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  Top 10 Short Stories The -...

  Rudyard Kipling

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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. 
   
  Kipling in these more modern times is increasingly seen as an apologist for the bad ways of evil empires.  It’s a simplistic analysis and avoids much of his literary talent that is entertaining, scary and down right brilliant story telling whatever the background it is based on or comes from.   
   
  01 - Top 10 - Rudyard Kipling - An Introduction 
  02 - The Man Who Would Be King - Part 1 
  03 - The Man Who Would Be King - Part 2 
  04 - They 
  05 - The Phantom Rickshaw 
  06 - My Own True Ghost Story 
  07 - Mark of the Beast 
  08 - Baa Baa Black Sheep 
  09 - The Maltese Cat 
  10 - Mary Postgate 
  11 - The Gardener 
  12 -At the End of the Passage

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  Voices of Famous Polar Explorers

  Frederick Albert Cook, Robert E....

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  Frederick Albert Cook (June 10, 1865 - August 5, 1940) was an American explorer and physician noted for his claims of achieving the first summit of Mount McKinley, in September 1906, and having reached the North Pole on April 21, 1908, which would have been a year before Robert Peary. Both claims have been largely discredited. Later, Dr. Cook was a founding member of the Arctic Club and Explorers Club. 
  Robert Edwin Peary, Sr. (May 6, 1856 - February 20, 1920) was an American explorer who claimed to have led the first expedition, on April 6, 1909, to reach the geographic North Pole. 
  Peary's claim was widely accepted for most of the 20th century, rather than the competing claim by Frederick Cook who said he got there a year earlier. More recently, historians generally believe Cook did not reach the pole, and there are grave doubts that Peary did, though he may have been as close as five miles. 
  Sir Ernest Henry Shackleton (February 1874 - January 5, 1922) was an Anglo-Irish polar explorer and one of the principal figures of the period known as the Heroic Age of Antarctic Exploration. 
  In January 1909 - as leader of the Nimrod Expedition - he and three companions made a southern march which established a record-farthest south latitude at 88 degrees 23' S - some 97 geographical from the South Pole - the closest convergence in exploration history up to that time. For this achievement, Shackleton was knighted by King Edward VII on his return home. 
  ©2013 Rick Sheridan (P)2013 Rick Sheridan

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  Before the Supreme Court - From...

  Lafcadio Hearn

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  Lafcadio Hearn was born on the 27th June 1850 on the Ionian isle of Levkás in Greece to a British Army officer and a Greek Mother. 
  His father, fearing for his career prospects at being married to a Greek Orthodox wife, sent them to Dublin whilst he continued to advance his career with further postings.  Life there was difficult for mother and son.  His father returned, wounded and traumatised, when Lafcadio was three.  He annulled the marriage and she remarried but had to give up care of Lafcadio to her sister-in law.   
  After brief periods for Catholic education in England and France he emigrated to Ohio in the United States when he was 19, taking on a series of casual jobs before embarking on a career as a journalist, publishing poems and essays in Cincinnati.  It was whilst here that he began a side-line in translating, starting with Gautier and Flaubert.  He married in 1874 to a 20 year old African-American woman in violation of Ohio's anti-miscegenation law.  The marriage soon failed. 
  In 1877 he relocated to New Orleans to write on a variety of themes before picking up a two year assignment from Harper’s to write in the West Indies, where he also wrote his first novel. 
  In 1890 Harper’s sent him to Japan.  Here he left journalism and took the remarkable decision to become a schoolteacher in the north of Japan.   Enraptured by the culture he was driven to explain it in various Western publications to those who had little, if any, knowledge of its culture.  Within the year he had fallen in love with, and married, a high-born Japanese lady, together they would have four children.   
  In 1895 he became a Japanese national and took the name Koizumi Yakumo, Koizumi being his wife’s family name. 
  The following few years, whilst a professor of Literature at the Imperial University of Japan, were his most creative and admired period.   
  Lafcadio Hearn died of heart failure on the 26th of September 1904, in Tokyo, Japan shortly before leaving to deliver a series of lectures at Cornell University in New York State.  He was 54.

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  The Story of B24 - From their...

  Arthur Conan Doyle

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  Arthur Conan Doyle was born in Edinburgh, Scotland on 22nd May 1859.  His childhood was blighted by his father’s heavy drinking which for some years broke up the family. Fortunately, wealthy uncles were willing to support them by paying for education and clothing.  
  He was accepted at the University of Edinburgh to study medicine and also began to write short stories the first, ‘The Haunted Grange of Goresthorpe’, was published in Blackwood’s Magazine.  Despite several other stories and some articles in the British Medical Journal his medical studies took priority. 
  When these finished he was appointed as Doctor on the Greenland whaler ‘Hope of Peterhead’ in 1880 and then, after graduation, as ship’s surgeon on the SS Mayumba on its voyage to West Africa. 
  1882 saw a move to Plymouth and his own independent practice. With few patients he resumed writing and completed his first novel, ‘The Mystery of Cloomber’, although most of his output was short stories based on his experiences at sea.  
  He married Louisa Hawkins in 1885. However, two years later he met and fell in love with Jean Elizabeth Leckie, though they remained platonic out of respect for, and loyalty to, his wife. 
  His literary career suddenly burst into life in November 1886 with ‘A Study In Scarlet’, the first of the fabulously successful Sherlock Holmes stories.  
  With two children to support he now revisited his haphazard commercial arrangements and curtailed everything save for commissions from the Strand Magazine.  
  As a sportsman he was remarkably proficient. He was goalkeeper for Portsmouth Association Football Club and played ten first-class cricket matches for the Marylebone Cricket Club as well as captain of the Crowborough Beacon Golf Club in East Sussex.  
  In 1891 tired of writing Holmes stories, he began a series of historical novels and even went so far as to apparently kill off Holmes in a lethal brawl with his arch-nemesis Moriarty. 
  Despite heavy and sustained criticism he continued to write in support of the Boer War, a fact he thought contributed to his knighthood in 1902.  The following year to great relief and acclaim he brought Sherlock Holmes back from the dead in his first outing for a decade. 
  Sadly, his wife Louisa died from TB in 1906 and, a year later, he at last married Jean.  
  During the War and for several years after family deaths had left him depressed. In a search for solace and answers he alighted upon spiritualism and, such was his interest, that he wrote several books on the subject. 
  On 7th July 1930 Conan Doyle was discovered in the hall of Windlesham Manor, his house in East Sussex, clutching his chest dying of a heart attack.  He was 71.

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  Tim Walz Story The: A...

  Jordan Blake

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  Discover the inspiring journey of a political leader in The Tim Walz Story: A Fascinating Biography by Jordan Blake. This insightful account follows Walz from his humble beginnings in rural Nebraska to his influential career in public service. With a strong focus on education, healthcare, and veterans' rights, Walz has made a name for himself as a dedicated and compassionate leader who prioritizes the well-being of his community. 
  The biography covers key moments from his time in the National Guard, his tenure in the U.S. House of Representatives, and his eventual role as Minnesota’s governor. Listeners will gain a deeper understanding of Walz’s leadership style, his perseverance in the face of challenges, and his unwavering commitment to serving his community. Through his experiences and important milestones, this audiobook paints a vivid picture of the man behind the political achievements, offering readers an inspiring look at a leader who continues to leave a significant mark on the nation.

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  Australia's Most Infamous Jail -...

  James Phelps

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  'Pentridge was a place of murder and mayhem. A bluestone hell. The worst prison Australia has ever seen.' Andrew Kirby, former inmate 
    
  Welcome to Pentridge, Australia's most infamous prison. 
  In the long-awaited return to his bestselling true crime series on life behind bars, James Phelps has finally turned his attention to HM Prison Pentridge - the bluestone behemoth that was home to Victoria's worst criminals for more than a century. 
  Beginning with a gang of guards and a handful of convicts, for more than 145 years Pentridge housed a who's who of Australian criminals and Melbourne's underworld including Ned Kelly and Mark 'Chopper' Read. 
  From solving the mystery of Ned Kelly's missing skull to the shocking truth about who really cut off Chopper's ears - Australia's Most Infamous Jail includes true and uncensored accounts of inmates (including a convicted serial killer, a mass murderer and the real Romper Stomper), guards, archaeologists and even a former governor-general. This is gritty, true crime storytelling, on steroids - about what life was really like behind the bluestone walls of Pentridge.  
  HarperCollins Australia 2024

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