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  Wonder Book for Girls and Boys

  Nathaniel Hawthorne

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  A Yankee student stays at a country house called Tanglewood during a golden New England fall. Also at the house are about a dozen children: younger cousins of the student and their friends of varying ages. The student, as much to amuse himself as to amuse the children, organises games and activities and tells stories. And the stories he tells are wild and fantastic. When his store of fairy tales and folk legends is exhausted he hits on the idea of retelling Greek Myths in his own style.We visit Tanglewood six times during the course of a year and hear six of the student's beautifully told stories: The Gorgon's Head, The Golden Touch, A Paradise of Children, The Three Golden Apples, The Miraculous Pitcher and The Chimaera. (Summary by Clive Catterall)

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  Feathered Glory

  James Lasdun

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  Feathered Glory explores themes of male friendship, waning middle-aged powers and sexual transgression in a way that couldn't feel more timely. The marriage of a school professor and artist reveals dangerous fault-lines when an old lover reappears in the husband's life and the wife, fascinated by a charismatic wildlife rehabilitator, brings an injured swan into their home.

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  Presentiments

  P. C. Wren

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  Percival Christopher Wren (1875-1941) was an English writer of adventure fiction mostly dealing with colonial soldiering in Africa. He is remembered best for Beau Geste, a much filmed book of 1924, involving the French Foreign Legion in North Africa. 
  "Presentiments" is the story of a legionnaire who knows he will be killed the following day but does not want to die without telling somebody about a set of terrible events which occurred in his childhood and which have overshadowed his life.

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  Top 10 Short Stories The - The...

  Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Charles...

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  Short stories have always been a sort of instant access into an author’s brain, their soul and heart.  A few pages can lift our lives into locations, people and experiences with a sweep of landscape, narration, feelings and emotions that is difficult to achieve elsewhere. 
   
  In this series we try to offer up tried and trusted ‘Top Tens’ across many different themes and authors. But any anthology will immediately throw up the questions – Why that story? Why that author?  
   
  The theme itself will form the boundaries for our stories which range from well-known classics, newly told, to stories that modern times have overlooked but perfectly exemplify the theme.  Throughout the volume our authors whether of instant recognition or new to you are all leviathans of literature. 
   
  Some you may disagree with but they will get you thinking; about our choices and about those you would have made.  If this volume takes you on a path to discover more of these miniature masterpieces then we have all gained something. 
   
  This mid-century decade reveals a journey traversing continents and genres as authors explore and revel in the telling of tumultuous times of social upheaval as nations are divided by Civil War or expand with the brute force of Imperial Dreams.  Our writers are here to document and narrate more about this fascinating decade. 
   
  01 - The Top 10 - The 1860's - The Men - An Introduction 
  02 - The Crocodile. An Extraordinary Incident - Part 1 by Fyodor Dostoyevsky 
  03 - The Crocodile. An Extraordinary Incident - Part 2 by Fyodor Dostoyevsky 
  04 - The Signalman by Charles Dickens 
  05 - The Generous Gambler by Charles Baudelaire 
  06 - The Romance of Certain Old Clothes by Henry James 
  07 - Malachi's Cove by Anthony Trollope 
  08 - The Outcasts of Poker Flat by Bret Harte 
  05 - The Astounding Adventure of Wheeler J Calamity, Related by Himslef by W S Gilbert 
  10 - The Spectre Bridegroom by William Hunt 
  11 - The 9.30 Up-Train by Sabine Baring-Gould 
  12 - The Man Without a Country by Edward Everett Hale

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  The Juryman

  John Galsworthy

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  John Galsworthy was born in Kingston Upon Thames in Surrey, on August 14th 1867.  The family was wealthy and well established.  John was schooled at Harrow and New College, Oxford before training as a barrister. But law was not for him. 
  Galsworthy first published in 1897 with a collection of short stories entitled “The Four Winds”.  Initially he published as 'John Sinjohn' but after the death of his father in 1904 he published as John Galsworthy. 
  Much of his early work was as Plays for which he dealt with social issues and the class system. From there it was but a short step to the works for which he won the Nobel Prize and for which he is so well remembered; The Forsythe Sage trilogy. 
  Although sympathetic to his characters, he reveals their insular, snobbish, and somewhat greedy attitudes and suffocating moral codes. In his writings he campaigns for prison reform, women's rights, animal welfare, and the opposition of censorship as well as a recurring theme of an unhappy marriage from the women’s side. 
  John Galsworthy died from a brain tumour at his London home, Grove Lodge, Hampstead on January 31st 1933. In accordance with his will he was cremated at Woking with his ashes then being scattered over the South Downs from an aeroplane.

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  Christmas Stories

  Charles Dickens

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  An entertaining selection of festive stories by Charles Dickens.

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