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  Mystery - Dickens - Doyle - Nesbit

  E. Nesbit, Charles Dickens,...

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  Mystery - Short Stories 
   
  Track List 
  The Mystery of the Semi-detached- E. NesbitThe Signalman- Charles DickensThe Silver Mirror- Sir Arthur Conan DoyleA True Relation of the Apparition of Mrs Veal- Daniel DefoeThe Haunted Orchard- Richard le Gallienne

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  After Twenty years - From their...

  O Henry

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  William Sydney Porter was born on 11th September 1862 in Greensboro, North Carolina. At age 3 his mother died from tuberculosis. From an early age it was clear Porter had a large appetite for reading as he absorbed the world around him. 
  He first attended at a school run by his aunt before enrolling at the Lindsey Street High School and then worked at his uncle’s drugstore and gained a pharmacists’ license in 1881.  
  A persistent cough took him to Texas in the hope that a change of climate would help his symptoms. He took on various types of work, initially from ranch hand and cook and then as varied as pharmacist, draftsman, bank teller and journalist. He also began to write, though for now, purely as a hobby. 
  He was a member of several singing and dramatic groups when he met 17 year old Athol Estes, daughter of a wealthy Austin family. Despite her mother’s objection owing to Athol’s tuberculosis, they began courting and in July 1887, they eloped and soon married. 
  Athol, impressed by his writing, encouraged him to get them published. A job as a draftsman at the Texas General Land Office paid a healthy $100 dollars per month and life was good. 
  But then life turned cruel. His son died a few hours after birth although a daughter, Margaret, came the following year.  His job had to be vacated but another was found at the First National Bank of Austin. The bank operated informally and Porter was careless in keeping the books. He lost that job but began writing for the humourous weekly The Rolling Stone and the Houston Post. Some time later the federal Bank auditors went through his former accounts and he was arrested on charges of embezzlement. 
  Porter fled the day before his trial to Honduras. Holed up for several months he began to write.  Athol had become too ill to travel to meet him and learning that her health was deteriorating he surrendered to the court in February 1897.  Bail was obtained so that he could stay with Athol during her final days.  
  Porter was sentenced to five years at the Ohio Penitentiary in Columbus. His pharmacy qualifications got him the job of night druggist.  His sentence also gave him time to write and publish fourteen short stories. In December 1899 in McClure’s Magazine he published a short story as O Henry.  
  He was released two years early in July 1901, and reunited with Margaret, now 11, in Pittsburgh.  He now began his most prolific period of writing; a short story per week for the New York World, while also publishing works in other magazines.  Eventually over 600 of his short stories were published. 
  Porter was a heavy drinker and in 1908 his health, which had deteriorated for several years, took a dramatic turn for the worse, as did his writing. 
  O Henry died of cirrhosis of the liver complicated by diabetes and an enlarged heart on 5th June 1910.<

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  Poor Folk

  Fyodor Dostoyesky

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  "Poor Folk" is the debut novel of Russian author Fyodor Dostoyevsky, first published in 1846. It's presented in epistolary form, primarily comprising letters between two distant relatives, Makar Devushkin and Varvara Dobroselova, who are both poor inhabitants of St. Petersburg. Through their correspondence, the book explores the life of the urban poor in Russia and the challenges they face. The novel delves into themes of poverty, societal class structures, and the emotional toll of destitution. The relationship between the two characters, rooted in genuine concern but tainted by their challenging circumstances, provides a heartfelt, tragic view into 19th-century Russian society.

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  The Adventure of Black Peter

  Arthur Conan Doyle

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  The Adventure of Black Peter is a Sherlock Holmes story by Arthur Conan Doyle. This tale is in the collection The Return of Sherlock Holmes, but was published originally in 1904 in the Strand Magazine and Collier's.Forest Row in the Weald is the scene of a harpoon murder, and a young police inspector, Stanley Hopkins, asks Holmes, whom he admires, for help. Holmes has already determined that it would take a great deal of strength and skill to run a man through with a harpoon and embed it in the wall behind him.Peter Carey, the 50-year-old victim and former master of the Sea Unicorn of Dundee, who lived with his wife and daughter, had a reputation for being violent. Carey did not sleep in the family house, but in a small cottage that he built some distance from the house, whose interior he had decorated to look like a sailor's cabin on a ship. This is where he was found harpooned. Hopkins could find no footprints or other physical evidence. However, a tobacco pouch made of sealskin and with the initials "P.C." was found at the scene, which was full of strong ship's tobacco. This is rather unusual, as Peter Carey—or "Black Peter" as people called him—seldom smoked. Indeed, Hopkins found no pipe in the cabin. Carey was found fully dressed, suggesting that he was expecting a visitor, and there was some rum laid out along with two dirty glasses...Famous works of the author Arthur Conan Doyle: A Study in Scarlet, The Sign of the Four, The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes, The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes, The Hound of the Baskervilles, The Return of Sherlock Holmes, The Valley of Fear, His Last Bow, The Case-Book of Sherlock Holmes, Stories of Sherlock Holmes, The Lost World.

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  Gulliver's Travels - Part One:...

  Jonathan Swift

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  Presenting "Part One: A Voyage to Lilliput"— the most famous segment of a classic 18th century satire. Shipwrecked on an unknown island, Lemuel Gulliver finds himself not merely a fish out of water, but a very big fish in a small pond. He awakens to find himself tied to the ground by the natives of Lilliput— tiny people small enough to fit in his pocket and play hide and seek in his hair! At first suspicious, Gulliver soon earns the trust of the Lilliputian people, who enlist their newfound giant in defending them from their enemies on the bordering island of Blefufeu— residents who are also desperate to use the giant in their war against Lilliput.

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  Orlando

  Virginia Woolf

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  Who said biography had to be based on fact? 
    
  In Virginia Woolf’s semi-biographical novel, join protagonist Orlando as he travels through time and experiences key moments in British history. Born into nobility, young Orlando earns the affection of the queen through his service as an Elizabethan court page. Orlando matures and falls in love with a Russian princess, but emerges from the Great Frost of 1608 only to have his heart broken. When violent unrest threatens his post of ambassador to Constantinople, Orlando falls into a deep sleep and awakens as a woman. 
    
  For anyone interested in the field of women’s & gender studies, Orlando is an important work of modernist queer fiction. In fact, the BBC named this book among the 100 most influential novels for its power to break the mold. InAudio is thrilled to release this audiobook edition as fans also await a theatre adaptation, set to open at the historic Garrick Theatre in December 2022. 
    
  Come along for this epic adventure and dare to see the world a bit differently.

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