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  A Thousand Deaths - From their...

  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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  Saying Dirty Things in Regional...

  Neil Campbell

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  Campbell gives voice to the extraordinary (never ordinary) men and women of Manchester. He goes beyond the King's English and formulaic approaches to short stories to capture, in print, how people really talk. Think James Kelman, Irvine Welsh, but Mancunian. Funny and heartfelt, this book is a romp to whizz through with pleasure. Forget mad for it Madchester, this is the Manchester of now, where Hacienda clichés turn into corporate nightmares and the only art is in marketing.

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  The Sea-Wolf

  Jack London

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  When literary critic Humphrey Van Weyden is rescued from a shipwreck by the seal-hunting schooner Ghost, he enters a world far removed from his sheltered existence. At the helm of the ship is Wolf Larsen—a brutal, brilliant, and enigmatic captain whose philosophy of survival and dominance challenges everything Van Weyden believes. Trapped aboard with a crew ruled by fear and violence, Van Weyden is forced to confront both the physical hardships of life at sea and the psychological warfare of Larsen’s ruthless worldview. 
  A gripping tale of man versus nature, intellect versus instinct, and morality versus might, The Sea-Wolf is one of Jack London’s most powerful and enduring novels. This audiobook brings the storm-lashed Pacific and its unforgettable characters vividly to life in a classic high-seas adventure that is as thought-provoking as it is thrilling. 
  Cover Photo by Nayla Charo: https://www.pexels.com/photo/bird-flying-over-the-sea-wave-4799392/

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  Halloween Bites - 13 Snack-Sized...

  Artemis Greenleaf, A.B....

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  Black Mare Books serves up some fun-sized treats from Artemis Greenleaf, Holly Dey, A.B. Richards, and Claire A. Murray. 
  In this grab-bag of Halloween shorts, you’ll find an assortment of killers and creeps. You may want to log off your Zoom meeting to play with the nice birdies. Perhaps kick back with a premium pizza before you go for a long walk in the dark woods? Or maybe you’ve wanted to run away to join the circus? Sounds like more fun than keeping a date with Death. 
  But be warned: the monsters may not be who you think they are. 

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  The Street That Wasn't There

  Clifford D. Simak

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  What if reality suddenly changed around you, and no one else noticed? In Clifford D. Simak's eerie and thought-provoking short story The Street That Wasn't There, an elderly man steps outside one morning only to discover that a familiar street has vanished—without a trace. As he struggles to make sense of this bizarre occurrence, he begins to question the nature of existence itself. A masterful blend of mystery, psychological tension, and science fiction, this tale challenges perceptions of reality in Simak's signature style. A must-listen for fans of mind-bending, classic sci-fi storytelling.

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  The Best That You Can Do - Stories

  Amina Gautier

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  Winner of the 2023 Soft Skull-Kimbilio Publishing Prize, a collection of short stories that elaborate the realities of a diasporic existence, split identities, and the beautiful potency of meaningful connections 
   
   
   
  Primarily told from the perspective of women and children in the Northeast who are tethered to fathers and families in Puerto Rico, these stories explore the confusion of being one person in two places—of having a mother who wants your father and his language to stay on his island but sends you there because you need to know your family. Loudly and joyfully filled with Cousins, Aunts, Grandparents, and budding romances, these stories are saturated in summer nostalgia, and place listeners at the center of the table to enjoy family traditions and holidays: the resplendent and universal language of survival for displaced or broken families. 
   
   
   
  Refusing to shy away from dysfunction, loss, obligation, or interrogating Black and Latinx heritages, Gautier's stories feature New York neighborhoods made of island nations living with seasonal and perpetual displacement. Like Justin Torres's We the Animals or Quiara Alegria Hudes's My Broken Language, it's the characters-in-becoming—flanked by family and rich with detail—that animate each story with special frequencies, especially for listeners grappling with split-identities themselves.

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