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  The Unparrelled invasion - From...

  Jack London

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  John Griffith Chaney was born on January 12th, 1876 in San Francisco.   
  His father, William Chaney, was living with Flora Wellman when she became pregnant.  Chaney insisted she have an abortion.  Flora's response was to turn a gun on herself.  Although her wounds were not severe the trauma made her temporarily deranged. 
  In late 1876 his mother married John London and the young child was brought to live with them as they moved around the Bay area, eventually settling in Oakland where now, calling himself Jack, he completed grade school. 
  Jack worked hard at several jobs, sometimes 12-18 hours a day, but his dream was university.  He studied hard and borrowed the money to enrol in the summer of 1896 at the University of California in Berkeley. 
  In 1897, at 21, Jack searched out newspaper accounts of his mother's suicide attempt and for the name of his biological father. He wrote to Chaney, then living in Chicago, who claimed he could not be Jack’s father because he was impotent and casually asserted that London's mother had relations with other men.  Jack, devastated by the response, quit Berkeley and went to the Klondike. Other accounts suggest that his dire finances presented Jack with the excuse he needed to leave. 
  In the Klondike Jack began to gather material for his writing but also accumulated many health problems, including scurvy, which together with hip and leg problems he would carry for the rest of his life. 
  During the late 1890's Jack was regularly publishing short stories and by the turn of the century full blown novels. 
  By 1904 Jack had married, fathered two children and was now in the process of divorcing.  A stint as a reporter on the Russo-Japanese war of 1904 was equal amounts trouble and experience. But that experience was always put to good use in a continuing and remarkable output of work. 
  In 1905 he married Charmian Kittredge who at last was a soul and companion who brought him some semblance of peace despite his advancing alcoholism and his incurable wanderlust. 
  Twelve years later Jack had amassed both wealth and a literary reputation through such classics as ‘The Call of the Wild’, ‘White Fang’ and many others. He had a reputation as a social activist and was a tireless friend of the workers.   
  Jack London died suffering from dysentery, late-stage alcoholism and uremia, aged only 40, on November 22nd 1916 at his property in Glen Elen in California.

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  Agnes Grey

  Anne Brontë

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  "Agnes Grey" is a novel written by Anne Brontë, the youngest of the Brontë sisters. The book was first published in 1847 under the pseudonym Acton Bell. It is a semi-autobiographical novel that provides a poignant and insightful portrayal of the life of a governess in the 19th century. The novel follows the life of the protagonist, Agnes Grey, who becomes a governess to support her financially struggling family. Agnes faces various challenges and hardships in her role as a governess, dealing with unruly and spoiled children as well as indifferent and sometimes cruel employers. The narrative explores themes of social class, morality, and the limited opportunities available to women in the Victorian era. Through Agnes's experiences, the novel offers a critical commentary on the treatment of governesses and the prevailing social norms of the time.

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  The Count of Monte Cristo

  Alexandre Dumas

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  The Count of Monte Cristo (French: Le Comte de Monte-Cristo) is an adventure novel written by French author Alexandre Dumas (père) completed in 1844. It is one of the author's most popular works, along with The Three Musketeers. Like many of his novels, it was expanded from plot outlines suggested by his collaborating ghostwriter Auguste Maquet.The story takes place in France, Italy, and islands in the Mediterranean during the historical events of 1815–1839: the era of the Bourbon Restoration through the reign of Louis-Philippe of France. It begins on the day that Napoleon left his first island of exile, Elba, beginning the Hundred Days period when Napoleon returned to power. The historical setting is a fundamental element of the book, an adventure story centrally concerned with themes of hope, justice, vengeance, mercy, and forgiveness.Before he can marry his fiancée Mercédès, Edmond Dantès, a French nineteen-year-old first mate of the Pharaon, is falsely accused of treason, arrested, and imprisoned without trial in the Château d'If, a grim island fortress off Marseille. A fellow prisoner, Abbé Faria, correctly deduces that romantic rival Fernand Mondego, envious crewmate Danglars, and double-dealing magistrate De Villefort are responsible. Over the course of their long imprisonment, Faria educates Dantès and tells him of a cache of treasure he found. After Faria dies, Dantès escapes and finds the treasure. As the powerful and mysterious Count of Monte Cristo, he enters the fashionable Parisian world of the 1830s to avenge himself.

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  The Double

  Fyodor Dostoevsky

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  This is the story of Yakov Petrovich Golyadkin. 
  Mr. Golyadkin, a minor government official, is a rather middling man. Then one day he meets his "double"—a man with the same name, face, and background. Initially charmed by the coincidence, Golyadkin soon notices a discernable cooling in the reaction of his friends and colleagues, while his double seems to grow in popularity. Mr. Golyadkin, unable to escape the relentless presence of "Golyadkin junior," finds that even the most ordinary activities begin to take on a terrifying significance, until he finds himself on the verge of a breakdown. 
  The Double introduced the concept of the split personality or divided soul that would become a common psychological feature of the characters of Dostoevsky's later novels. Considered the most Gogolesque of Dostoevsky's works, the novella brilliantly depicts Golyadkin's descent into madness in a way that is hauntingly poetic. The Double illustrates Dostoevsky's uncanny ability to capture the complexity of human emotion especially the darker side of the human psyche. In this remarkable work of doppelgänger literature, Dostoevsky examines the neurosis and paranoia that cripple a seemingly ordinary man, producing a thoroughly modern nightmare, brilliantly foreshadowing the works of Kafka and Sartre.

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  The Mystery of the Blue Train

  Agatha Christie

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  In Agatha Christie's six installment of the Hercules Poirot series, our titular detective will once again showcase his brilliant investigative skills as he untangles the mystery of the blue train.A luxury train is headed to Nice with several well-to-do passengers on board. Most are living, breathing people with their own mysterious motivations, but the train will also deliver one silent victim. Somewhere along the route, Ruth Keeting was robbed and murdered, and it's up to Poirot to find her killer. Is it Ruth's estranged husband? Her French lover? Or someone else altogether . . . In this classic murder mystery filled with twists and turns, Poirot will stage a chilling reenactment of the fatal journey in order to expose hidden truths and bring the true culprit to justice.

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  Alice Dunbar Nelson - A Short...

  Alice Dunbar Nelson

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  Alice Ruth Moore was born on 19th July 1875 in New Orleans where she was part of the multi-racial Creole community.  She was the first generation seemingly born free after the Civil War and unusually for the times, obtained a university education which led to her becoming a teacher at a public school in New Orleans.   
  In 1895, when she was 20, she published her first collection of short stories and poems, ‘Violets and Other Tales’, and moved to New York City where she co-founded and taught at the White Rose Mission, a Home for Girls.   
  Alice was always politically active and sought to advance the position of black women.  She began work as a journalist at the Woman’s Era newspaper where her work was seen by the established poet and journalist Paul Laurence Dunbar.  After corresponding for two years she joined him in Washington DC and they married in 1898.   
  It was a difficult relationship, due mainly to Dunbar’s fragile health, alcoholism and depression.  After a severe beating she left him and moved to Delaware to teach for a decade though took time out to enroll at Cornell University. 
  A short-lived marriage to Henry A. Callis, a physician and professor at Howard University ended in divorce and she became co-editor and writer for an influential publication of the African Methodist Episcopal Church.  A third marriage to civil rights activist Robert J. Nelson came about, as did affairs with several women, notably the activist Fay Jackie Robinson.   
  In Wilmington Delaware she and her husband devoted their time and writings to working for equality for African Americans and women’s suffrage.   
  Alice Dunbar Nelson was a natural and gifted writer across many genres, from novels, essays, plays to diaries, criticism, poetry and of course short stories, of which ‘Stones in the Village’ is a fine example.  The protagonist, like herself, is light skinned from New Orleans, which allows for a social mobility and a unique position in American society that Dunbar Nelson captures with an imagination and insight to explores another divisive perspective on race.  It is unsurprising that Alice was a prominent part of the early Harlem Renaissance and influenced many others including Langston Hughes and Countee Cullen. 
  Alice and her husband moved to Philadelphia in 1932 and it was here that she died on 18th September 1935, at the age of 60, from a heart ailment.

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