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  Trent's Last Case

  E. C. Bentley

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  Considered by many to be the first modern mystery novel, Trent's Last Case introduces the gentleman sleuth Philip Trent, a freelance reporter and investigator. Trent becomes involved in the case of the murder of millionaire American financier Sigsbee Manderson, slain while on holiday in England. During the course of his investigation, Trent falls in love with one of the primary suspects. And while he collects evidence and becomes convinced that he has cracked the case, he turns out to be well off the mark.

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  The Chronicles of Barsetshire...

  Anthony Trollope

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  Three wise, witty novels in the saga following the residents of a rural English town in the Victorian era. In the nineteenth century, Anthony Trollope created the fictional world of Barsetshire, the setting for a series of classic novels that addressed love, murder, religion, politics, and the ordinary lives of locals both rich and poor.Framley Parsonage: A young vicar’s ambition drives him into a costly bargain in this comedic love story that brilliantly examines the intersection of romance and social class.The Small House at Allington: This witty novel follows the amorous misadventures of a pair of sisters.The Last Chronicle of Barset: A clergyman’s daughter falls in love with a member of high society, while her father stands accused of a terrible crime.

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  Voyage The (Unabridged)

  Katherine Mansfield

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  The Voyage is a 1921 short story by Katherine Mansfield. It was first published in The Sphere on 24 December 1921, and later reprinted in The Garden Party and Other Stories.At the harbour Fenella and her grandmother say goodbye to Fenella's father and board the Picton boat; a number of everyday situations are described during the journey, which highlight a degree of tension between the rather religious grandmother and staff on the boat. At Picton they are met by Mr Penreddy with a carriage. They arrive at the grandparents's house and meet Fenella's grandfather. It becomes apparent slowly as the story develops that Fenella's mother has recently died, and she is being taken to live in Picton for an unknown length of time.

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  Buffalo Bill Cody: Stories from...

  William Cody, Bill Buffalo

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  William Frederick Cody, known as Buffalo Bill, is one of the great icons of the pioneer years in the early American West. His exploits provide much insight into the life on the plains, with its Indians, cowboys, rough riders, and overall rugged existence. You are sure to enjoy this selection of entertaining stories from the Old West, written by the Honorable William F Cody.

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  British Short Story The - Volume...

  Ada Ester Leverson, William...

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  These British Isles, moored across from mainland Europe, are more often seen as a world unto themselves.  Restless and creative, they often warred amongst themselves until they began a global push to forge a World Empire of territory, of trade and of language. 
   
  Here our ambitions are only of the literary kind.  These shores have mustered many masters of literature. So this anthology’s boundaries includes only those authors who were born in the British Isles - which as a geographical definition is the UK mainland and the island of Ireland - and wrote in a familiar form of English. 
   
  Whilst Daniel Defoe is the normal starting point we begin a little earlier with Aphra Behn, an equally colourful character as well as an astonishing playwright and poet.  And this is how we begin to differentiate our offering; both in scope, in breadth and in depth.  These islands have raised and nurtured female authors of the highest order and rank and more often than not they have been sidelined or ignored in favour of that other gender which usually gets the plaudits and the royalties. 
   
  Way back when it was almost immoral that a woman should write.  A few pages of verse might be tolerated but anything else brought ridicule and shame.  That seems unfathomable now but centuries ago women really were chattel, with marriage being, as the Victorian author Charlotte Smith boldly stated ‘legal prostitution’.  Some of course did find a way through - Jane Austen, the Brontes and Virginia Woolf but for many others only by changing their names to that of men was it possible to get their book to publication and into a readers hands.  Here we include George Eliot and other examples. 
   
  We add further depth with many stories by authors who were famed and fawned over in their day.  Some wrote only a hidden gem or two before succumbing to poverty and death. There was no second career as a game show guest, reality TV contestant or youtuber. They remain almost forgotten outposts of talent who never prospered despite devoted hours of pen and brain. 
   
  Keeping to a chronological order helps us to highlight how authors through the ages played around with characters and narrative to achieve distinctive results across many scenarios, many styles and many genres. The short story became a sort of literary laboratory, an early disruptor, of how to present and how to appeal to a growing audience as a reflection of social and societal changes.  Was this bound to happen or did a growing population that could read begin to influence rather than just accept? 
   
  Moving through the centuries we gather a groundswell of authors as we hit the Victorian Age - an age of physical mass communication albeit only on an actual printed page.  An audience was offered a multitude of forms: novels (both whole and in serialised form) essays, short stories, poems all in weekly, monthly and quarterly form.  Many of these periodicals were founded or edited by literary behemoths from Dickens and Thackeray through to Jerome K Jerome and, even some female editors including Ethel Colburn Mayne, Alice Meynell and Ella D’Arcy. 
   
  Now authors began to offer a wider, more diverse choice from social activism and justice – and injustice to cutting stories of manners and principles.  From many forms of comedy to mental meltdowns, from science fiction to unrequited heartache.  If you can imagine it an author probably wrote it.  
   
  At the end of the 19th Century bestseller lists and then prizes, such as the Nobel and Pulitzer, helped focus an audience’s attention to a books literary merit and sales worth. Previously coffeehouses, Imperial trade, unscrupulous overseas printers ignoring copyright restrictions, publishers with their book lists as an appendix and the gossip and interchange of polite society had been the main avenues to secure sales and profits.

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  Metamorphosis

  Franz Kafka

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  Gregor Samsa wakes up one morning to find he has been transformed into a gigantic insect. This extraordinary tale of imagination was written by Kafka against the backdrop of increasing turmoil in central Europe and remains not just an affecting tale but a disturbing allegory. It is read here, in a new translation, by master story teller Martin Jarvis.

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