Other books that might interest you

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  My Parent's Bedroom (A Story...

  Uwem Akpan

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  Uwem Akpan's stunning stories humanize the perils of poverty and violence so piercingly that few readers will feel they've ever encountered Africa so immediately.  The eight-year-old narrator of "An Ex-Mas Feast" needs only enough money to buy books and pay fees in order to attend school. Even when his twelve-year-old sister takes to the streets to raise these meager funds, his dream can't be granted. Food comes first. His family lives in a street shanty in Nairobi, Kenya, but their way of both loving and taking advantage of each other strikes a universal chord. In the second of his stories published in a New Yorker special fiction issue, Akpan takes us far beyond what we thought we knew about the tribal conflict in Rwanda. The story is told by a young girl, who, with her little brother, witnesses the worst possible scenario between parents. They are asked to do the previously unimaginable in order to protect their children. This singular collection will also take the reader inside Nigeria, Benin, and Ethiopia, revealing in beautiful prose the harsh consequences for children of life in Africa.Akpan's voice is a literary miracle, rendering lives of almost unimaginable deprivation and terror into stories that are nothing short of transcendent.

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  A Foggy Evening

  A. J. Alan

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  A. J. Alan was the pseudonym of Leslie Harrison Lambert (1883-1941), an English magician, intelligence officer, short story writer, and radio broadcaster. He was hugely popular in the '20s and '30s for his radio broadcasts, when he performed his own humorous and often macabre short stories, which he always delivered wearing full evening dress.A Foggy Evening tells of a night when A. J. Alan is mistaken by a stranger for someone else, and decides to play along with the mistake. He is dragged along to a mysterious party, which turns out to be the meeting of a very odd secret society. All narrated with A. J. Alan's infection humour.

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  Green Tea

  Joseph Le Fanu

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  Joseph Thomas Sheridan Le Fanu (1814-1873) was an Irish writer of Gothic tales and mystery novels. He was the leading ghost-story writer of the 19th century and was central to the development of the genre in the Victorian era.Green Tea is an iconic Gothic horror story which tells the story of a tea-drinking clergyman, haunted by a terrifying black monkey, which follows him wherever he goes, urging him to dreadful deeds and blighting his life in every way.The case is related by the erudite Dr. Martin Hesselius, a German doctor whom the clergyman had consulted.

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  The Master Mystery

  John W. Grey

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  While Harry Houdini didn't rise to fame as a screen actor, silent film makers of the day sought to capitalize on his fame. The Master Mystery was Houdini's first such attempt, and it was embraced by the viewing public, leading to other screen roles following.The hero (or superhero) is Quentin Locke, scientist, agent of the U.S. Justice Department, and not surprisingly, an escape artist extraordinaire.The Master Mystery follows agent Locke through many pitfalls, in true serial fashion, as he is tasked with uncovering a band of thugs and a peculiar metal robot (reportedly the first robot in film) with a brain, called an automaton, which has been robbing potential inventors of their patent rights.All in good fun by today's standards, we find our hero escaping a straightjacket, a diver's suit, and an electric chair to name but a few, and of course winning the hand of the daughter of one of the industrialists along the way. (Summary by Roger Melin)

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  The Downs

  Amyas Northcote

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  Amyas Northcote (1864 - 1923) was an English writer and contemporary of M. R. James, who was best known for his ghost stories. "The Downs" is a classic ghost story which demonstrates Northcote's understated genius. The story starts out as a regular tale, but with a few understated clues as to the nature of the horror that is to come - perfectly setting the atmosphere of creepy tension: "I was perfectly confident in my ability to find my way back over the down to Branksome at night, as the path was very familiar to us, and I expected to be aided by the light of the moon which would rise about ten o'clock."  Sure enough, the journey back over the downs reveals a terrifying horror... and our hero is lucky to escape with his life.

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  Millie

  Katherine Mansfield

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  Katherine Mansfield (1888-1923) was a prominent modernist writer of short fiction and a close associate of D. H. Lawrence and Virginia Woolf.  
  Millie is a countrywoman who is left alone on the farm when her husband and the farmhands join a posse chasing a local murderer. While they are gone an injured stranger appears at the farm, and Millie must decide what to do.

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