Outros livros que poderiam interessá-lo

• 

  Grand Central - Original Stories...

  Karen White, Jenna Blum, Sarah...

  • 0
  • 0
  • 0

  A war bride awaits the arrival of her GI husband at the platform... A Holocaust survivor works at the Oyster Bar, where a customer reminds him of his late mother... A Hollywood hopeful anticipates her first screen test and a chance at stardom in the Kissing Room... On any particular day, thousands upon thousands of people pass through New York City's Grand Central Terminal, through the whispering gallery, beneath the ceiling of stars, and past the information booth and its beckoning four-faced clock, to whatever destination is calling them. It is a place where people come to say hello and good-bye. And each person has a story to tell. Now, ten bestselling authors inspired by this iconic landmark have created their own stories, set on the same day, just after the end of World War II, in a time of hope, uncertainty, change, and renewal.

  Ver livro

• 

  Washington Irving - A Short...

  Washington Irving

  • 0
  • 0
  • 0

  Washington Irving was born on 3rd April, 1783, the youngest of 11, in New York. 
    
  Irving found his real interests away from school in literature and the theatre.  An outbreak of yellow fever at 15 moved him away from Manhattan and into the surrounding countryside providing valuable settings for later works such as ‘The Legend of Sleepy Hollow’. 
   
  By 19 Irving was writing regularly to the New York Morning Chronicle, commenting on the theatrical and social scenes.  When his health began to fail, he was sent on the Grand Tour of Europe.  Bizarrely he ignored most of the great sights on offer to concentrate on developing his social and conversational powers.  His health, though, did improve.  
   
  In 1806, back in New York to study law, he scraped a pass at the bar and then founded with several others the literary magazine Salmagundi. Irving nicknamed the city ‘Gotham City’, a name still in use today.  Moderately successful, the magazine spread Irving’s reputation beyond New York. 
   
  In 1809 while mourning the death of his teenage fiancée Irving finished his first significant book, ‘A History of New-York from the Beginning of the World to the End of the Dutch Dynsasty, by Diedrich Knickerbocker’.  It satirised local history, local historians and politics.  It received great critical acclaim. 
   
  Unfortunately his family’s established trading company was now facing great upheavals and Irving was dispatched to England to try to sort it out.  After two years he could see no way out but bankruptcy.  This left him in England with no real employment prospects, and so he returned to writing.  
   
  He sent some short stories back to New York to be published as ‘The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon, Gent’.  The first part included ‘Rip Van Winkle’ and was extremely successful.  The sixth part contained ‘The Legend of Sleepy Hollow’.  
   
  Beset by literary piracy, with no copyright law at the time, he set about publishing legitimate copies in England to outwit the bootleggers.  From now on Irving published concurrently in America and England in order to render piracy obsolete.  
   
  In August 1824, he published ‘Tales of a Traveller’, which included the famed ‘The Devil and Tom Walker’.  
   
  In 1826, the American Minister to Spain, invited him to Madrid where he could examine the many historical documents that he had access to.  Irving reveled in both the size of the libraries he was granted access to and their rich quality.  Historical works flowed from his pen further enhancing his reputation and fortune.   
   
  Following the completion of ‘Tales of the Alhambra’ in 1832, Irving returned to America after 17 years abroad. He was now a figurehead of American literature and dispensed advice to Edgar Allan Poe amongst others.  Irving also became an advocate for American copyright legislation.  
   
  A later appointment as Minister to Spain in 1842 left him disheartened at the antics of the various political factions he encountered.  It also afforded him no time to write as he had hoped.  
   
  On his return home he began an ‘Author’s Revised Edition’ of his works agreeing an unprecedented deal for 12 per cent of the retail profits.  
   
  Washington Irving died of a heart attack at his ‘Sunnyside’ home on the 28th November 1859 at the age of 76, a few months after completing his five volume George Washington biography, in whose honour he had been named. 
   
  01 - Washington Irving - A Short Story Collection - An Introduction 
  02 - The Legend of Sleepy Hollow by Washington Irving 
  03 - The Devil and Tom Walker by Washington Irving 
  04 - The Art of Book-Making by Washington Irving 
  05 - The Conquest of the Earth by the Moon by Washington Irving 
  06 - John Bull by Washington Irving

  Ver livro

• 

  The Cry of a Century

  Richard Middleton, Edgar Jepson

  • 0
  • 0
  • 0

  Richard Barham Middleton (1882-1911) was an English poet and author who is remembered mostly for his supernatural tales and ghost stories, in particular The Ghost Ship, The Coffin Merchant and On the Brighton Road. Edgar Alfred Jepson (1863-1938) was an English author best known for his adventure and detective fiction. He also wrote supernatural and fantasy stories.The Cry of a Century is a short story about a gifted 11 year old known variously as The Infant Phenomenon and The Marvel of the Twentieth Century who supports his mother by performing great feats of memory and general knowledge every night on the stage in the Brixton Theatre of Varieties for four pounds 10 a week. One night after his performance, his mother does not come to pick him up from the theatre. The young Marvel catches a ride on the back of a passing motor car. But the exhausted boy drifts off to sleep and when he awakes he is far outside London at a mysterious house whose inhabitants are holding a very strange and eerie celebration.

  Ver livro

• 

  A Source of Irritation

  Stacy Aumonier

  • 0
  • 0
  • 0

  Nobel Prize winner (and Forsyte Saga author) John Galsworthy described Stacy Aumonier as ‘one of the best short-story writers of all time’ and predicted that, through the best of his stories, he would ‘outlive all the writers of his day’. A Source of Irritation is one such story.Sam Gates, an elderly and somewhat irritable agricultural labourer, is thinning a field of turnips in Norfolk one morning during the Great War. Suddenly he sees an ‘airyplane’ behaving oddly in the sky. The plane, an enemy fighter, lands on the neighbouring field, and the next moment, owing to his odd similarity to an active German spy, Sam finds himself captured and abducted away to the trenches in Northern France.

  Ver livro

• 

  The Stolen White Elephant

  Mark Twain

  • 0
  • 0
  • 0

  In this Mark Twain short story an Indian elephant, en route from India to Britain as a gift to Queen, disappears in New Jersey. The local police department goes into high gear to solve the mystery but it all comes to a tragic end.(Summary written by Kristen McQuillin)

  Ver livro

• 

  The Blue Laboratory

  L T Meade

  • 0
  • 0
  • 0

  The name L T Meade, a pseudonym for Elizabeth Thomasina Meade Smith, rarely brings a sign of recognition. 
   
  Although she wrote mainly for young girls she also wrote across many genres including sensational, religious, historical, adventure and romances.  In all, her credits add up to over 300 titles. 
   
  Born in Brandon, County Cork in Ireland in 1844 she began her prolific career as a writer when she was a mere 17 years of age and was first published in 1872. 
   
  In 1879 she married Alfred Toulmin Smith and moved to London with him. 
   
  Meade also wrote many works with several male co-authors, edited a popular girl’s magazine ‘Atlanta’ and was a socially active feminist in the struggle for equal rights. 
    
  She died in 1914 at the age of 70. 
   
  In ‘The Blue Laboratory’, a young Governess working in St Petersburg discovers the horrifying secret of her scientist employer.  She has to do something. But what?

  Ver livro