12 h 4 minAudiobook7 minSummaryRead it, hear it, the 15-minute summary, and print and large print at costPaperback · 6 × 9 in · printing soonHardcover · 6 × 9 in · printing soonAbout this book
What if the trouble in your rooms is something no ordinary doctor can treat?
In Algernon Blackwood’s John Silence, Physician Extraordinary, a calm, kind doctor takes on troubles of mind and spirit that ordinary medicine cannot explain. Across five tales, he listens where others laugh or turn away. For his patients, the unseen threatens health, work, and the comfort of familiar places.
A Psychical Invasion brings Silence a writer whose rooms seem hostile. In Ancient Sorceries, Arthur Vezin describes a strange French town. The Nemesis of Fire turns to an old house; Secret Worship returns a man to his German school. The Camp of the Dog carries dread into a wild landscape, where a holiday slowly loses its ease.
What you’ll discover
- A patient investigator Meet a physician who refuses to call anything impossible before he has looked closely.
- Rooms that threaten Enter a writer’s rooms, where failing health and faltering work hint at something hostile.
- A town that draws you Follow Arthur Vezin into a quiet place whose pull is stronger than he expects.
- Old places, hidden powers Feel unease gather around an old house and a school remembered from youth.
- Dread under open skies Watch a camping holiday sour as the wild shore carries the feeling of being watched.
Who will love it
You will love this if you enjoy ghost stories with a calm, clever investigator, atmospheric settings from fog-bound London to Baltic islands, and cases that mix fear, wonder and a warm human heart.
What’s inside
The key ideas, in the 15-minute summary
- A doctor without fees takes the cases others refuse
- A strange drug opens a door that stays open
- Animals feel what the doctor cannot yet see
- A quiet French town hides a watching life
- A girl called Ilse offers him an old bond
- A cold, burning house and a colonel in need
- A chase through the wood and a plan for midnight
- A schoolboy's memories lead a merchant to a dark door
- Wild islands, a girl's fear and a howling in the night
Who’s who
- Dr. John SilenceA rich, gentle doctor who takes no fees and treats psychical afflictions, using trained intuition and unselfish will.
- Felix PenderA humorous author whose sense of humor has been replaced by dread after taking a strange drug.
- Arthur VezinA timid man of forty-five who steps off a train in northern France and finds a town watching him.
- HubbardSilence's assistant, who tells the cases of the burning house and the island camp and learns to follow his chief.
- Colonel WraggeA retired soldier who hates unseen enemies, and who asks Silence to explain fires haunting his house and wood.
- HarrisA silk merchant who returns to his old mountain school and longs for the peace he knew as a boy.
- Joan MaloneyA wild-spirited young woman at home in the open, who fears a pull she cannot name.
- Peter SangreeA delicate Canadian pupil who loves Joan from a distance and changes in the island wilderness.
Formats and delivery
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- Large-print eBook
- The same book in bigger, clearer type, from the first page.
- Audiobook
- 12 h 4 min, complete, read by Lucas Linden.
- 15-minute summary
- The key ideas in about 7 minutes, to read or to hear.
- Paperback
- 6 × 9 in. Printing soon: leave your email under Paperback or Hardcover above.
- Hardcover
- 6 × 9 in. Printing soon: leave your email under Paperback or Hardcover above.
- Large print paperback
- 8.5 × 11 in. Printing soon: leave your email under Paperback or Hardcover above.
- Large print hardcover
- 8.5 × 11 in. Printing soon: leave your email under Paperback or Hardcover above.
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John Silence, medico straordinario
by Algernon Blackwood · 1908
A fee-free doctor follows fear, fire and a howling beast through five cases of the unseen.
Medium level10–20 hours to read25 languages
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In short
What would you do if your sense of humor vanished and something else began writing your stories? Algernon Blackwood answers with John Silence, Physician Extraordinary, five cases of a doctor who takes no fees and faces haunted houses, secret rites, burning woods and a howling beast.
From the 15-minute summary · Key idea 1
A doctor without fees takes the cases others refuse
Dr. John Silence is rich by accident and a doctor by choice. He keeps no consulting room and charges nothing, and he helps poorly paid workers, often artists, who cannot afford a long rest. He is known as the psychic doctor, a name he dislikes.
The first case begins when Mrs. Sivendson asks him to help Felix Pender, a writer of humorous stories. Pender lives in a small house near Putney Heath, and his gift for comedy has failed. What he writes now frightens him, and he believes someone else shares the house. His wife watches him step aside on the stairs to let nobody pass.
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What is John Silence, Physician Extraordinary about?
It is a collection of five supernatural cases handled by Dr. John Silence, a kind doctor who takes no fees and treats psychical afflictions. The cases range from a haunted house to a hill town, a burning wood, a mountain school and a wild island.
Who is John Silence?
He is a rich, gentle doctor in his forties who chooses cases that interest him and costs the patient nothing. He relies on trained sensitivity, calm will and sympathy, and is sometimes called the psychic doctor.
Are the stories connected?
Each case stands on its own, so you can read any of them first. Dr. Silence links them, and Hubbard, his assistant, tells several. The tone moves from quiet unease to bigger set pieces.
The author
Algernon Blackwood
1869–1951 · English supernatural fiction writer
Algernon Blackwood (1869–1951) was an English short story writer and novelist. He was born in Kent and lived in Canada before returning to Britain. He wrote The Empty House and Other Ghost Stories (1906), The Willows (1907), John Silence (1908), and The Wendigo (1910). He died in London.
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