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  Gentle Breathing - From their...

  Ivan Bunin

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  Ivan Alekseyevich Bunin was born on 22nd October 1870 in Voronezh province, in the South-West of the Russian Empire. 
  His early life was plagued by his Father’s gambling habits which caused his education to be erratic and the family to lose most of their wealth. 
  Bunin published his first poem in 1887 in St Petersburg and later in Oryol he worked for the local paper and became its editor, handily allowing him to publish his own poems and short stories.  There he met and married Varvara Pashchenko.  Ivan Bunin's debut book of poetry ‘Poems (1887–1891)’ was published in 1891. 
  This poetry and his translation of Longfellow garnered him his first Pushkin Prize.  Now he switched to writing prose and his novella ‘Antonov Apples’ is regarded as his first masterpiece.  Many more would follow. 
  The October Revolution of 1905 found Bunin in the Crimea.  Scenes of ‘class struggle’ he saw more as the oppressed people's craving for anarchy and destruction. 
  In November 1906 he began a passionate affair with Vera Muromtseva, within a few months they were touring through Egypt and Palestine.  ‘The Bird's Shadow’ collection was the result.   
  His second Pushkin Prize came in 1909 for Poems (1903–1906) and further translations.  He was now elected to the prestigious Russian Academy. 
  More widespread fame came in 1910 with ‘The Village’, a controversial and bleak portrayal of Russian country life.  Travel too beckoned them back to the Middle East, Ceylon (now Sri Lanka) and for winters in Capri with their friend Maxim Gorky.  
  That friendship suddenly ended in April 1917 as the revolution began to ferment in war-ravaged Russia.  After the Bolsheviks took power and the upheavals continued, he decided to leave Russia, finally achieving that in early 1920.  
  It would take some time to heal the wounds and stress he had been under and for his writing to begin again.  Settled in France, Bunin published many of his previous works and collections of novellas.  He also made regular contributions to the Russian emigre press.  
  Although reluctant to become involved in politics, Bunin was now feted as both a writer and the figurehead of non-Bolshevik Russian values and traditions.  In 1933 he became the first Russian to be awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature ‘for following through and developing with chastity and artfulness the traditions of Russian classic prose.’  
  In 1938 Bunin began working on the celebrated cycle of nostalgic, and erotically themed stories known Dark Avenues (or Dark Alleys).  
  As World War II broke out he chose to remain in Grasse spending the war at his remote Villa Jeanette, high in the mountains.  
  Ivan Bunin was a staunch anti-Nazi, and often, under difficult conditions, sheltered fugitives after Vichy was occupied by the Germans.  He wrote but did not publish during these years until on August 23rd the Nazi’s fled Grasse without a fight.  The next day the Americans came.  
  In May 1945 he returned to Paris and, apart from convalescing at times in Juan-les-Pins, he stayed for the rest of his life. 
  After 1948, with his health deteriorating, Bunin concentrated upon writing his memoirs and a book on Chekhov.  His last years were overshadowed by bitterness and despair at the situation in Russia and the treatment of its peoples.  He was suffering now from asthma, bronchitis and chronic pneumonia. 
  Ivan Alekseyevich Bunin died in a Paris attic flat on 8th November 1953.  Heart failure, cardiac asthma and pulmonary sclerosis were given as the causes of death.  He was 83.

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  One Night in Paris - A Novella

  Juliette Sobanet

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  From bestselling author Juliette Sobanet, a heartwarming and enchanting journey that will sweep you away to Jazz Age Paris… 
  When Manhattan attorney Ella Carlyle gets a call that her beloved grandmother is dying, she rushes to Paris to be by her side, against the wishes of her overbearing boyfriend. Ella would do anything for her grandmother and jumps at the chance to fulfill her dying wish. But things take a mystical turn when Ella is transported to a swinging Parisian jazz club full of alluring strangers…in the year 1927! As the clock runs out on her one night in the City of Light, Ella will attempt to rewrite the past...and perhaps her own destiny as well.

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  Avalanche - Stories

  Jessica Westhead

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  "Things used to be easier, but even in those carefree days, the rules were in place for a reason. And that reason is: so we can all agree. So we can all have the same standard applied across the board. So there is no special treatment, which no one should receive. This is why we need the rules." 
   
   
   
  The stories in Avalanche combine humor with an earnest examination and indictment of white entitlement, guilt, shame, and disorientation in the wake of waking up to the reality of racism. Focusing on the perspective of white, cis, straight, and mostly middle-aged and middle-class characters, this collection shines a light on the obliviousness of white privilege, the violence of polite, quiet racism hiding just under the surface of mundane, everyday situations, and the anguished flailing of "well-intentioned white ladies" desperate to confirm their essential goodness at all costs. Westhead writes with compassion and empathy for both her frustrating and frustrated white protagonists and the racialized characters who encounter them, and uses humor not to comfortably distance white readers from the harmful behavior of her self-absorbed protagonists, but to pull them in close to recognize—and reckon with—those familiar parts of themselves, and to become more aware of the insidious systems of white supremacy at work behind the scenes. 
   
   
   
  Bonus material: This audiobook includes the Acknowledgments as supplemental material in printable PDF format.

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  Transactions with the Fallen

  Michael Elcock

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  In this new collection of short stories, author Michael Elcock explores a variety of inner worlds and lived experiences: survival and betrayal in Germany after World War II ... life in the Scottish highlands ... trouble with army ants ... 
  ADVANCE PRAISE FOR TRANSACTIONS WITH THE FALLEN 
  "Michael Elcock's stories enchant, disturb and remind us of the many worlds we inhabit. Touching on intimate moments and interactions, not a lot happens in these intertwined tales, and that is precisely their strength. A young man sits with an older woman one evening and learns about love. A soldier coaxes music out of a battered piano in an attempt to stay alive. Transactions with the Fallen is a study of human relationships told with an exacting eye for detail and the resonant moment." ---Eve Joseph, Griffin Poetry Prize Winner, 2019 
  "There's a lot to be learned from other people's childhoods---and from other people's adulthoods too, if they've been lucky enough to have one. When they're luckier still, there's a lot to be learned from other people's imaginations. In this remarkable book of stories, Michael Elcock offers us the fruits of all three: a rich, multifaceted childhood, a robust, thoughtful adulthood, and a lively, athletic imagination." ---Robert Bringhurst, author, poet, and recipient of the British Columbia Lieutenant Governor's Award for Literary Excellence 
  ABOUT THE AUTHOR 
  Born in Scotland, Michael Elcock emigrated to Canada at age twenty-one and now lives on Vancouver Island. A memoir about his travels to Belfast, Malta, Hawaii, Prague, Paris, Oman, and Andalusia, entitled A Perfectly Beautiful Place, was published in 2004. Other books include Writing on Stone (2006), a novel, The Gate (2012), and a fictionalized memoir, Eyes of Rain and Ragged Dreams: Coming of Age in Edinburgh (2017).

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  Ara's Prelude - Companion Tales...

  D. August Baertlein

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  Far north in the Atlantic Ocean, where islands are small, rocky, and infested with sheep and humans, live the Selkies—a race of seal/human shapeshifters of unearthly beauty. 
  The five short stories in Ara's Prelude recount the early lives of characters from the novel ARA’s SONG. You’ll meet Princess Ara as a seal pup and young Seamus defending his dreams of becoming a fisherman. Seamus’s folks struggle to protect him from those vicious Selkies, while Ara’s father warns of dangerous humans like that boy she finds so fascinating. And then there’s Oluva, the psychic shopkeeper who knows more about Selkies than she lets on. 
  Chronologically, these are the first events in THE SELKIE CHRONICLES, but each book stands alone. 
  Selkies are beguiling and real. Come see for yourself.

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  Hearts and Bones - Love Songs...

  Niamh Mulvey

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  'Vivid, memorable and beautifully crafted’ - Sarah Moss, author of Summerwater'A brilliant collection, from a remarkable talent' - Joseph O'Connor, author of ShadowplayHearts and Bones is a book about relationships. It explores what love does to us, and how we survive it.A young woman learns to wield her power, leaving casualties in her wake, while a man from a small town finds solace in a strange new hobby. A watchful child feels a breaking point approach as her mother struggles to keep her life on track, and another daughter steps onto a stage while her family in the audience hope that she is strong enough now to take on the world.First-time lovers make mistakes, brothers and sisters try to forgive one another, and parents struggle and fail and struggle again. Teenage souls are swayed by euphoric faith in a higher power and then by devotion to desire, trapped between different notions of what might be true. Quiet revolutions happen in living rooms, on river banks, in packed pubs and empty churches, and years later we wonder why we ever did the things we did.Set between Ireland and London in the first two decades of this millennium, the stories in Hearts and Bones, Niamh Mulvey's debut collection, look at the changes that have torn through these times and ask who we are now that we’ve brought the old gods down. Witty, sharply observed and deeply moving, these ten stories announce an extraordinary new Irish literary talent.'Highly accomplished, inventive . . . what stands out is Mulvey's command of her own originality' - Irish Times'Honest, daringly fresh and stunningly written, these stories cut right to the very essence of what it means to be young’ - Jan Carson, author of The Raptures

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