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  Inspiration An - From their pens...

  George Gissing

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  George Robert Gissing was born on November 22nd, 1857 in Wakefield, Yorkshire.  
  He was educated at Back Lane School in Wakefield. Gissing loved school. He was enthusiastic with a thirst for learning and always diligent.  By the age of ten he was reading Dickens, a lifelong hero. 
  In 1872 Gissing won a scholarship to Owens College. Whilst there Gissing worked hard but remained solitary. Unfortunately, he had run short of funds and stole from his fellow students. He was arrested, prosecuted, found guilty, expelled and sentenced to a month's hard labour in 1876. 
  On release he decided to start over.  In September 1876 he travelled to the United States. Here he wrote short stories for the Chicago Tribune and other newspapers. On his return home he was ready for novels. 
  Gissing self-published his first novel but it failed to sell.  His second was acquired but never published. His writing career was static.  Something had to change.  And it did. 
  By 1884 The Unclassed was published.  Now everything he wrote was published. Both Isabel Claren-don and Demos appeared in 1886. He mined the lives of the working class as diligently as any capitalist. 
  In 1889 Gissing used the proceeds from the sale of The Nether World to go to Italy. This trip formed the basis for his 1890 work The Emancipated. 
  Gissing's works began to command higher payments. New Grub Street (1891) brought a fee of £250.  
  Short stories followed and in 1895, three novellas were published; Eve's Ransom, The Paying Guest and Sleeping Fires. Gissing was careful to keep up with the changing attitudes of his audience.  
  Unfortunately, he was also diagnosed as suffering from emphysema. The last years of his life were spent as a semi-invalid in France but he continued to write. 1899; The Crown of Life. Our Friend the Charlatan appeared in 1901, followed two years later by The Private Papers of Henry Ryecroft. 
  George Robert Gissing died aged 46 on December 28th, 1903 after catching a chill on a winter walk.

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  Diary of a Lunatic - From their...

  Leo Tolstoy

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  Leo Tolstoy was born in 1828 in the Russian province of Tula to a wealthy noble family. As a child, he had private tutors but he showed little interest in any formal education. When he went to the University of Kazan in 1843 to study oriental languages and law, he left without completing his courses.  Life now was relaxed and idle but with some writing also taking place.  Gambling debts forced an abrupt change of path and he joined the army to fight in the Crimean War.  He was commended for his bravery and promoted but was appalled at the brutality and loss of life.  He recorded these and other earlier experiences in his diaries which formed the basis of several of his works. 
  In 1852 ‘Childhood’ was published to immediate success and was followed by ‘Boyhood’ and ‘Youth’. 
  His experience in the army and the horrors he witnessed resulted in ‘The Cossacks’ in 1862 and the trilogy ‘Sevastopol Tales’. After the war he travelled around Europe, visiting London and Paris and meeting such luminaries as Victor Hugo and Charles Darwin.  
  It was now that Tolstoy began his masterpiece, ‘War and Peace’. Published in 1869 it was an epic work that changed literature. He quickly followed this with ‘Anna Karenina’.  
  These successes made Tolstoy rich and helped him accomplish many of his dreams but also brought problems as he grappled with his faith and the lot of the oppressed poor. These revolutionary views became so popular that the authorities now kept him under surveillance.  
  He led a life of asceticism and vegetarianism and put his socialist ideals into practice by establishing numerous schools for the poor and food programmes. He also believed in giving away his wealth, which caused much discord with his wife.  
  His writing continued to bring forth classics such as ‘The Death of Ivan Ilyich’ and many brilliant and incisive short stories such as ‘How Much Land Does A Man Need’.  
  In 1901 Tolstoy was excommunicated from the Church and controversially deselected for the Nobel Prize for Literature. 
  Whilst undertaking a pilgrimage by train in October 1910 with his daughter Aleksandra he caught pneumonia in the nearby town of Astapovo.  Leo Tolstoy died on November 9th, 1910, he was 82.

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  Pre-Approved for Haunting - And...

  Patrick Barb

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  In this new collection, Patrick Barb explores themes of family found and lost, media consumption and the dangers of runaway nostalgia, the supernatural in our lives, and the impact of violence in both the long- and short-term. -A young couple is reunited with their lost son whose favorite fuzzy bear suit connects him to the ghost of a vengeful mama bear while he's alone in the forest. -A jaded screenwriter can’t escape the haunted screenplay that’s ruined his career. -A man returns to his small hometown, where the people are gone and the trees have taken over. -A Slasher and Final Girl brother-sister duo match wits and blades against a sentient, dimension-hopping apocalypse at a never-ending summer camp. From rural backwoods to Park Slope brownstones, Barb's characters face impossible, awful situations, testing their inner strength and understanding of reality. Covering quiet horror, weird fiction, supernatural horror, slasher horror, topical dark fiction, and more, these stories spotlight supposedly familiar terrors and fears in new and unexpected ways..

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  Strange Fauna

  ZA Ralston

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  (00 years across the shattered plains, voyaging the scattering void, there is no roadside assistancr. 
  Wrenna, 8 months pregnant and Scarrett are stranded far from home.

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  Top 10 Short Stories The - The...

  Robert Louis Stevenson, Jack...

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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. 
   
  In this volume the Mad Scientist takes centre stage.  Naturally the stories come in all shapes and sizes and in the pens of our classic authors the scientists more usually arrive as dark, twisted and evil as they go about their work illuminating humanity as only a mad scientist can. 
   
  1 - The Top 10 Short Stories - Mad Scientists - An Introduction 
  2 - The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll & Mr Hyde - Part 1 by Robert Louis Stevenson 
  3 - The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll & Mr Hyde - Part 2  by Robert Louis Stevenson 
  4 - A Thousand Deaths by Jack London 
  5 - A Diagnosis of Death by Ambrose Bierce 
  6 - The Facts In The Case of Monsieur Valdemar by Edgar Allan Poe 
  7 - The Mortal Immortal by Mary Shelley 
  8 - Carnivorine by Lucy Hamilton Hooper 
  9 - The Man Without a Body by Edward Page Mitchell 
  10 - Rappaccini's Daughter - Part 1 by Nathaniel Hawthorne 
  11 - Rappaccini's Daughter - Part 2 by Nathaniel Hawthorne 
  12 - The Blue Laboratory by L T Meade 
  13 - Herbert West - Reanimator - Part 1 by H P Lovecraft 
  14 - Herbert West - Reanimator - Part 2 by H P Lovecraft

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  Cold Revenge

  Bip Wetherell

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  ‘Cold Revenge’ is a collection of 14 short stories.  
  A ‘Gambling Man’ tries to win the money but will he win the girl? What kind of man kidnaps a child and leaves him alone in a cold dark place? In a relationship, can ‘A Worm Really Turn’? In the future, men live alone in capsules depending on the mainframe computer to take care of everything. An R.A.F. officer seeks ‘Cold Revenge’ when he discovers the real truth behind his parents' accident. How do you gain revenge on a wife who no longer has any interest in your marriage? A top radio disc jockey is supposed to entertain his public, not murder them!  
  See what you think after reading ‘Cold Revenge’.

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