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  A Starry Drive

  Robert Louis Stevenson

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  In our rule at Silverado, there was a melancholy interregnum. The queen and the crown prince with one accord fell sick; and, as I was sick to begin with, our lone position on Mount Saint Helena was no longer tenable, and we had to hurry back to Calistoga and a cottage on the green. By that time we had begun to realize the difficulties of our position. We had found what an amount of labour it cost to support life in our red canyon; and it was the dearest desire of our hearts to get a China-boy to go along with us when we returned. We could have given him a whole house to himself, self-contained, as they say in the advertisements; and on the money question we were prepared to go far. Kong Sam Kee, the Calistoga washerman, was entrusted with the affair; and from day to day it languished on, with protestations on our part and mellifluous excuses on the part of Kong Sam Kee.

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  John Charrington's Wedding - A...

  Edith Nesbit

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  Edith Nesbit was born on the 15th August 1858 in Kennington, then part of Surrey.   
   
  Due to the health issues and tuberculosis of her sister Mary, Nesbit’s early life was one of constant changes of house both in England and on the continent. 
   
  At age 17, Nesbit met Hubert Bland and they married three years later―whilst she was 7 months pregnant.  Bland also kept his affair with another woman going throughout their marriage and the two children of that relationship were raised by Nesbit as well as her own three with Bland. 
   
  Together they were founder members of the Fabian Society in 1884 naming their son Fabian in its honour.  They also edited the Society's journal; ‘Today’.  Nesbit was an active lecturer and prolific writer on socialism during those years but gradually her work for them dwindled as her career as a children’s writer grew.  Her most famous success was ‘The Railway Children’ but she was also very prolific and greatly accomplished in poetry, short stories―especially her macabre ghost and supernatural stories―and novels for adults.  
   
  In February 1917, some three years after the death of Bland she married Thomas ‘the Skipper’ Tucker in Woolwich, where he was a ship's engineer on the Woolwich Ferry. 
   
  Edith Nesbit died from lung cancer on the 4th May 1924 at her house ‘The Long Boat’ at Jesson, St Mary's Bay, New Romney in Kent.  She was 65.

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  The Eater of Souls

  Henry Kuttner

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  "The Eater of Souls" by Henry Kuttner tells the story of Sindara, the ruler of Bel Yarnak, who confronts a monstrous entity known as the Eater of Souls. This entity's call has been drawing his people to their deaths in the Gray Gulf of Yarnak. Sindara, rejecting the advice of his necromancers and hydromancers, turns to his god, Vorvadoss, for help. After a harrowing battle, Sindara undergoes a horrific transformation, merging with the Eater of Souls to break the cycle of despair. The story ends with his tragic descent into darkness, forever separated from the beauty of his homeland.

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  Far from the Madding Crowd

  Thomas Hardy

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  Embark on a journey through the pastoral landscapes of Wessex with Thomas Hardy's "Far from the Madding Crowd." This classic novel follows the independent and spirited Bathsheba Everdene as she navigates love, ambition, and heartache. Courted by three very different suitors—the steadfast Gabriel Oak, the dashing Sergeant Troy, and the wealthy Farmer Boldwood—Bathsheba's choices lead to dramatic and unforeseen consequences. A richly woven tale of resilience, passion, and the complexities of rural life, Hardy's masterpiece explores the timeless themes of human relationships and the inexorable forces of fate.

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  Wireless - A rare Kipling...

  Rudyard Kipling

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  Joseph Rudyard Kipling was born in Mumbai, India on 30th December 1865.   
   
  As was the custom in those days, he and his sister were sent back to England when he was 5.  The ill-treatment and cruelty by the Portsmouth couple they boarded with Kipling said contributed to the onset of his literary life.  
   
  At 16 he returned to India to work on a local paper where he was soon contributing and writing.  It also exposed him to the issues of identity and national allegiance which pervade much of his work.  
   
  In 1886, his ‘Departmental Ditties’, collection of verse appeared in print followed by 39 short stories for his newspaper over only 8 months.  These were then published as ‘Plain Tales from the Hills’, shortly after his 22nd birthday.  
   
  He continued his prolific pace of writing before being dismissed in a dispute and, taking his pay-off and the profits from the sale of some publishing rights, decided to return to London, travelling via Rangoon, Hong Kong, Japan and the United States, all the while writing articles, and arriving at Liverpool in October 1889. 
   
  Over the next two years he saw further works published as books and in magazines, as well as a nervous breakdown for which he was prescribed a sea voyage, to South Africa, Australia, New Zealand and India.  
   
  Happier times came with marriage to Caroline Starr Balestier in January 1892.  The honeymoon began in Vermont and ended in Yokahama where they heard their bank had failed.  They returned to Vermont and settled.  Caroline was now pregnant and he was planning the ‘Jungle Books’.  
   
  A failed arbitration between the US and England resulted in an argument between Caroline’s brother and Kipling, and then his arrest.  At the hearing he was mortified by the exposure of his private life and after settling the matter they returned to England and life in Torquay.  ‘Kim’ was published in 1902, and ‘Just So Stories for Little Children’, a year later.  
   
  In 1907 he was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature with the citation “in consideration of the power of observation, originality of imagination, virility of ideas and remarkable talent for narration which characterise the creations of this world-famous author”.   
   
  When the Great War erupted, he scorned those who refused conscription.  His son enlisted and was killed at the Battle of Loos in September 1915, at 18, an exploding shell had ripped his face apart.  This death inspired Kipling’s writing thereafter, but the tragedy broke his life and by 1930 his prolific pen had almost ceased. 
   
  Rudyard Kipling died on 18th January 1936 from a perforated duodenal ulcer.  He was 70.  His ashes are buried at Poets’ Corner in Westminster Abbey.

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  The Great Gatsby - The Deluxe...

  Francis Scott Fitzgerald

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  “Gatsby believed in the green light, the orgastic future that year by year recedes before us.” 
  Step into the glittering yet hollow world of the 1920s—a realm of champagne, jazz, and restless ambition. In The Great Gatsby, F. Scott Fitzgerald peers beyond the shimmer of the American Dream, revealing the illusions and disillusionment at its core. 
  The novel unfolds in the summer of 1922 through the eyes of Nick Carraway, a Yale graduate and World War I veteran who rents a modest home in West Egg, Long Island. His enigmatic neighbor, Jay Gatsby, is a self-made millionaire famed for extravagant parties but haunted by a singular obsession: to reclaim Daisy Buchanan, the woman he once loved. Daisy, trapped in wealth and a loveless marriage, becomes both the object of Gatsby’s dream and a symbol of its emptiness. 
  At its heart, The Great Gatsby is a meditation on illusion, identity, and the cost of desire. It is both a tragic love story and a sharp critique of the American Dream—its promises, its failures, and its corruption. 
  Written in the Jazz Age, Fitzgerald’s lyrical prose captures a generation intoxicated by success yet shadowed by disillusionment. A century later, the novel endures because it speaks to the dreamer in us all, chasing a light always just out of reach.

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