Publisher: Diamond Book Publishing
In this gripping collection of World War I stories, author Boyd Cable employs the innovative method of using actual battlefield dispatches as the backbone around which he builds his gritty, unflinching tales of wartime bravery, tragedy, pluck and triumph. Please Note - This is not The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck.
The main heroines are sisters, Marianne and Elinor Dashwood, who have also a younger sister Margaret and an elder step brother John.At the beginning of the story Mr. Dashwood dies and Mrs. Dashwood and her daughters have to move from their home which now has become John´s property. Their budget is shoestring, so that they settle down in a small cottage in the country where Marianne and Elinor experience their first love and disappointment.Marianne is guided especially by her feelings and she blames her elder sister Elinor, who has a more rational view of the world, for being cold and reserved. But finally, she finds out that the sense and sensibility are not inevitably separated matters...Show book
"The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde" is a novella written by the Scottish author Robert Louis Stevenson and first published in 1886. It is about a London lawyer who investigates strange occurrences between his old friend, Dr Henry Jekyll, and the misanthropic Edward Hyde.The work is known for its vivid portrayal of a split personality, split in the sense that within the same person there is both an apparently good and an evil personality each being quite distinct from each other; in mainstream culture the very phrase "Jekyll and Hyde" has come to mean a person who is vastly different in moral character from one situation to the next. This is different from multiple personality disorder where the different personalities do not necessarily differ in any moral sense. "The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde" was an immediate success and one of Stevenson's best-selling works.Show book
Do you have what it takes to be the person you want to be? This is a neat self help book in plain English by the New Thought Movement author Orison Swett Marden. He has included various essays on the principles he believes will lead to success in life. This book is a nice reading for any one who believes in "The golden opportunity you are seeking is in yourself. It is not in your environment; it is not in luck or chance, or the help of others; it is in yourself alone," which was one of Orison Swett Marden's famous dialogues.Show book
It’s just a hideously papered room. At least, that’s what everybody else thought. But when a woman suffering from a nervous condition is housed in the room, things begin to surface from the wallpaper. Things that seem familiar, but are best left quiet and undisturbed...Show book
Edward Frederic Benson (1867 - 1940) was an English novelist, biographer, memoirist, archaeologist, and short story writer, best known as the true master of the gothic occult story.The Face tells the story of a woman, Hester, who has a strange recurring nightmare. The night before the nightmare she dreams of walking a path across fields, over wooden stiles, through a wind-blown wood, to a grey stone church at the top of the cliff. The next night she always has a nightmare about being at the base of the same cliff and an eerie horrifying man's face appears and tells her that he will be coming for her. After these nightmares, Hester always awakes screaming. Then one day, Hester finds out who the strange hideous man in the nightmare is... and the mystery deepens.The nightmares increase in frequency until a doctor prescribes a rest cure at the seaside. But a walk along the cliff-top brings Hester to uncannily familiar territory... it is the landscape of her dream, where she knows the terrifying man is waiting for her.Show book
Anton Pavlovich Chekhov was born on 29th January 1860 in Taganrog, on the south coast of Russia. His family life was difficult; his father was strict and over-bearing but his mother was a passionate story-teller, a subject Chekhov warmed to. As he later said; ‘our talents we got from our father, but our soul from our mother’. At school Chekhov was distinctly average. At 16 his father mis-managed his finances and was declared bankrupt. His family fled to Moscow. Chekhov remained and eked out a living by various means, including writing and selling short sketches to newspapers, to finish his schooling. That completed and with a scholarship to Moscow University obtained he rejoined his family. He was able to help support them by selling satirical sketches and vignettes of Russian lifestyles and gradually obtained further commissions. In 1884, he qualified as a physician and, although it earned him little, he often treated the poor for free, he was fond of saying ‘Medicine is my lawful wife, and literature is my mistress.’ His own health was now an issue as he began to cough up blood, a symptom of tuberculosis. Despite this his writing success enabled him to move the family into more comfortable accommodation. Chekhov wrote over 500 short stories which included many, many classics including ‘The Kiss’ and ‘The Lady with a Dog’. His collection ‘At Dusk’ won him the coveted Pushkin Prize when was only 26. He was also a major playwright beginning with the huge success of ‘Ivanov’ in 1887. In 1892 Chekhov bought a country estate north of Moscow. Here his medical skills and money helped the peasants tackle outbreaks of cholera and bouts of famine. He also built three schools, a fire station and a clinic. It left him with less time for writing but the interactions with real people gained him detailed knowledge about the peasantry and their living conditions for his stories. His most famous work, ‘The Seagull’ was received disastrously at its premiere in St Petersburg. It was later restaged in Moscow to highlight its psychological aspects and was a huge success. It led to ‘Uncle Vanya’, ‘The Three Sisters’ and ‘The Cherry Orchard’. Chekhov suffered a major lung hemorrhage in 1897 while visiting Moscow. A formal diagnosis confirmed tuberculosis and the doctors ordered changes to his lifestyle. Despite a dread of weddings the elusive literary bachelor quietly married the actress Olga Knipper, whom he had met at rehearsals for ‘The Seagull’, on 25th May 1901. By May 1904 with his tuberculosis worsening and death imminent he set off for the German town of Badenweiler writing cheerful, witty letters to his family and assuring them his health was improving. On 15th July 1904 Anton Chekhov died at Badenweiler. He was 44.Show book
