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  Babylon Revisited - Like his...

  F Scott itzgerald

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  Francis Scott Key Fitzgerald was born on 24th September 1896 in Saint Paul, Minnesota into an upper-middle class family. Whilst his mother was pregnant with him, his two young sisters tragically died.  Fitzgerald once said this was when his destiny as a writer was ordained. 
   
  His intelligence and talent was recognised from an early age, with his first story, about a detective being published in the school magazine when he was just 13.   
   
  In 1913 he enrolled at Princeton but his devotion to his own literary pursuits resulted in him leaving and, rather bizarrely, joining the Army.  In 1918, stationed at Fort Sheridan near Montgomery, Alabama he met and became infatuated and then inseparable from Zelda Sayre.  Initially though she refused to marry him but with the success of ‘This Side of Paradise’, the fame and the flow of money enabled them both to begin a gilded life.  For them this was The Jazz Age.  For Fitzgerald he was already an alcoholic. 
   
  He continued to write with great mastery and the titles of his novels and many of his 164 short stories are household names.  The Great Gatsby, often cited as The Great American Novel was published to mixed reviews.  As America moved from the Great Depression to the slaughter of the Second World War his works and himself were seen as far too entwined with the decadent twenties. The world had moved on and he hadn’t.   
   
  Further tragedy was never far from his life. Zelda after years of erratic and now intolerable behaviour was committed to an institution in 1936.  His own sales began to decline and he became a hack for hire in Hollywood, dependent on increasing amounts of booze and the weekly pay check.  His drunken state had often resulted in arrest or hospitalisation, further imperiling his talents.   Despite his contribution to many MGM films he received only one credit. 
   
  The end came all too soon for one of America’s greatest ever writers.  On 21st December 1940, at only 44 years of age in Hollywood, F Scott Fitzgerald succumbed to a heart attack. 
   
  In this bittersweet story of a man who enjoyed the boom years of la dolce vita and now, in more straitened times, is unable to get what he really wants; the custody of his daughter.  He returns to Paris to meet the ghosts of those good times and to make amends for his past.

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  The Unpleasantness at the...

  Dorothy L. Sayers

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  General Fentiman is found dead on the afternoon of November 11 in his armchair at the Bellona Club—just hours after the passing of his wealthy estranged sister. At ninety years old, his physician certifies death by natural causes. The important question, then, is not how he died, but when, as the answer determines the fate of an inheritance worth half a million pounds. If he died after his sister, her fortune stands to go to his grandsons, who are sorely in need of the funds. However, if his sister outlived him—even if only briefly—the money instead goes to his sister's companion, Ann Dorland. Fellow Bellona Club member and amateur sleuth Lord Peter Wimsey has to untangle a series of events to determine the general's precise time of death—and figure out if it was, in fact, a result of natural causes.

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  The Velveteen Rabbit

  Margery Williams

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  The Velveteen Rabbit is a popular bedtime story. A little boy gets a stuffed toy, the Velveteen Rabbit. He loves him so much that the rabbit turns "real." But one day the rabbit is thrown out and a fairy comes to him. The moral of the story is: Love and connection are important to all. Recommended for age 3+.

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  A Trip to the Other World - From...

  Kálmán Mikszáth

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  The bookshelves of World literature are incredible collections that have gathered together centuries of very talented authors.  From their countries and continents their fame spread and whilst among their number many are now forgotten or neglected their talents endure.  Among them is Kálmán Mikszáth.

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  The Little Prince

  Antoine de Saint-Exupéry

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  Audiobook The Little Prince is a novella written and illustrated by French writer and military pilot Antoine de Saint-Exupéry. It was first published in English and French in the United States by Reynal & Hitchcock in April 1943 and was published posthumously in France following liberation; Saint-Exupéry's works had been banned by the Vichy Regime. The story follows a young prince who visits various planets, including Earth, and addresses themes of loneliness, friendship, love, and loss. Despite its style as a children's book, The Little Prince makes observations about life, adults, and human nature. 
  The Little Prince became Saint-Exupéry's most successful work, selling an estimated 140 million copies worldwide, which makes it one of the best-selling in history. The book has been translated into over 505 different languages and dialects worldwide, being the second most translated work ever published, trailing only the Bible.The Little Prince has been adapted to numerous art forms and media, including audio recordings, radio plays, live stage, film, cinema television, ballet, and opera.

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  Lolly Willowes - Or the Loving...

  Sylvia Townsend Warner

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  When Laura Willowes's beloved father dies, she is absorbed in the household of her brother and his family. There, she leaves behind "Laura" and enters into the state of "Aunt Lolly," a genteel spinster indispensable to the upbringing of her nieces. For twenty years, Lolly is neither indulgent nor impulsive, until one day when she decides to move to a village in the Chilterns, much to her family's chagrin.
  
  But it's in the countryside, among nature, where Lolly has her first taste of freedom. Duty-bound to no one except herself, she revels in the solitary life. When her nephew moves there, and Lolly feels once again thrust into her old familial role, she reaches out to the otherworldly, to the darkness, to the unheeded power within the hearts of women to feel at peace once more.

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