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  Ticket to Venus

  E. K. Jarvis

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  The office had appeared as if by magic. One day the suite of rooms was empty, the next day furniture was being moved in. The third day the office was open for business. 
  A sign painter was busy lettering the front door as Markham passed it on his way to his own modest office. 
  He read the words that had been painted on the door. 
  GENERAL TICKET OFFICE 
  Tickets here for LUNA, MARS, VENUS 
  Perhaps nothing that could have happened, short of death itself, would have hit him harder than these three words lettered on the door: LUNA. MARS. VENUS. 
  According to the information discreetly conveyed by the lettering on this door, they were selling tickets to the planets right here in this office, just as, down on the first floor, they were selling airline tickets to Europe, Asia, and the islands of the far seas. 
  This—in 1951! 
  Markham was sure space travel was net yet possible. Then how could this unknown travel agency dare sell tickets to other planets?

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  From Madrid to Heaven

  Leslie Croxford

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  Characters in From Madid to Heaven unexpectedly find themselves in impossible circumstances. In fourteen short stories, set between Iberia and North Africa, they come nevertheless to face the strange possibility that when nothing is possible, everything may suddenly be possible.

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  Blood Feast - The Complete Short...

  Malika Moustadraf

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  Malika Moustadraf (1969–2006) is a feminist icon in contemporary Moroccan literature, celebrated for her stark interrogation of gender and sexuality in North Africa. Blood Feast is the complete collection of Moustadraf’s published short fiction: haunting, visceral stories by a master of the genre. A teenage girl suffers through a dystopian rite of passage?,? a man with kidney disease makes desperate attempts to secure treatment?, and a mother schemes to ensure her daughter passes a virginity test. Delighting in vibrant sensory detail and rich slang, Moustadraf takes an unflinching look at the gendered body, social class, illness, double standards, and desire, as lived by a diverse cast of characters. Blood Feast is a sharp provocation to patriarchal power and a celebration of the life and genius of one of Morocco’s preeminent writers.

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  A Daemon in Jade - A Short...

  Michael van der Voort

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  What is evil? Is it simply a concept, a description applied to the actions of men or to incidents that impact them or is it something more? An external force eternal and ever present that can weave itself in slithering pathways into our thoughts and deeds? Is it possible for instance, for an object to be evil? For it to reek, on a level detectable beyond our normal senses of corruption, or wickedness and of rot? could it leave upon the skin and the mind like a residue a clinging film of something that is not only older than man but hateful of him? 
  These are the questions that circulate around the Daemon in Jade, the massive sculpture that the ancients chose to bury head down and disregard. Not simply forgetting, but deliberately, purposely shunning the hideous thing as wretched and unclean.

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  Hide And Seek - From their pens...

  Fyodor Sologub

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  Fyodor Kuzmich Teternikov was born on 1st March 1863 in St. Petersburg into the family of a poor tailor.  When his father died of tuberculosis in 1867, his illiterate mother was forced to become a servant in the home of an aristocrat, where Sologub and his younger sister grew up.  
  Seeing how difficult his mother's life was, Sologub was determined to rescue her from it, and after graduating from the St. Petersburg Teachers' Institute in 1882 he took his mother and sister with him to his first teaching post in Kresttsy.  It was here he began his literary career in 1884 with his poem ‘The Fox and the Hedgehog’ under the name Te-rnikov. 
  It would be another decade before he could escape his various jobs to move to Moscow and begin his literary career on what would be his most famous novel, ‘The Petty Demon’.  It was now suggested that he use a pseudonym and so Sologub became his new identity. 
  In 1896 he published a book of poems, a collection of short stories, and his first novel, ‘Bad Dreams’, which is considered one of the first decadent Russian novels. 
  In 1905 ‘The Petty Demon’, was published, initially in serial form. But life was still difficult unrewarding jobs, little time to write and a small, cramped apartment lightened only by gatherings of friends, poets and writers. 
  By the October Revolution his work was becoming popular and with the novel of ‘The Petty Demon’, finally published as a book, he now had a growing income. 
  His sister's tuberculosis could now be more easily treated with treatments in proper sanitoria, even as far away as Finland, but in June 1907 she passed. 
  He returned to St. Petersburg and retired.  The following year he married the translator Anastasia Chebotarevskaya who reordered his life.  A big new apartment was rented, small gilt chairs were bought, and the walls of the large cold office were decorated with paintings. 
  Sologub continued to write and publish poems, plays, and translations and in 1914 he started a magazine, Writers' Journals, but the outbreak of World War I put an end to it.  
  The October Revolution, with publishing under Bolshevik control, ensured he now had no outlets for his writing and could only lecture. 
  His wife’s suicide in September 1921, mainly due to deprivation and uncertainty, as they prepared for a new life abroad, grieved him for the rest of his life. 
  In May 1927 Sologub became seriously ill, and by summer he could leave his bed only rarely.  
  After a long struggle, Fyodor Sologub died on 5th December 1927 in Leningrad.  He was 64.

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  The Ghost in the Cupboard Room -...

  Wilkie Collins

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  Wilkie Collins was born on 8th January 1824 in Marylebone, London.  
  The family moved several times in his early years before, at 12, they travelled to France and Italy for 2 years where the sights and atmosphere made a deep and lasting impression on him. 
  He resumed his education at Mr Cole’s private boarding school in Highbury, Islington.  Here, he began his literary career under unusual circumstances: the school bully would give him no peace until he had been told a bedtime story.  This ‘little brute’ helped create one of England’s greatest writers.  
  On leaving school, in 1841, he became a clerk at a tea merchant before, 2 years later, publishing his first short story.  However, his first novel was rejected and remained so during his lifetime.  
  A brief stint at Lincoln’s Inn to please his father and to acquire a steady income was halted by his father’s death.  Collins then wrote and published his fathers’ memoirs.  He then completed his legal education though he would never practice.  
  In March 1851, he was introduced to Charles Dickens and there now started a period of sustained literary output and a remarkable lifelong friendship.  His stories were published in Dicken’s magazines, and he toured with Dicken’s theatrical before the two of them travelled to the Continent. 
  By the early 1860’s worrying signs of ill-health appeared with rheumatic gout.  As it worsened, he sought respite and cures in German spa towns and gave up writing to help his recuperation. 
  His personal life had become very complicated.  He was living with the widowed Caroline Graves and conducting an affair with a much younger Martha Rudd.  With the serialised release of ‘The Moonstone’ and vicious attacks of gout Caroline left him and married another.  Collins was now prescribed opium and was soon its lifelong dependent.  Martha bore him two children and with the return of a now divorced Caroline Graves he now divided his time between the two women. 
  In 1874 he set aside writing to tour North America on a reading tour. 
  Throughout his later years he continued to write and publish.  In all 30 novels, 14 plays, 60 short stories and over a 100 non-fiction essays as well as many more collaborations with Dickens. 
  In 1884 the Society of Authors elected him as it’s Vice-President. 
  Wilkie Collins died from a paralytic stroke on September 23rd, 1889, in London. He was 65.

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