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  After Twenty years - From their...

  O Henry

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  William Sydney Porter was born on 11th September 1862 in Greensboro, North Carolina. At age 3 his mother died from tuberculosis. From an early age it was clear Porter had a large appetite for reading as he absorbed the world around him. 
  He first attended at a school run by his aunt before enrolling at the Lindsey Street High School and then worked at his uncle’s drugstore and gained a pharmacists’ license in 1881.  
  A persistent cough took him to Texas in the hope that a change of climate would help his symptoms. He took on various types of work, initially from ranch hand and cook and then as varied as pharmacist, draftsman, bank teller and journalist. He also began to write, though for now, purely as a hobby. 
  He was a member of several singing and dramatic groups when he met 17 year old Athol Estes, daughter of a wealthy Austin family. Despite her mother’s objection owing to Athol’s tuberculosis, they began courting and in July 1887, they eloped and soon married. 
  Athol, impressed by his writing, encouraged him to get them published. A job as a draftsman at the Texas General Land Office paid a healthy $100 dollars per month and life was good. 
  But then life turned cruel. His son died a few hours after birth although a daughter, Margaret, came the following year.  His job had to be vacated but another was found at the First National Bank of Austin. The bank operated informally and Porter was careless in keeping the books. He lost that job but began writing for the humourous weekly The Rolling Stone and the Houston Post. Some time later the federal Bank auditors went through his former accounts and he was arrested on charges of embezzlement. 
  Porter fled the day before his trial to Honduras. Holed up for several months he began to write.  Athol had become too ill to travel to meet him and learning that her health was deteriorating he surrendered to the court in February 1897.  Bail was obtained so that he could stay with Athol during her final days.  
  Porter was sentenced to five years at the Ohio Penitentiary in Columbus. His pharmacy qualifications got him the job of night druggist.  His sentence also gave him time to write and publish fourteen short stories. In December 1899 in McClure’s Magazine he published a short story as O Henry.  
  He was released two years early in July 1901, and reunited with Margaret, now 11, in Pittsburgh.  He now began his most prolific period of writing; a short story per week for the New York World, while also publishing works in other magazines.  Eventually over 600 of his short stories were published. 
  Porter was a heavy drinker and in 1908 his health, which had deteriorated for several years, took a dramatic turn for the worse, as did his writing. 
  O Henry died of cirrhosis of the liver complicated by diabetes and an enlarged heart on 5th June 1910.<

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  The Threat and Other Stories

  Saki Saki

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  Sir Lulworth Quayne discusses with his nephew the threat posed by the suffragette movement in this satirical short story by Saki. This collection of stories also includes "Tea", "The Wolves of Cernogratz" and "The Penance", which were first published in 1919 in The Toys of Peace and Other Papers.

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  Dracula's Guest

  Bram Stoker

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  Title: Dracula’s Guest 
  Author: Bram Stoker 
  Narrator: Jonathan Dunne 
  Original Publication: 1914 
  Public Domain: Yes 
  Series Placement: Number 8 in the Timeless Terrors series 
  Description: 
  Dracula’s Guest by Bram Stoker is a haunting Gothic tale that serves as a chilling prelude to the legendary novel Dracula. First published posthumously in 1914, this short story follows an unnamed Englishman—implied to be Jonathan Harker—who strays from his coach during a journey through the Bavarian countryside on Walpurgis Night. 
  What begins as a simple detour soon descends into an atmosphere of mounting dread, as he encounters desolate graveyards, supernatural portents, and an unseen force that foreshadows the terror awaiting him in Transylvania. 
  Stoker weaves an unsettling blend of folklore, suspense, and atmospheric horror, capturing the eerie allure of the Gothic tradition. This recording, narrated by Amazon bestselling horror author Jonathan Dunne, immerses listeners in the tale’s dark landscapes and spectral menace. While the text itself is in the public domain, this performance is an original work and copyright © 2025 Jonathan Dunne. 
  Prepare to step into a shadowed world of ancient superstition and nocturnal terror—a fitting overture to one of literature’s most enduring vampire myths.

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  Champagne

  Anton Chekhov

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  Champagne is a short story by Anton Pavlovich Chekhov, written in 1887.
  The story is written in the first person. The young head of a remote railway stop lived with his wife and without children in solitude, amusing himself with vodka and watching passing trains.
  Life was boring. One day before celebrating the New Year, he sat with his wife at the festive table, drank enough and thought about boredom. We waited for the clock to show the arrival of the New Year. At five minutes to twelve he uncorked the bottle, the cork flew out, and the bottle slipped out of his hands and fell to the floor. The wife greeted Happy New Year with frightened eyes. She knew that the falling bottle was a bad omen and meant that something bad would happen in the new year.
  After arguing with his wife, the narrator left the house thinking that this had already happened to them, that the worst could not happen. He remembered his dead parents, how he was kicked out of the gymnasium, how he wandered around with nothing to do and friends. He did not love his wife; he married when he was still a boy.
  Returning home, he saw his wife cheerful - "good aunt" Natalya Petrovna, the wife of the hero's wife's uncle, a woman of free behavior, came to them for three days. At dinner, "aunt" and "nephew" drank well, they became dizzy, and their romance began (a terrible, mad whirlwind). In this whirlwind, the hero loses his wife, mistress, and job. He asks "what else bad could happen to me?"

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  Mateo Falcone

  Prosper Mérimée

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  There are stories that strike like a bullet—swift, precise, and inescapable. Mateo Falcone is one of them.
  In the sun-scorched Corsican wilderness, where honor is measured in blood and a man's word is as unyielding as the mountains, a moment of hesitation can seal one's fate. A fugitive seeking refuge, a child faced with an impossible choice, a father whose sense of justice knows no mercy—Mérimée paints a world where tradition rules with an iron grip, and betrayal, no matter how small, does not go unanswered.
  There are no heroes here, no villains—only the weight of an unwritten law, passed down through generations, and the chilling certainty of what must come next. A tale as sharp as a knife's edge, Mateo Falcone lingers in the mind long after the final page, leaving behind the echo of a single gunshot and the question: what price does honor demand?

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  Cousin Mary - From their pens to...

  Mary Russell Mitford

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  The bookshelves of British literature are incredible collections that have gathered together centuries of very talented authors.  From these Isles their fame spread and whilst among their number many are now forgotten or neglected their talents endure.  Among them is Mary Russell Mitford.

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