's flirtations, along with the lifestyle of renown musician Mademoiselle Reisz, rejuvenates Edna's sense of freedom and independence. However, an affair with the womanizer Alcee Arobin provides Edna with a taste of the danger that comes from living outside of social convention. Trapped between the life she is expected to live and the one she longs to lead, Edna struggles to find happiness. Also included are eight of Chopin's most celebrated short stories: A Pair of Silk Stockings, A Reflection, A Respectable Woman, Beyond the Bayou, Desiree's Baby, Ma'ame Pelagie," «The Kiss,» and «The Locket.»"
Marley was dead, to begin with…' And yet, he manages to visit his old partner, the miser Ebenezer Scrooge, and send him on a transformative journey, led by three ghosts. First to his own past, where he sees again the love he spurned, then to the present, where he sees those around him going about their holiday preparations, and then into his own future, to see his just reward. A Christmas favorite, it will warm your heart with favorite memories, and remind you how the true Christmas spirit comes from giving with love.