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  Top 10 Short Stories The -...

  Jerome K. Jerome

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  Short stories have always been a sort of instant access into an author’s brain, their soul and heart.  A few pages can lift our lives into locations, people and experiences with a sweep of landscape, narration, feelings and emotions that is difficult to achieve elsewhere. 
   
  In this series we try to offer up tried and trusted ‘Top Tens’ across many different themes and authors. But any anthology will immediately throw up the questions – Why that story? Why that author?  
   
  The theme itself will form the boundaries for our stories which range from well-known classics, newly told, to stories that modern times have overlooked but perfectly exemplify the theme.  Throughout the volume our authors whether of instant recognition or new to you are all leviathans of literature. 
   
  Some you may disagree with but they will get you thinking; about our choices and about those you would have made.  If this volume takes you on a path to discover more of these miniature masterpieces then we have all gained something. 
   
  Invariably Jerome is most often remembered for his light-hearted and humourous works such as ‘Three Men in a Boat’.  Here we have a number of his beautifully lyrical short stories and some from his forgotten, and rather darker side. 
   
  01 - The Top 10 - Jerome K Jerome - An Introduction  
  02 - Told After Supper - The Doctor's Story by Jerome  K Jerome 
  03 - The Curate's Story - My Uncle's Story - My Own Story by Jerome K Jerome 
  04 - Told After Supper - The Wisdom Of Uncle Podger by Jerome K Jerome 
  05 - The Absent Minded Man by Jerome K Jerome 
  06 - The Man of Science by Jerome K Jerome 
  07 - The Man Who Went Wrong by Jerome K Jerome 
  08 - The Cost of Kindness by Jerome K Jerome 
  09 - The Man Who Did Not Believe in Luck by Jerome K Jerome 
  10 - The Minor Poets Story by Jerome J Jerome 
  11 - The Lesson by Jerome K Jerome

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  The Ghost in the Garden Room

  Elizabeth Gaskell

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  Elizabeth Stevenson was born in Chelsea in London on 29th September 1810.  
   
  Both parents embedded their strong Unitarian beliefs into Elizabeth who rebelliously was often reluctant to display these religious convictions.  
   
  The early death of Elizabeth’s mother saw her sent away to be brought up by her maternal aunt in Knutsford, Cheshire.  
   
  Her father now remarried but Elizabeth spent most of her childhood in Cheshire away from her father and his new family but was supportive towards her half-siblings.  
   
  Elizabeth’s aunt encouraged her education and particularly to read and express herself through writing.   
   
  In 1828, her brother John, who worked in the merchant navy, disappeared on a journey to India. This disastrous loss depressed her father, and she went to his household to nurse him for the next year before he died.  
   
  In 1832, she fell in love with William Gaskell, a Unitarian minister like her father, and married him.  They settled in Manchester. This booming industrial city had a great impact on Elizabeth who felt the need to speak up for poor workers and their exploitation by large industrial companies. A collection of poems and short stories, ‘Sketches among the Poor’ appeared in 1837, co-authored by her husband.  Her first major work, under a pseudonym, was ‘Mary Barton: A Tale of Manchester Life’ published in 1848. 
   
  During her career she worked continually with Charles Dickens and published much in his various magazines. With him she published ‘Lizzie Leigh’ in 1850 which dealt with the taboo subject of prostitution.  She was an excellent writer and impressed her many Victorian literary peers. Much of her writing reflects her work as a social critic highlighting the exploitation of the working class and the situation of women in society.  
   
  On 12th November 1865, Elizabeth Gaskell died in Holybourne, Hampshire, after suffering from a heart attack a month earlier.

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  Benito Cereno

  Herman Melville

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  When an American sea captain sees a Spanish slave ship in distress, he reaches out with an offer to help. Once on board, however, the odd behavior of the captain, crew, and slaves leave him with an uneasy feeling that something is not as it seems. Melville based the plot of this novella on real events that occurred off the coast of Chile in 1799. Though it is not Melville’s best-known work, it is favored among scholars as one of his most complex.

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  The Ultimate Allan Quatermain...

  H. Rider Haggard

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  The Ultimate Allan Quatermain Collection includes the 8 full-length novels, 4 short stories and 1 extracanonical work featuring Allan Quatermain.The character Allan Quatermain is an English-born professional big game hunter and occasional trader living in South Africa. An outdoorsman who finds English cities and climate unbearable, he prefers to spend most of his life in Africa, where he grew up under the care of his widower father, a Christian missionary. In the earliest-written novels, native Africans refer to Quatermain as Macumazahn, meaning Watcher-by-Night, a reference to his nocturnal habits and keen instincts. In later-written novels, Macumazahn is said to be a short form of Macumazana, meaning One who stands out. Quatermain is frequently accompanied by his native servant, the Hottentot Hans, a wise and caring family retainer from his youth. His sarcastic comments offer a sharp critique of European conventions. In his final adventures, Quatermain is joined by two British companions, Sir Henry Curtis and Captain John Good of the Royal Navy, and by his African friend Umslopogaas.Included in this collection:1. King Solomon's Mines (1885)2. Allan Quatermain (1887)3. Allan's Wife and Other Tales (1887): Allan's Wife / Hunter Quatermain's Story / A Tale of Three Lions / Long Odds4. Marie (1912)5. Child of Storm (1913)6. Allan and the Holy Flower (1915)7. The Ivory Child (1916)8. The Ancient Allan (1920)9. She and Allan (1920)10. Extracanonical Work: Magepa the Buck (1912)

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  Ivan Matveyitch

  Anton Chekhov

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  Ivan Matveyitch by Anton Chekhov is an archetypal example of the Russian realist tradition, and serves as an exploration of human identity in a rapidly changing, modernizing nation. Through his depiction of the titular protagonist, a common man on the cusp of middle-agedness, Chekhov paints a vivid portrait of a character struggling to reconcile his sense of self with shifting cultural and social expectations. Read in English, unabridged.

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  Lost Treasure

  Caradoc Evans

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  David Caradoc Evans (1878-1945) was a Welsh story writer, novelist, and playwright. Evans was brought up in a Welsh-speaking community in Cardiganshire, and although he learned English at school and always wrote in English, his work is soaked in Welsh syntax and vocabulary. Evans left school at 14 and worked throughout Wales in a series of menial jobs before moving to London, where he worked as a draper's apprentice.It was this background which influenced Lost Treasure, which tells the story of Hugh, a miserly Welsh draper in London who scrimps and saves until he has ten sovereigns. This he changes for a ten-pound note, which he gives to his wife, Millie, for safekeeping. Millie hides it somewhere quite safe...so safe indeed that she forgets where she has put it. The news of the loss of the ten-pound note sends Hugh, his career, his social life, and Millie's destiny into a tailspin and changes their destiny forever.

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