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  Guy de Maupassant - A Short...

  Guy de Maupassant

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  Henri René Albert Guy de Maupassant was born on August 5th, 1850 near Dieppe in France.  
   
  Maupassant’s early life was badly torn when at age 11 (his younger brother Hervé was then five) his mother, Laure, a headstrong and independent-minded woman, risked social disgrace in order to obtain a legal separation from her husband. 
   
  After the separation, Laure kept custody of her two boys. With the father now forcibly absent, Laure became the most influential and important figure in the young boy's life.   
   
  Maupassant’s education was such that he rebelled against religion and other societal norms but a developing friendship with Gustave Flaubert began to turn his mind towards creativity and writing. 
   
  After graduation he volunteered for the Franco-Prussian war. With its end he moved to Paris to work as a clerk in the Navy Department.  Gustave Flaubert now took him under his wing.  Acting as a literary guardian to him, he guided the eager Maupassant to debuts in journalism and literature.  For Maupassant these were exciting times and the awakening of his creative talents and ambitions. 
   
  In 1880 he published what is considered his first great work, ‘Boule de Suif’, (translated as as ‘Dumpling’, ‘Butterball’, ‘Ball of Fat’, or ‘Ball of Lard’) which met with a success that was both instant and overwhelming.  Flaubert at once acknowledged that it was ‘a masterpiece that will endure.’ Maupassant had used his talents and experiences in the war to create something unique.  
   
  This decade from 1880 to 1891 was to be the most pivotal of his career.  With an audience now made available by the success of ‘Boule de Suif’ Maupassant organised himself to work methodically and relentlessly to produce between two and four volumes of work a year.  The melding of his talents and business sense and the continual hunger of sources for his works made him wealthy. 
   
  In his later years he developed a desire for solitude, an obsession for self-preservation, and a fear of death as well as a paranoia of persecution caused by the syphilis he had contracted in his youth.  
   
  On January 2nd, 1892, Maupassant tried to commit suicide by cutting his throat.  Unsuccessful he was committed to the private asylum of Esprit Blanche at Passy, in Paris.  It was here on July 6th, 1893 that  
  Henri René Albert Guy de Maupassant died at the age of only 42. 
  1 - Guy de Maupassant - A Short Story Collection - An Introduction 
  2 - The Piece of String  
  3 - Two Little Soldiers  
  4 - Two Friends 
  5 - Suicides  
  6 - The Grave 
  7 - An Uncomfortable Bed 
  8 - Regret 
  9 - Love 
  10 - The Kiss 
  11 - The Dowry 
  12 - The Vendetta 
  13 - A Dead Woman's Secret 
  14 - Mother Sauvage

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  Miss Mary Pask

  Edith Wharton

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  Edith Wharton (1862-1937) was a Pulitzer Prize-winning American novelist and short story writer. She was nominated for the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1927, 1928 and 1930.Among her most popular and terrifying tales are the many masterly ghost stories which she wrote in her early career.Miss Mary Pask is the story of a young man who calls in on the sister of his best friend's wife while he is travelling in Brittany, where she lives. But as he stands on the doorstep, he suddenly recalls hearing that the sister had died a year ago. And yet there is a figure in white coming down the stairs....

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  His First Time: Adam - A sexy...

  Callie Love, Ann Omasta

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  My name is Adam, and I’m part of an elite, rare group… I’m a male librarian. 
  Most women don’t see that there’s more to me than just my love of books. 
  But Eve is not most women. 
  I’m brainy, reserved, surprisingly tough, and known for my humorous bad-date stories.  
  Gorgeous Eve is temptation personified. When she saunters into my library and takes a bite out of my juicy, red apple, my entire world turns upside down. 
  Thanks to her, I’ll never again walk through aisle L through R of the Media Center without smiling. 
  But I want more than simply a hot quickie, and Eve has already told me a lie. 
  Can I trust this beautiful temptress with my heart? 
  Will Eve’s devastating secret block the duo’s path to happiness in this forbidden love story? Find out now by listening to His First Time: Adam. 
  The Hot Shots of Romance Quickies are scorching short stories featuring sexy heroes, curvy heroines, seductive insta-love, sizzling bedroom scenes, and satisfying happily-ever-after endings. Start anywhere. Binge-read them all. Grab Adam now and enjoy a perfectly-portioned taste of steamy romance to satisfy your craving.

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  Old Time Radio's Greatest Stars:...

  Black Eye Entertainment

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  Versatile actor William Conrad had a long career (1945-1993) and was an American World War II fighter pilot, actor, producer, and director whose career spanned five decades in radio, film and television.He appeared in nearly 8,000 radio shows during the golden age and when TV beckoned, he delivered, starring in Cannon (1971-76), Nero Wolfe (1981) and Jake and the Fat Man (1987-1992). He also narrated the television adventures of Rocky and Bullwinkle (1959-1964) and The Fugitive (1963-1967). He starred in numerous films, including the The Killers (1946), Body and Soul (1947), Sorry, Wrong Number (1948), Joan of Arc (1948) and The Naked Jungle (1954). His most popular role on radio was United States Marshal Matt Dillon on the long-running adult western series Gunsmoke (1952-1961). He voiced starring and supporting roles on most of the west-coast’s dramatic radio programs, including Suspense, Escape, The Whistler, Night Beat, The Lux Radio Theatre and Philip Marlowe.We’ve carefully selected 12 of William Conrad’s finest radio performances for this exciting collection and we hope you enjoy it!The Whistler — “The Trigger Man”Gunsmoke — “Lynching Man”Escape — “Leinengen Vs. the Ants”Suspense — “Beware the Quiet Man”Yours Truly, Johnny Dollar — “Milford Brooks III” (Audition show with Dick Powell)Box Thirteen — “The Dead Man Walks”The Halls of Ivy — “Gangster’s Son”Night Beat — “The Einer Pierce Case”The Story of Dr. Kildare — “The Dick Brennan Case”Broadway Is My Beat — “The Lucille Baker Case”I Was a Communist for the FBI — “The Pit Viper”The Adventures of Philip Marlowe — “The Anniversary Gift” (Conrad subbing for regular star Gerald Mohr)

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  Little Dorrit

  Charles Dickens

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  When Arthur Clennam returns to England after many years abroad, he takes a kindly interest in Amy Dorrit, his mother's seamstress, and in the affairs of Amy's father, William Dorrit, a man of shabby grandeur, long imprisoned for debt in Marshalsea prison. As Arthur soon discovers, the dark shadow of the prison stretches far beyond its walls to affect the lives of many, from the kindly Mr Panks, the reluctant rent-collector of Bleeding Heart Yard, and the tipsily garrulous Flora Finching, to Merdle, an unscrupulous financier, and the bureaucratic Barnacles in the Circumlocution Office. A masterly evocation of the state and psychology of imprisonment, Little Dorrit is one of the supreme works of Dickens's maturity.

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  The Gardener

  E.F. Benson

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  Hugh and Margaret Grainger have rented a lovely old house near an excellent golf course. At the bottom of the garden is a strange, well-kept, but untenented thatched cottage.A visitor to the Graingers has a strange and overwhelming presentiment on passing the cottage that the house is actually not empty. Indeed, on several occasions he seems to see a light in the cottage. And one evening he thinks he sees a figure entering the house. But every attempt to investigate confirms that the cottage is abandoned.Margaret Grainer is an enthusiast for communicating with the spirit world via the planchette. When she starts receiving peculiar messages from someone calling himself the gardener everyone is intrigued but sceptical. But then the gardener announces his wish to enter the house... and catapults the inhabitants of the house into a strange and terrifying spiral of events.

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