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  Phantom Rickshaw The (Unabridged)

  Rudyard Kipling

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  This story was first published in Quartette, the Christmas Annual of the Civil and Military Gazette for 1885, which included four stories by the nineteen-year-old Kipling with other items of prose and verse by his parents and sister. It was revised before being collected in The Phantom Rickshaw and Other Tales, Volume 5 of the Indian Railway Library, of 1890. It was included in Wee Willie Winkie and Other Stories, published in 1890, and in numerous later editions of that collection.Jack Pansay has had a passionate ship-board romance with Agnes Keith-Wessington, the golden-haired wife of an officer. He wearies of her and tells her so, but she refuses to accept his rejection, insisting that it is all "a hideous mistake". She grows wan and thin, but he continues to respond curtly and brutally. He becomes engaged to Kitty Mannering, a lively young woman, whom he deeply loves, and - not long after - Agnes dies of a broken heart. Soon after, his rides out with Kitty around Simla are disrupted by the ghost of Agnes, in her familiar yellow-panelled rickshaw, which only he can see. She is still insisting that it is all "a hideous mistake". His friends think he is mad or drunk, his doctor is mystified, and Kitty breaks off the engagement. His life is ruined, and he goes to his death, still haunted by the golden-haired ghost.

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  A Pair of Silk Stockings

  Kate Chopin

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  Kate Chopin (1850 - 1904) was a U.S. author of French and Irish descent famous for her short stories and novels set in Louisiana.  "A Pair of Silk Stockings" is the tale of a frazzled housewife and mother, Mrs. Sommers, who has come into a small fortune of $15. She plans selflessly to spend it on clothes and shoes for her children, but when she sets out on her shopping trip she is seduced by a pair of beautiful soft silk stockings and embarks on an intoxicating spending spree for her own personal pleasure.

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  The Avalanche

  Gertrude Atherton

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  Price Ruyler has been sent to San Francisco from New York to salvage the family business after the 1906 earthquake. His success makes him one of the city's most eligible bachelors but he resists the machinations of the local girls (and their mothers). Then he meets the beautiful and captivating Helene. He proposes within a week. Into the fourth year of their marriage, he realizes something has changed. He still loves his wife and he believes she loves him but he begins to wonder about her mysterious past and questions whether family secrets were buried in the rubble left by the earthquake.

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  Her Lover

  Maxim Gorky

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  Maxim Gorky, whose real name was Alexey Maximovich Pyeshkov, is probably the best-known late-19th-century Russian fiction writer among the English-speaking world. His pen name translates as Maxim the Bitter, an attitude reflected in many of his works.Much of his writing reflects his own terrible life experiences and suffering. It is in his short stories that he reveals his true genius. "Her Lover" describes the plight of a lonely, alienated woman who creates an imaginary lover for herself.

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  The Valley of Fear

  Arthur Conan Doyle

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  "The Valley of Fear" is the fourth and final Sherlock Holmes novel by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. It is loosely based on the real-life exploits of the Molly Maguires and Pinkerton agent James McParland. The story was first published in the "Strand Magazine" between September 1914 and May 1915. The first book edition was copyrighted in 1914, and it was first published by George H. Doran Company in New York on 27 February 1915,In this tale drawn from the note books of Dr Watson, the deadly hand of Professor Moriarty once more reaches out to commit a vile and ingenious crime. However, a mole in Moriarty's frightening criminal organization alerts Sherlock Holmes of the evil deed by means of a cipher.

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  A Midsummer Night's Dream

  William Shakespeare

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  A Midsummer Night's Dream is a comedy written by William Shakespeare.    It portrays the events surrounding the marriage of Theseus, the Duke of Athens, to Hippolyta, the former queen of the Amazons. These include the adventures of four young Athenian lovers and a group of six amateur actors (the mechanicals) who are controlled and manipulated by the fairies who inhabit the forest in which most of the play is set. The play is one of Shakespeare's most popular works for the stage and is widely performed across the world.    The play consists of four interconnecting plots, connected by a celebration of the wedding of Duke Theseus of Athens and the Amazon queen, Hippolyta, which is set simultaneously in the woodland and in the realm of Fairyland, under the light of the moon.    The play opens with Hermia, who is in love with Lysander, resistant to her father Egeus' demand that she wed Demetrius, whom he has arranged for her to marry. Helena meanwhile pines unrequitedly for Demetrius. Enraged, Egeus invokes an ancient Athenian law before Duke Theseus, whereby a daughter must marry the suitor chosen by her father, or else face death. Theseus offers her another choice: lifelong chastity while worshipping the goddess Artemis as a nun.    Peter Quince and his fellow players Nick Bottom, Francis Flute, Robin Starveling, Tom Snout, and Snug plan to put on a play for the wedding of the Duke and the Queen, "the most lamentable comedy and most cruel death of Pyramus and Thisbe". Quince reads the names of characters and bestows them to the players. Nick Bottom, who is playing the main role of Pyramus, is over-enthusiastic and wants to dominate others by suggesting himself for the characters of Thisbe, the Lion, and Pyramus at the same time. He would also rather be a tyrant and recites some lines of Ercles. Bottom is told by Quince that he would do the Lion so terribly as to frighten the duchess and ladies enough for the Duke and Lords to have the players hanged. Quince ends the meeting with "at the Duke's oak we meet."

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