Uploaded July 2026 | Updated September 2026, 4 days ago
Two strangers, an artist and a stonemason, meet in the sweltering heat of a mid-August afternoon. A series of uncanny coincidences suggest that their fates may be intertwined... but is the future fixed, or is there anything they can do to change it?... The story starts at 00:00:58
Narrated/performed by Simon Stanhope, aka Bitesized Audio. If you enjoy this content and would like to help me keep creating, there are a few ways you can support me (and get access to bonus content):
* Monthly support on Patreon: patreon.com/bitesizedaudio
* Occasional/one-off support via Buy Me a Coffee: buymeacoffee.com/bitesizedaudio
* Donate via PayPal: paypal.com/donate/?hosted_button_id=HMMUWZ7URN26A
* Visit my Bandcamp page to hear more of my performances of classic stories, and you can purchase and download high quality audio files to listen offline: bitesizedaudio.bandcamp.com
* Become a Bitesized Audio Classics member on YouTube, from $1 / £1 / €1 per month:
youtube.com/c/BitesizedAudioClassics/join
00:00:00 Narrator's Introduction
00:00:58 August Heat
00:14:25 Credits, thanks and further listening
About the author: William Fryer Harvey (1885–1937) was born in Leeds, West Yorkshire, into a family of Quakers; he was educated at the Quaker Bootham School in York. After graduating from Oxford he trained in medicine, but poor health led him to focus on writing, and he published his first book of short stories, Midnight House, in 1910.
Harvey suffered lung damage during service in World War I, the consequences of which remained with him for the rest of his life, and he lived in Switzerland for several periods in the 1920s to aid his recuperation before returning to settle permanently in England in the early 1930s. He died in Letchworth in 1937 at the age of 52.
W. F. Harvey is best remembered as the author of several classic short stories in the genres of suspense and horror, among the best-known being August Heat (1910) and The Beast With Five Fingers (1928).
Recording © Bitesized Audio 2026
Two strangers, an artist and a stonemason, meet in the sweltering heat of a mid-August afternoon. A series of uncanny coincidences suggest that their fates may be intertwined... but is the future fixed, or is there anything they can do to change it?... The story starts at 00:00:58
Narrated/performed by Simon Stanhope, aka Bitesized Audio. If you enjoy this content and would like to help me keep creating, there are a few ways you can support me (and get access to bonus content):
* Monthly support on Patreon: patreon.com/bitesizedaudio
* Occasional/one-off support via Buy Me a Coffee: buymeacoffee.com/bitesizedaudio
* Donate via PayPal: paypal.com/donate/?hosted_button_id=HMMUWZ7URN26A
* Visit my Bandcamp page to hear more of my performances of classic stories, and you can purchase and download high quality audio files to listen offline: bitesizedaudio.bandcamp.com
* Become a Bitesized Audio Classics member on YouTube, from $1 / £1 / €1 per month:
youtube.com/c/BitesizedAudioClassics/join
00:00:00 Narrator's Introduction
00:00:58 August Heat
00:14:25 Credits, thanks and further listening
About the author: William Fryer Harvey (1885–1937) was born in Leeds, West Yorkshire, into a family of Quakers; he was educated at the Quaker Bootham School in York. After graduating from Oxford he trained in medicine, but poor health led him to focus on writing, and he published his first book of short stories, Midnight House, in 1910.
Harvey suffered lung damage during service in World War I, the consequences of which remained with him for the rest of his life, and he lived in Switzerland for several periods in the 1920s to aid his recuperation before returning to settle permanently in England in the early 1930s. He died in Letchworth in 1937 at the age of 52.
W. F. Harvey is best remembered as the author of several classic short stories in the genres of suspense and horror, among the best-known being August Heat (1910) and The Beast With Five Fingers (1928).
Recording © Bitesized Audio 2026
