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  The Iliad

  Homer

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  The Iliad tells the dramatic story of the Trojan War, focusing on the wrath of Achilles and the clash between honor, pride, and fate. 
  This timeless masterpiece, attributed to the Greek poet Homer, is brought to life through an immersive narration that captures the grandeur, fury, and poetry of ancient warfare. With dramatic performances, vibrant storytelling, and evocative soundscapes, this audiobook invites listeners into the heart of one of the most influential works in literary history. 
  Whether you're a student, history lover, or mythology enthusiast, The Iliad offers a profound experience into the soul of ancient Greece — a journey of gods, warriors, and destiny.

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  Benediction - From their pens to...

  F. Scott Fitzgerald

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  Francis Scott Key Fitzgerald was born on 24th September 1896 in Saint Paul, Minnesota into an upper-middle class family. Whilst his mother was pregnant with him, his two young sisters tragically died.  Fitzgerald once said this was when his destiny as a writer was ordained. 
  His intelligence and talent was recognised from an early age, with his first story, about a detective being published in the school magazine when he was just 13.   
  In 1913 he enrolled at Princeton but his devotion to his own literary pursuits resulted in him leaving and, rather bizarrely, joining the Army.  In 1918, stationed at Fort Sheridan near Montgomery, Alabama he met and became infatuated and then inseparable from Zelda Sayre.  Initially though she refused to marry him but with the success of ‘This Side of Paradise’, the fame and the flow of money enabled them both to begin a gilded life.  For them this was The Jazz Age.  For Fitzgerald he was already an alcoholic. 
  He continued to write with great mastery and the titles of his novels and many of his 164 short stories are household names.  The Great Gatsby, often cited as The Great American Novel was published to mixed reviews.  As America moved from the Great Depression to the slaughter of the Second World War his works and himself were seen as far too entwined with the decadent twenties. The world had moved on and he hadn’t.   
  Further tragedy was never far from his life. Zelda after years of erratic and now intolerable behaviour was committed to an institution in 1936.  His own sales began to decline and he became a hack for hire in Hollywood, dependent on increasing amounts of booze and the weekly pay check.  His drunken state had often resulted in arrest or hospitalisation, further imperiling his talents.   Despite his contribution to many MGM films he received only one credit. 
  The end came all too soon for one of America’s greatest ever writers.  On 21st December 1940, at only 44 years of age in Hollywood, F Scott Fitzgerald succumbed to a heart attack.

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  The Adventure of the Engineer's...

  Arthur Conan Doyle

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  The Adventure of the Engineer's Thumb, one of the 56 short Sherlock Holmes stories written by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, is the ninth of the twelve stories collected in The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes. The story was first published in Strand Magazine in March 1892. Dr. Watson notes that this is one of only two cases which he personally brought to the attention of Sherlock Holmes.The story, set in 1889, mainly consists of a young London consultant hydraulic engineer, Mr. Victor Hatherley, recounting strange happenings of the night before, first to Dr. Watson, who dresses the stump where Mr. Hatherley's thumb has been cut off, and then to Sherlock Holmes himself.Hatherley had been visited in his office by a man who identified himself as Colonel Lysander Stark. He offered Hatherley a commission at a country house, to examine a hydraulic press used, as Stark explains, to compress fuller's earth into bricks. Stark warned Hatherley to keep the job confidential, offering him 50 guineas (£52 10s, an enormous sum at the time, worth over £4000 today). Hatherley felt compelled to take this work, despite his misgivings, as his business was newly established and he had very little work.Famous works of the author Arthur Conan Doyle's: "A Study in Scarlet", "Silver Blaze", "The Hound of the Baskervilles", "The Yellow Face", "A Scandal in Bohemia", "The Red-Headed League", A Case of Identity", "The Boscombe Valley Mystery", "The Five Orange Pips", "The Man with the Twisted Lip", "The Blue Carbuncle", "The Speckled Band", "The Engineer's Thumb", "The Noble Bachelor", "The Beryl Coronet", "The Copper Beeches" and many more.

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  Top 10 Short Stories The -...

  F Scott itzgerald, H G Wells,...

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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. 
   
  Within these ten stories our authors including Edgar Allan Poe, H G Wells, Guy de Maupassant and a host of others demonstrate the power and the motivation that revenge demands.  Yes, the pen is mightier and more brutal than the sword. 
   
  01 - The Top 10 - Revenge - An Introduction 
  02 - Bernice Bobs Her Hair by F Scott Fitzgerald 
  03 - The Cone by H G Wells 
  04 - The Hand by Guy de Maupassant 
  05 - The Cask of Amontillardo by Edgar Allan Poe 
  06 - The Signal by Vsevolod Garshin 
  07 - The Caballero's Way by O Henry 
  08 - The Cold Embrace by Mary Elizabeth Braddon 
  09 - The Bride Comes to Yellow Sky by Stephen Crane 
  10 - The Scapegoat by Paul Laurence Dunbar 
  11 - A Jury of Her Peers by Susan Glaspell

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  A Slip of the Pen - From their...

  Amy Levy

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  Amy Levy was born in London, England in 1861, the second of seven in a fairly wealthy Anglo-Jewish family. The children read and participated in secular literary activities and became firmly integrated into Victorian life. 
  Her education was at Brighton High School, Brighton, before studies at Newnham College, Cambridge; she was the first Jewish student when she arrived in 1879, but left after four terms. 
  Amy’s writing career began early; her poem ‘Ida Grey’ appeared when she was only fourteen. Her acclaimed short stories ‘Cohen of Trinity’ and ‘Wise in Their Generation,’ were published by Oscar Wilde in his magazine ‘Women's World’. 
  Her poetic writings reveal feminist concerns; ‘Xantippe and Other Verses’, from 1881 includes a poem in the voice of Socrates's wife. ‘A Minor Poet and Other Verse’ from 1884 comprises of dramatic monologues and lyric poems. 
  In 1886, Amy began a series of essays on Jewish culture and literature for the Jewish Chronicle, including ‘The Ghetto at Florence’, ‘The Jew in Fiction’, ‘Jewish Humour’ and ‘Jewish Children’. 
  That same year while travelling in Florence she met the writer Vernon Lee. It is generally assumed they fell in love and this inspired the poem ‘To Vernon Lee’. 
  Her first novel ‘Romance of a Shop’, written in 1888 is based on four sisters who experience the pleasures and hardships of running a London business during the 1880s. This was followed by Reuben Sachs (also 1888) and concerned with Jewish identity and mores in the England of her time and was somewhat controversial. 
  Her final book of poems, ‘A London Plane-Tree’ from 1889, shows the beginnings of the influence of French symbolism. 
  Despite many friendships and an active life, Amy suffered for many years with serious depressions and this, together with her growing deafness, led her to commit suicide by inhaling carbon monoxide on September 10th, 1889. She was 27.

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  A Raw Youth

  Fyodor Dostoevsky

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  "I have a secret power... my idea is to become a Rothschild."
  
  Twenty-year-old Arkady Dolgoruky is the "raw youth"—an illegitimate son caught between two worlds. Armed with a secret "idea" to achieve absolute independence through wealth, he travels to St. Petersburg to confront his biological father, the charismatic yet destructive aristocrat Versilov. What follows is a whirlwind of blackmail, underground gambling dens, and ideological warfare. Arkady must navigate a society where old traditions are crumbling and new, dangerous "ideas" are taking root, all while trying to uncover the truth about the man who gave him life but denied him a name.
  
  The Psychology of the Underground: In Arkady, Dostoevsky creates one of his most complex protagonists—a young man who is simultaneously arrogant, naive, deeply hurt, and fiercely intelligent. The novel captures the "formlessness" of youth and the desperate desire to find a "Great Idea" to live by. It is a precursor to the modern coming-of-age story, stripped of sentimentality and replaced with raw, nervous energy.
  
  A Mirror of a Changing Nation: A Raw Youth is Dostoevsky's most direct exploration of the disintegration of the Russian family and, by extension, the Russian state. Through the lens of Arkady's "accidental family," the novel examines the loss of spiritual unity and the rise of the individual. It is a gripping mystery, a philosophical treatise, and a vivid portrait of a society on the brink of a radical transformation.
  
  Discover the man behind the mask. Purchase "A Raw Youth" today and experience Dostoevsky's most underrated and energetic classic.

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