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  Wilkie Collins - A Short Story...

  Wilkie Collins

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  Wilkie Collins was born on 8th January 1824 in Marylebone, London.  
   
  The family moved several times in his early years before, at 12, they travelled to France and Italy for 2 years where the sights and atmosphere made a deep and lasting impression on him. 
   
  He resumed his education at Mr Cole’s private boarding school in Highbury, Islington.  Here, he began his literary career under unusual circumstances: the school bully would give him no peace until he had been told a bedtime story.  This ‘little brute’ helped create one of England’s greatest writers.  
   
  On leaving school, in 1841, he became a clerk at a tea merchant before, 2 years later, publishing his first short story.  However, his first novel was rejected and remained so during his lifetime.  
   
  A brief stint at Lincoln’s Inn to please his father and to acquire a steady income was halted by his father’s death.  Collins then wrote and published his fathers’ memoirs.  He then completed his legal education though he would never practice.  
   
  In March 1851, he was introduced to Charles Dickens and there now started a period of sustained literary output and a remarkable lifelong friendship.  His stories were published in Dicken’s magazines, and he toured with Dicken’s theatrical before the two of them travelled to the Continent. 
   
  By the early 1860’s worrying signs of ill-health appeared with rheumatic gout.  As it worsened, he sought respite and cures in German spa towns and gave up writing to help his recuperation. 
   
  His personal life had become very complicated.  He was living with the widowed Caroline Graves and conducting an affair with a much younger Martha Rudd.  With the serialised release of ‘The Moonstone’ and vicious attacks of gout Caroline left him and married another.  Collins was now prescribed opium and was soon its lifelong dependent.  Martha bore him two children and with the return of a now divorced Caroline Graves he now divided his time between the two women. 
   
  In 1874 he set aside writing to tour North America on a reading tour. 
   
  Throughout his later years he continued to write and publish.  In all 30 novels, 14 plays, 60 short stories and over a 100 non-fiction essays as well as many more collaborations with Dickens. 
   
  In 1884 the Society of Authors elected him as it’s Vice-President. 
   
  Wilkie Collins died from a paralytic stroke on September 23rd, 1889, in London. He was 65.

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  Lost Love’s Return

  Alfred Nichols

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  For fans of Nicholas Sparks, Amor Towles and Kate Quinn , comes a tale that asks one important question Can love prevail from the battlefields of WW1 Europe, to postwar Mississippi and into WWII one?  
  In 1918, in a dramatic battlefield scene on the Western Front, young American soldier Peter Montgomery sustains a severe wound. He’s transported to a British hospital, where he falls hard for Elizabeth, a young English nurse, and she for him. Upon his release, they engage in an intense love affair, forever changing both of their lives. 
  Separated and shipped home, Peter tries desperately to reconnect with Elizabeth, but the War and the Spanish flu epidemic have the world in turmoil. Despite his every effort, desperate and in great distress, he is unable to reconnect with her. And then, suddenly, all hope is gone. 
  For the next twenty-seven years, Peter stoically meets many challenges in his life: finding a way to make a living during the Depression; being a devoted father to his son, born eleven months after marriage to a woman he does not love. 
  This debut novel from Alfred Nicols takes you from the battlefields of Europe during WWI to postwar Mississippi and into WWII and begs one question. Will true love prevail? 
  "An absolutely fabulous production!" — InD'tale Magazine

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  The Kudzu Queen

  Mimi Herman

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  Longlisted for the Center for Fiction First Novel Prize 
   
   
   
  Fifteen-year-old Mattie Lee Watson dreams of men, not boys. So when James T. Cullowee, the Kudzu King, arrives in Cooper County, North Carolina, in 1941 to spread the gospel of kudzu—claiming that it will improve the soil, feed cattle at almost no cost, even cure headaches—Mattie is ready. Mr. Cullowee is determined to sell the entire county on the future of kudzu, and organizes a kudzu festival, complete with a beauty pageant. Mattie is determined to be crowned Kudzu Queen and capture the attentions of the Kudzu King. As she learns more about Cullowee, however, she discovers that he, like the kudzu he promotes, has a dark and predatory side. When she finds she is not the only one threatened, she devises a plan to bring him down. Based on historical facts, The Kudzu Queen unravels a tangle of sexuality, power, race, and kudzu through the voice of an irresistibly delightful (and mostly honest) narrator.

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  The Windfall - A tale about the...

  Vicente Blasco Ibáñez

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  Vicente Blasco Ibáñez was born in Valencia, Spain on 29th January 1867.  
   
  At university, he studied law and graduated in 1888 but never felt the urgency to practice - he was more interested in politics, journalism, literature and women.   
   
  Politically he was a militant Republican partisan and, in his youth, founded a newspaper, El Pueblo (The People). The newspaper was taken to court many times and he made many enemies. In one incident he was shot and almost killed. In 1896, Ibáñez was arrested and sentenced to a few months in prison. 
   
  Despite this colourful background he found time to write novels. His first published work was ‘La Araña Negra’ (The Black Spider) in 1892, a work that he later repudiated although at the time it was a useful vehicle for him to express his anti-clerical views. 
   
  In 1894, he published ‘Arroz y Tartana’ (Airs and Graces), about a late 19th Century widow in Valencia trying to keep up appearances in order to marry her daughters well.   
   
  Ibáñez’s next sequence of books studied rural life in the farmlands of Valencia and failed to gain much of an audience.   
   
  His writing now took on a new direction with its now familiar sensational and melodramatic themes in 1908 with ‘Sangre y Arena’ (Blood and Sand), which follows the career of Juan Gallardo from his poor beginnings as a child in Seville, to his rise to becoming a famous matador in Madrid 
   
  However, his greatest success was ‘Los Cuatro Jinetes del Apocalipsis (The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse) in 1916, which tells a tangled tale of the French and German sons-in-law of an Argentinian land-owner who find themselves fighting on opposite sides in the First World War.  It was a literary and commercial sensation and became the best-selling book of 1919.  It also propelled Rudolph Valentino to stardom in the 1921 film. 
   
  Ironically his fame in the English-speaking world has come not as a novelist but as the stories behind some of Hollywood’s greatest silent movies. 
   
  Vicente Blasco Ibáñez died in Menton, France on January 28th, 1928, the day before his 61st birthday.

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  The House in the Orchard

  Elizabeth Brooks

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  When a World War II widow inherits a dilapidated English estate, she uncovers a diary written by an adolescent girl named Maude Gower. Looking for answers, she begins reading, only to unravel more questions about the mysterious past and many secrets hidden deep within the walls of Orchard House. 
   
   
   
  In 1876, orphaned Maude is forced to leave London, and her adored brother, Frank, to live with a stranger. Everyone—especially Frank—tells her not to trust Miss Greenaway, the enigmatic owner of Orchard House, but Maude can't help warming to her new guardian. Encouraged by Miss Greenaway, Maude finds herself discovering who she is for the first time, and learning to love her new home. But when Frank comes for an unexpected visit, the delicate balance of Maude's life is thrown into disarray. Complicating matters more, Maude witnesses an adult world full of interactions she cannot quite understand. Her efforts to regain control result in a violent tragedy, the repercussions of which will haunt Orchard House for the rest of Maude's life—and beyond. 
   
   
   
  With each psychologically gripping turn, Elizabeth Brooks masterfully explores the blurred lines between truth and manipulation, asking us who we can trust, how to tell guilt from forgiveness, and whether we can ever really separate true love from destruction.

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  The Homestead

  Russell J. Atwater

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  The Cowans have arrived in Texas to homestead. After their dangerous trek west, they want to settle, free from worry and danger. With the help of his son, Wes, the McLeod brothers, and Pony Boy, Bruce is ready to raise his cabin. 
   
   
   
  Unfortunately for them, their troubles have just begun! 
   
   
   
  They discover that Cord McGregor, the cattle baron they had a run in with on the Santa Fe Trail, has a spread nearby. To make matters worse, the cattle ranchers are in a range war against homesteaders and sheepherders. 
   
   
   
  McGregor and the other ranchers aren't their only problem. There's a tribe of hostile Apaches nearby and the Owens gang to the north. 
   
   
   
  Caught between three different enemies, Bruce raises his log cabin, hoping his family can live in peace. It's not to be. 
   
   
   
  Amid the growing issues that threaten the lives of the settlers, Trent waits for the perfect time to ask Becky to marry him. 
   
   
   
  Forced once again to defend themselves, the McLeod brothers face their deadliest foes yet. They can't move on this time. The stakes are high. Life or death. They must protect their lives and their homestead, or die. Will they ever live in peace?

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