Other books that might interest you

• 

  A Confirmed Rake

  Martha Keyes

  • 0
  • 0
  • 0

  When Rebecca Russell’s brother marries, she finally has the opportunity she has been dreaming of: to leave the seclusion of her reclusive grandfather’s home and enter into society. But when her inexperience has her making blunders and courting embarrassment, help comes from an unexpected source: the brooding, irritable brother of her chaperone. Valentine Donovan is a rake, mountains of gaming debt and all. With his only hope for financial relief tied up in the Admiralty Court, he must temporarily rely on his father’s charity—and all the strings attached to it. His father demands Valentine show evidence that he is changing his ways, so when the engaging but naïve young woman living with his sister presents a plan, he can’t refuse the opportunity to fulfill some of his father’s requirements, albeit reluctantly. But Valentine is unprepared for Rebecca’s guileless optimism and how impossible he finds it to say no to her increasingly onerous requests—requests that put both their hearts and reputations in danger. A Confirmed Rake is the second in Martha Keyes's The Donovans regency-set romance series. Each book can be treated as a standalone.

  Show book

• 

  Young Magic - Power may be good...

  Helen Simpson

  • 0
  • 0
  • 0

  Helen de Guerry Simpson was born in Sydney, Australia on the 1st December 1897.  As a 17 year old she was sent to France and then on to Oxford, England to complete her education.  Whilst there she founded the Oxford Women's Dramatic Society.  She was sent down in 1921 apparently for breaking regulations prohibiting men and women students from acting together. 
   
  Her early work of poems, plays, a novel and a collection of short stories found little commercial success. It was only with ‘Boomerang’ in 1932 that her success was established.  Helen continued to write across the genres and by now had become intensely interested in politics.  She was selected to run by the Liberals for the Isle of Wight parliamentary seat in the expected General Election of 39 or 40. 
   
  Sadly this coincided with the rapid onset of cancer and her health very quickly deteriorated.   
   
  Helen Simpson died in Worcestershire, England on the 14th October 1940.  She was 42. 
   
  In ‘Young Magic’ a young girl has definite supernatural abilities which she attempts to control.  Years later when she returns home and begins a relationship those abilities begin to reappear in a more sinister form.

  Show book

• 

  Alice Dunbar Nelson - A Short...

  Alice Dunbar-Nelson

  • 0
  • 0
  • 0

  Alice Ruth Moore was born on 19th July 1875 in New Orleans where she was part of the multi-racial Creole community.  She was the first generation seemingly born free after the Civil War and unusually for the times, obtained a university education which led to her becoming a teacher at a public school in New Orleans.   
  In 1895, when she was 20, she published her first collection of short stories and poems, ‘Violets and Other Tales’, and moved to New York City where she co-founded and taught at the White Rose Mission, a Home for Girls.   
  Alice was always politically active and sought to advance the position of black women.  She began work as a journalist at the Woman’s Era newspaper where her work was seen by the established poet and journalist Paul Laurence Dunbar.  After corresponding for two years she joined him in Washington DC and they married in 1898.   
  It was a difficult relationship, due mainly to Dunbar’s fragile health, alcoholism and depression.  After a severe beating she left him and moved to Delaware to teach for a decade though took time out to enroll at Cornell University. 
  A short-lived marriage to Henry A. Callis, a physician and professor at Howard University ended in divorce and she became co-editor and writer for an influential publication of the African Methodist Episcopal Church.  A third marriage to civil rights activist Robert J. Nelson came about, as did affairs with several women, notably the activist Fay Jackie Robinson.   
  In Wilmington Delaware she and her husband devoted their time and writings to working for equality for African Americans and women’s suffrage.   
  Alice Dunbar Nelson was a natural and gifted writer across many genres, from novels, essays, plays to diaries, criticism, poetry and of course short stories, of which ‘Stones in the Village’ is a fine example.  The protagonist, like herself, is light skinned from New Orleans, which allows for a social mobility and a unique position in American society that Dunbar Nelson captures with an imagination and insight to explores another divisive perspective on race.  It is unsurprising that Alice was a prominent part of the early Harlem Renaissance and influenced many others including Langston Hughes and Countee Cullen. 
  Alice and her husband moved to Philadelphia in 1932 and it was here that she died on 18th September 1935, at the age of 60, from a heart ailment.

  Show book

• 

  They Got Out 3 - A Sci-Fi and...

  C.A. Gleason

  • 0
  • 0
  • 0

  The Hike: A hiking trail snakes through government secrets, passing by a classified military base where something deadly escapes. 
  The Torment: A filthy rich criminal bribes his way to freedom . . . but at greater cost than he could ever imagine. 
  Ember: The last man on Earth navigates a dangerous landscape, being hunted at every step, as he tries to find the last woman alive. 
  This collection includes five additional stories about an interview with dire consequences, a weakling who develops mysterious powers, an otherworldly animal fight, a legendary battle against giant spiders, and the return of Him.

  Show book

• 

  Russian Short Story The - Volume...

  Anton Chekhov, Helena Blavatsky,...

  • 0
  • 0
  • 0

  The Russian novel has a reputation that is immense, both in narrative and in length.  Unquestionably though the ideas, themes and characters make many novels rightly revered as world class, as icons of literature. 
   
  Perhaps an easier way to enjoy a wider selection of the Russian heritage, with its varied and glorious literary talents, is with the short story.  These gems sparkle and beguile the mind with their characters and narrative, exploring facets of society and the human condition that more Western authors somehow find more difficult to navigate, or to explore, explain and relate to.   
   
  The Russian short story is, in many respects, in a genre of its own.  It is at its captivating best whether it’s an exploration of real-life experiences, through fantasy and fables and on to total absurdity. 
   
  In a land so vast it is unsurprising that it is a world almost unto itself. Cultures and landscapes of differing hues are packed together bound only by the wilful bonds and force of Empire. 
   
  The stories in this collection traverse the decades where one might be a serf under an absolute monarch, and the reality of that was pretty near to slavery, into an emancipation of sorts in the fields, or towns under the despotic will of landowners and the rich into the upheavals of Empire and then the overthrow of the ruling class and its replacement by the communists, who promised equality for all and delivered a society where the down-trodden remained the lowest yet vital cog of the state machine and its will.  
   
  Whilst Tolstoy, Gogol, Dostoevsky, Pushkin and Chekhov are a given in any Russian collection we also explore and include Andreyev, Korolenko, Turgenev, Blavatsky and many others to create a world rich and dense across a sprawling landscape of diverse people, riddled with the class and unfairness in perhaps some of the most turbulent times that Russia has ever experienced. 
   
  01 - The Russian Short Story - Volume 4 - An Introduction 
  02 - The Sentry by Nikolai Lyeskov 
  03 - A Witch's Den by Helena Blavatsky 
  04 - The General's Will by Vera Jelihovsky 
  05 - The Old Bell Ringer by Vladimir Korolenko 
  06 - The Shades, A Phantasy by Vladimir Korolenko 
  07 - The Signal by Vsevolod Garshin 
  08 - Dethroned by I N Potapenko 
  09 - The Kiss by Anton Chekhov 
  10 - The Lady with the Dog by Anton Chekhov 
  11 - The Bet by Anton Chekhov 
  12 - Gooseberries by Anton Chekhov

  Show book

• 

  Edited Story An - From their...

  Morley Roberts

  • 0
  • 0
  • 0

  The bookshelves of British literature are incredible collections that have gathered together centuries of very talented authors.  From these Isles their fame spread and whilst among their number many are now forgotten or neglected their talents endure.  Among them is Morley Roberts.

  Show book