Publisher: MVP
Belinda, with a modest self-possession quite her own, promptly answered for this Spectre in a low, clear voice: The lights extinguished; by the hearth I leant, Half weary with a listless discontent. The flickering giant shadows, gathering near. Closed round me with a dim and silent fear; All dull, all dark; save when the leaping flame, Glancing, lit up The Picture's ancient frame.
A Shakespeare Society Production. The complete play in five acts. Desperately in love with Bertram, the son of a Spanish countess, Helena schemes with the virginal Diana to fulfill Bertram’s stipulations and win his love. As Bertram’s infidelity and Helena’s deceits are revealed, the estranged lovers reunite, but the audience is left to wonder if, in love, the end justifies the means.Show book
"A Story of the Days To Come" is a novella by H. G. Wells comprising five chapters that was first published in the June to October 1899 issues of The Pall Mall Magazine. It was later included in an 1899 collection of Wells's short stories, Tales of Space and Time. The novella depicts two lovers in a dystopian future London of the 22nd century and explores the implications of excessive urbanisation, class warfare, and advances in the technology of medicine, communication, transportation, and agriculture. Like When the Sleeper Wakes, published in the same year, the novella extrapolates the trends Wells observed in 19th-century Victorian London two hundred years into the future. The London of the early 22nd century has a population of over 30 million, with the lower classes living in subterranean dwellings, and the middle and upper classes living in skyscrapers and largely communal accommodations. Moving walkways interconnect the city, with fast air-travel and superhighways available between cities. The countryside is largely abandoned.Show book
Pericles is the Prince of Tyre but is forced to leave the city due to the atrocities that the wicked Emperor of Greece threatens to bestow should he stay. His courage, wisdom and goodness are recognized wherever he goes so much so that he marries the Queen of Pentapolis who bears him a child at sea, for he is forced to return to Tyre to pacify its citizens who are clamouring for his return as their ruler following the death of the wicked Emperor of Greece. He believes his Queen to have died in childbirth and has to trust the upbringing of this newly born daughter, Marina, with the good rulers of Tarsus, as on board ship is no place for an infant. Pericles was grief stricken at the loss of his wife and child and could hardly eat or speak but the twists of fate had a better outcome for him. Although not one of the best known of Shakespeare’s histories it has all his trademarks and with a strong reading by the warm rousing voice of Tim Graham, means this audio shouldn’t be ignored.Show book
The heart of John Middleton by Elizabeth Gaskell.Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell,often referred to as Mrs Gaskell, was an English novelist, biographer, and short story writer. Her novels offer a detailed portrait of the lives of many strata of Victorian society, including the very poor, and are of interest to social historians as well as lovers of literature.Show book
Convalescing in London after a disastrous experience of war in Afghanistan, Dr. John Watson finds himself sharing rooms with his enigmatic new acquaintance Sherlock Holmes. But their quiet bachelor life at 221B Baker Street is soon interrupted by the grisly discovery of a dead man in a grimy "ill-omened" house in southeast London, his face contorted by an expression of horror and hatred such as Watson has never seen before. On the wall, the word rache-German for "revenge"-is written in blood, yet there are no wounds on the victim or signs of a struggle. Watson's head is in a whirl, but the formidable Holmes relishes this challenge to his deductive powers. And so begins their famous investigative partnership.Show book
Fyodor Mikhailovich Dostoyevsky was born in Moscow on 11th November, 1821 to distinguished multi-ethnic parents from a Lithuanian background. His childhood years were at the family home in hospital grounds which also contained an orphanage, an insane asylum and a cemetery for criminals. The young Fyodor often disobeyed his father by talking to the ill in the hospital gardens. His health was compromised at age 9 when he experienced his first epileptic fit. By the time he was a teenager both parents had died and he was now enrolled in a military academy where he graduated and eventually became a Lieutenant in 1842. He left military service the next year. In 1846 he published his first novel ‘Poor Cow’ to great literary acclaim. His next was unable to emulate that success but his short stories helped provide an income. Life as an author was definitely difficult. As he began his next work he was arrested and incarcerated for treason and participation in the political and literary Petrashevsky Circle. Although the case was weak and unjustified he was sentenced to 4 years of hard labour followed by 5 years of military service in a Siberian regiment. Despite the undoubted hardships and setbacks in his life, and whether they helped or hindered his writing, his talents produced many exceptional works of literature including ‘Crime and Punishment’, ‘The Idiot’ and ‘The Brothers Karamazov’. Dostoevsky’s ability to get under the skin of his characters and show the inner workings of their mind was hugely influential and ahead of its time. Interwoven with this was the influence of the broader social, spiritual and political forces at work in a person's psyche. Fyodor Dostoevsky struggled financially and remained in poor health for much of his adult life. He died from a lung haemorrhage on 9th February, 1881. ‘The Dream of a Ridiculous Man’ is one of his many classic short stories that turn a splinter of the ordinary into the spiralling descent of chaos.Show book
