Altri libri che potrebbero interessarti

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  A Society - From their pens to...

  Virginia Woolf

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  Adeline Virginia Woolf was born on the 25th January 1882 in South Kensington in London. 
  Although lauded as a founder of modernist writing with such classics as ‘Orlando’, ‘Mrs Dalloway’ and ‘To the Lighthouse’ and, of course, many classic short stories, her background is filled with elements of tragedy that she somehow overcame to become such a revered writer.   Her mother died when she was 13, her half-sister Stella two years later and with it her first of several nervous breakdowns.  Appallingly it was later found that three of her half-brothers had sexually abused her so darkness must have seemed ever present.   
  She began writing professionally at age 20 but her father’s death two years later brought a complete mental collapse and she was briefly institutionalised.  Somehow she found within herself a literary career and with it great innovations in writing; she was a pioneer of “stream of consciousness”.    
  Her tight circle of friends were the founders of the Bloomsbury Group, a movement whose legacy still influences across the arts and society in many way to this day.   
  Whilst the dark periods continued to interrupt her emotional state her rate of work never ceased.  Until, on 28th March 1941, Woolf put on her overcoat, filled up its pockets with stones, and walked into the River Ouse, in Lewes, East Sussex and drowned herself.  Her body was not recovered until the 18th April.  She was 59. 
  She left behind a note which read in part “Dearest, I feel certain that I am going mad again.  I feel we can't go through another of those terrible times.  And I shan't recover this time.  I begin to hear voices, and I can't concentrate.  So I am doing what seems the best thing to do”.

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  Esme - From their pens to your...

  Saki Saki

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  Hector Hugh Munro, more familiarly known by his pen-name ‘Saki’ was born in what was then Akyab in British Burma on 18th December 1870. His father was an Inspector General for the Indian Imperial Police, and his mother the daughter of a Rear Admiral. 
  When he was 2 his mother died and he and his siblings were sent back to England to be raised by their grandmother and paternal maiden aunts in a strict, puritanical household near Barnstaple, Devon. Educated by governesses Saki used many of these women as character models for his later writing. 
  At 17 his father retried and returned to England and then embarked on a series of European travels with Saki and his siblings. 
  After a short stint working in Burma with the Indian Imperial Police Saki decided to move to London to make a living as a writer. Initially he wrote as a journalist for a number of newspapers and magazines before attempting an historical study, ‘The Rise of the Russian Empire’, whose real value lay in directing him to writing short stories instead, the first of which, ‘Dogged’, he published in 1899. 
  From here it was a short stab of the pen to writing political satire before in 1902 he became the foreign correspondent for The Morning Post, first in the Balkans, then Russia, Paris and back to London in 1908, where 'the agreeable life of a man of letters with a brilliant reputation awaited him.'  
  Collections of his short stories full of witty, mischievous and often macabre stories that satirized Edwardian society and two novels now appeared in the years up to the Great War.  At its’ outbreak he was 43 but managed to join as an ordinary trooper. More than once he returned to the battlefield when officially too sick or injured.  
  On 14th November 1916 Hector Hugh Munro was sheltering in crater during the Battle of the Ancre, when he was shot and killed by a German sniper. According to several sources, his last words were "Put that bloody cigarette out!"

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  The Stories of Erskine Caldwell

  Erskine Caldwell

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  American master Erskine Caldwell’s powerful classic stories of anger, humor, insight, and hope for the South  Author of some of the most widely banned fiction of the twentieth century, Erskine Caldwell had a talent for striking a nerve. In this collection of nearly one hundred stories, the full depth and scope of his talent is on display, including his trademark biting satire as well as his skill at rendering deeply moving portraits of his native South. In a career that spanned over six decades, Caldwell produced stories that serve to document a changing society, from the dehumanizing trials of the Great Depression through the transformative battle to desegregate the South. Taken together, his short fiction reveals a voice that remains essential for readers hoping to understand the American experience.   This ebook features an illustrated biography of Erskine Caldwell including rare photos and never-before-seen documents courtesy of the Dartmouth College Library.

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  A Broken People's Playlist -...

  Chimeka Garricks

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  ""A dozen interlinked, music-oriented stories set in Port Harcourt, Nigeria, where Garricks was raised... Each songlike story feels like a breakout hit encapsulating the brokenness and the beauty in life’s soundtrack.""—Booklist, starred review 
  “Beautifully woven . . . a magical delight.”—Hari Kunzru, author of White Tears 
  A Broken People’s Playlist is set to the soundtrack of life, comprised of twelve music-inspired tales about love, the human condition, micro-moments, and the search for meaning and sometimes, redemption. It is also Chimeka Garricks’s love letter to his native city, Port Harcourt, introducing us to a cast of indelible characters in these loosely interlocked tales. 
  There is the teenage wannabe-DJ eager to play his first gig even as his family disastrously falls apart—who reappears many years later as an unhappy middle-aged man drunk-calling his ex-wife; a man who throws a living funeral for his dying brother; three friends who ponder penis captivus and one’s peculiar erectile dysfunction; a troubled woman who tries to find her peace-place in the world, helped by a headful of songs and a pot of ginger tea. 
  Infused with the author’s resonant and evocative storytelling, each page holds “the depth of a novel” (Hari Kunzru); a character, a moment that will—like a favorite song—long linger in the heart and mind.

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  Little Matsue and other tales

  Larry Boyd

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  Little Matsue and Other Tales encompasses a magnificent thread of entangled journeys of acceptance and resignation, but also longing, and resolution. The uniqueness of each story comes from Larry Boyd’s intricate and vivid storytelling, which allows the reader to effortlessly step into the point of view of the characters and connect to their most nuanced emotions. From the graphic, imaginative way a little girl interprets the world around her, to the surprisingly relatable dynamics displayed by a family of fish, Little Matsue and Other Tales brings about the perfect blend between realistic and fictional narratives.  
  ‘Boyd boldly dances through that liminal space between child and adult until your eyes leak and your body aches. Fiercely imaginative, Little Matsue, will have you whizzing through kingdoms and time, writhing with rage, seduced by new love and building with dinosaur bones. You will laugh at the Oceanic Olympics as much as you will mourn for the strong woman you’ve just met lying in the grave. This book is insightful, a little mad and deeply enjoyable.’ Kate Liston-Mills, Dear Ibis  
  ‘A gifted storyteller with a wry, original view, Larry Boyd is equally at ease in the worlds of 12th century China or the hip-hop community. His wonderfully diverse stories are full of sly humour and unexpected twists. There’s the tragedy of a daughter of a Polish migrant navigating Australian Christmas at its ugliest, the misadventure of a servant in feudal Japan and even an ironic take on fishy tales. Boyd gets inside his characters; a child fantasising to escape feuding parents, a father struggling with his role as his baby son’s primary carer, a teenage music student inspired by his first sexual experience. This is story telling at its traditional best.’ 
  Sally Blakeney, journalist 

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  Top 10 Short Stories The -...

  Robert Louis Stevenson, HP...

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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. 
   
  In this volume the wonders of Sci-Fi and its inventions are twisted with the darkness of horror to reveal narratives that grip us in inventive ways.  Perhaps only pens of the calibre of Lovecraft, Stevenson, Wells and their literary colleagues can so easily lure our senses into dark and terrifying times.   
   
  1 - The Top 10 Short Stories - Classic Sci Fi Horror - An Introduction 
  2 - Re-Animator - Part 1 by H P Lovecraft 
  3 - Re-Animator - Part 2 by H P Lovecraft 
  4 - The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll & Mr Hyde - Part 1 by Robert Louis Stevenson 
  5 - The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll & Mr Hyde - Part 2  by Robert Louis Stevenson 
  6 - A Thousand Deaths by Jack London 
  7 - The Operation by Violet Hunt 
  8 - Moxon's Master by Ambrose Bierce 
  9 - The Voice in the Night by William Hope Hodgson 
  10 - Carnivorine by Lucy Hamilton Hooper 
  11 - The Blue Laboratory by L T Meade 
  12 - Rappaccini's Daughter - Part 1 by Nathaniel Hawthorne 
  13 - Rappaccini's Daughter - Part 2 by Nathaniel Hawthorne

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