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  Grace Arising

  Emma Lombard

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  GRACE ARISING is the third full-length novel in The White Sails Series. The burgeoning 1840s New Holland wool market is irresistible to entrepreneurial souls prepared to brave the open oceans. Having survived unimaginable tragedy together, Grace and Seamus Fitzwilliam plan a fresh start aboard their new ship, Elias. 
  Lucius Chittenden, the new first mate, comes highly-recommended, and with the return of the trusted crew, the journey promises smooth sailing. The Elias is bursting with goods for the colony as well as shepherds for Gilly Downs, but it is not long before a theft is discovered, souring the mood aboard. 
  While Chittenden’s demand for expedience guarantees blistering speeds, it comes at a cost to the men’s morale, and sets Seamus and Grace at loggerheads. Seamus believes the officer pragmatic, Grace believes him cruel. When Chittenden’s cavalier attitude results in him shooting Seamus, Grace has Chittenden chained to the hold. With Seamus gravely injured, she assumes command of the Elias, taking responsibility for seeing her crew and family to safety. 
  The demands of navigating a tall ship across stormy seas, while trying to keep Seamus alive and managing her children, sees Grace bowed by duty. Sheer grit keeps her at the helm, affecting an air of steadfastness and complete control—but do the sailors see this in her? And will she make it to New Holland in time to save Seamus’s life? 
  Be prepared to be swept away from the smoggy skies of London, across the roiling Indian Ocean, and returned to beloved Gilly Downs in New South Wales as GRACE ARISING delivers more romantic, historical adventure, sea stories. The White Sails Series is historical women's fiction, touted by readers as, if Bridgerton and Pirates of the Caribbean had a love child.

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  The East Wing

  Saki Saki

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  "The East Wing" by Saki is a short story that unfolds during a house party beset by a fire in the middle of the night. The narrative centers around Mrs. Gramplain, the hostess, who faces a dire situation as flames engulf the east wing of her home, where her imaginary daughter, Eva, is believed to be trapped.

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  A Strange Story - Turgenev...

  Ivan Turgenev

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  Ivan Sergeyevich Turgenev was born on 9th November 1818 in Oryol, Russia to parents from the nobility.  He and his two brothers were raised by their mother on the family estate.  Surrounded by foreign governesses he became fluent in French, German, and English.  Their father spent little time with them and this undoubtedly had an effect on him and his brothers.  When he was nine the family moved to Moscow to give their children a better education. 
   
  Turgenev studied for a year at the University of Moscow and then at the University of St Petersburg to study Classics, Russian literature, and philology.  During that time his father died from kidney stone disease.  In 1838 Turgenev studied philosophy and history at the University of Berlin for 3 years before returning to St Petersburg for his master's. 
   
  He started his career with the Russian Civil Service and it was only in 1852, after several earlier publications, that he made his name with his short story collection, ‘A Sportsman's Sketches’, based on his observations of peasant life and nature. 
    
  That same year he wrote an obituary for Nikolai Gogol: "Gogol is dead!... What Russian heart is not shaken by those three words?... He is gone, that man whom we now have the right (the bitter right, given to us by death) to call great."  The St Petersburg censor banned publication but the Moscow censor allowed it.  He was dismissed but Turgenev was held responsible and imprisoned for a month, and then exiled to his country estate.  
   
  Along with many other intellectuals Turgenev left Russia and settled in Paris in 1854.  During this period he wrote his finest stories and four novels.  
   
  Alexander II ascended the Russian throne in 1855, and the political climate relaxed.  Turgenev returned home.  
   
  ‘Fathers and Sons’, Turgenev's most famous and enduring novel, appeared in 1862. Its leading character is considered the first ‘Bolshevik’ in Russian literature. But the hostile reaction prompted Turgenev's decision to again leave Russia.  
   
  His health declined during his later years.  In January 1883, an aggressive malignant tumor was removed but by then it had metastasized in his upper spinal cord, causing him intense pain in his final few months of life.  
   
  Ivan Turgenev died on 3rd September 1883 of a spinal abscess, a complication of the metastatic liposarcoma, in his house near Paris.  He was buried in St Petersburg.  
   
  In this tale a young girl, Sophia, endures difficult circumstances before several years later becoming the companion of a devout, but pitifully poor, vagrant holy man wandering the countryside.

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  Survivors of the Hive

  Jason Heroux

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  Loss. Grief. Centipedes. Silence. The word "no." The word "yes." A high school poetry contest that may or may not be linked to the end of the world. The characters in this collection are under attack. A grief-baffled son hopes to save an innocent insect from a toxic genocide, a daughter struggles to accept loss while visiting a community overwhelmed by denial, a sorrow-stricken father recalls his bizarre final conversation with his only child; the individuals in these stories discover how difficult it can be to let go of what's gone in order to live with what's left.

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  A Lickpenny Lover - 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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  Souvenirs from Another Life -...

  Leah Browning

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  Souvenirs from Another Life, the first full-length collection of short fiction by Leah Browning, features an abundant selection of stories. Relationships are at the forefront: those between friends, siblings, partners, or parents and children, as well as the more tangential relationships between neighbors or coworkers. By turns sharp and tender, the stories delve into the reality and surreality of love, companionship, and family.  
  In “Caught,” a man finds his Tinder date surrounded by vaguely threatening birds. Toward the beginning of “The Surrogate Wife,” a woman returns after a long journey to discover that her husband’s new housekeeper has taken over her home. And in “The Costume Wedding,” a doctor and her boyfriend travel to Albuquerque to attend a front yard ceremony where they’ve been instructed to dress up. 
  Slippery and hypnotic, these short stories illuminate hidden corners of courtship, marriage, divorce, friendship, and familial devotion. Souvenirs from Another Life includes full-length literary fiction, flash, microfiction, and linked stories about the pleasures and absurdities of everyday life.

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