Showing results by author "Hector Hugh Munro" in All Categories

A glittering collection of 36 short stories by Edwardian satirist Hector Hugh Munro, who wrote under the pseudonym "Saki". Beasts And Super-Beasts includes many of Saki's best loved tales, exemplifying his witty and multi-layered storytelling, satirizing the habits and morals of British society of his day.

When Mr. Cornelius Appin announces that he has succeeded in teaching the cat, Tobermory, to speak, nobody in the house party believes him. But when Tobermory makes his entrance and begins to reveal the kind of personal secrets only a cat can know about the assembled company, chaos breaks out. Tobermory must be destroyed at all costs. Hector Hugh Munro at his most masterful!

Conradin is a sickly and introverted child who hates his guardian, Mrs. De Ropp. When she takes away his pet hen and threatens to do the same with his pole-cat, whom he worships like a god, Conradin makes a special prayer and his sinister wish is answered. Hector Hugh Munro (aka Saki) at his most sinister and macabre. Superb!

A quartet of short stories by the mastermind of practical jokes, Hector Hugh Munro, better known under his pseudonym “Saki”. This collection brings together four of his most ingenious tales, all of which involve one character playing a prank on the others. The results range from the comic to the macabre… but all are brilliantly narrated with Saki’s superb ironic wit. The Stampeding of Lady Bastable.

Unknowingly, a man arrives on the anniversary of the “Great Tragedy” that led to his host having her large French window wide open onto the lawn on an October afternoon in the vain hope that her husband and brothers - whom he learns have been dead three years - will return through it. To his horror, the man shares in the terrors of the day.

Mrs. Sangrail is determined to offload her wayward son Clovis onto Lady Bastable for six days while she takes a trip to Scotland. Is desperation she resorts to cunning bribery, but Clovis has other ideas and devises an ingenious scheme to thwart his mother’s plans. Another piece of genius humour writing by Hector Hugh Munro, peppered with his humorous observations on British Edwardian society.

When the prematurely middle-aged J.P. Huddle is recommended to take an “unrest-cure” by a friend, he little realizes that the other passenger in the railway compartment, the prank-loving Clovis, will take this as a personal challenge. The havoc which Clovis’s macabre and at times shocking practical joke causes is beyond anything that the sleepy hamlet of Tilfield has seen before. Hector Hugh Munro at his most macabre.

Finding himself trapped in a compartment with a set of unruly children, the Storyteller decides to take revenge by narrating a tale with a most immoral twist. This is a wonderful example of Hector Hugh Munro’s witty and multi-layered storytelling, satirizing British Edwardian society. The listener is drawn into the story along with the children and is equally horrified and delighted by the unexpected ending.

Bertie Thropplestance stands to inherit a vast fortune from his wealthy but indomitable grandmother, a fact which has not escaped the notice of every mother of a marriageable girl in the county. But old Mrs. Thropplestance has her own ideas of a suitable mate for her grandson, and even when he romantically rescues Dora Yonelet from a rampaging elk, this cuts little ice with the dowager. The elk, however, has its own ideas....

When the Momeby family’s baby goes missing, their neighbour Miss Gilpet undertakes to find the child. Her immediate success turns out to be less of a miracle and more of an embarrassment for all.

When Theodoric Voler boards a train he finds he is not alone in the compartment. Not only is there a female companion asleep in one corner, there is a mouse which has hidden itself inside his clothes. Can the sensitive and prudish young man manage to undress and extricate the mouse without his female companion waking up? Hector Hugh Munro (Saki) at his most satirical. A superb and witty observation on the sensibilities and mores of British Edwardian society.

When Henri Deplis comes into a small inheritance and celebrates his new found wealth by getting an elaborate tattoo, he little realizes what a series of catastrophic events will ensue. The tattoo is recognized as a masterpiece of modern art and given to the city of Bergamo. This is the start of a series of restrictions on Henri Deplis’ lifestyle which gradually but inevitably lead to his downfall.

When Theophil Eshley, the bovine painter, is called upon by his neighbour Adela Pingsford to remove a stray ox from her garden things go inevitably and comically wrong. No oxen are harmed in the course of this story, but sadly the same cannot be said of assorted chrysanthemums, drawing rooms and egos.

Genuinely chilling narratives of paranormal phenomena, the returning dead, uncanny apparitions, sinister happenings and inexplicable events which make your blood run cold. Listen in the dark... if you dare!