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  The Lamoille Stories

  Bill Schubart

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  Schubart brings to life the friends and characters of his native Lamoille County, where in the late 1950s and early 1960s, life was lived close to the earth and often against the grain. Schubart’s collection of twenty-two stories captures Vermont in its transition from an enclave of hill farms and small towns where everyone knew your grandfather to a place where vehicles bearing license plates from “away” mix with hippie vans filled with born-again Vermonters getting back to the land…until snowfall.

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  The Red Flower - This deep...

  Vsevelod Garshin

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  Vsevolod Mikhailovich Garshin was born on 14th February 1855 in what is now Dnipro in the Ukraine, but then part of the Russian Empire. 
   
  After attending secondary school he studied at the Saint Petersburg Mining Institute.  
   
  Wars between and on behalf of Empires were a regular feature of the decades then.  Garshin volunteered to serve in the Russian army at the beginning of the Russo-Turkish War in 1877.  
   
  He began as a private in the Balkans campaign and was wounded in action.  By the end of the war, in 1878, he had been promoted to officer rank.  
   
  By now Garshin, having previously published some articles and reviews in newspapers, wished to devote himself to a literary career.  The decision made he resigned his army commission. 
   
  His time as a soldier provided rich experiences for his early stories. His first ‘Four Days’ was related as the interior monologue of a wounded soldier left for dead on the battlefield for four days, face to face with the corpse of a Turkish soldier he had killed, gained him early admiration as an author of note.  
   
  He wrote perhaps only 20 stories, but their influence was immense, although in these more modern times he is barely remembered and lives in the more prolific shadows of others.  His characters are superbly worked into stories that come alive in the intensity and reality of his prose.   
   
  Garshin’s most well-known story is ‘The Red Flower’, also known as ‘Scarlet Blossom’ and is easily amongst the first rank of stories dealing with mental health issues. 
    
  Despite early literary success, he himself experienced periodical bouts of mental illness.   
   
  In one such bout Garshin attempted to commit suicide by throwing himself down the stone stairs leading into his apartment building.  Although not immediately fatal, Vsevolod Garshin died as a result of his injuries in a St Petersburg hospital on 5th April 1888.  He was 33. 
   
  In this captivating story a man is placed into an insane asylum.  Life may be grim within its walls but he has a plan to remove evil from the world.  All it takes is further sacrifice from himself.

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  Abaco Breeze

  Ed Robinson

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  A mysterious detective puts Breeze in a tight spot. Blackmail is the deal of the day, but Breeze isn't buying. Instead, he accepts a mission to rebuild a marina in Marsh Harbor. He assumes the relocation will keep him out of trouble.His assumption is wrong.He becomes a part of the lives of survivors there, as they work together to reclaim a piece of paradise.

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  The Hungered One - Short Stories

  Ed Bullins

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  “A richness of language and observation pervades this collection of short stories by a black writer about real black people” (The New York Times Book Review).   Award-winning playwright Ed Bullins received the New York Drama Critics Circle Award for his play The Taking of Miss Janie, and is also renowned for such works as In the Wine Time and Clara’s Ole Man. In this collection of his early short fiction, he explores themes of loneliness and despair and the African American experience in beautifully crafted stories.   “For true students and fans of American and African American literature of the 1960s and ’70s, Ed Bullins is one of our indisputable heavyweight champs.” —Kevin Powell, author and activist

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  Claude Gueux

  Victor Hugo

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  Victor Marie Hugo was born on 26th February 1802 in Besançon, France.   
   
  There can be no doubt that Hugo is ranked as the greatest of French authors and poets. In addition to this he fought against social injustice throughout his life and from his frequent elections to the French Assembly. 
   
  Hugo published his first novel, Han d’Islande (1823), the year after his marriage and so began an immense canon of fiction and poetry not only for France but to World literature.  
   
  He was elected to the Académie Française in 1841 and the same year came a peerage and entrance to the Higher Chamber as a pair de France, where he spoke against the death penalty, social injustice and in favour of press freedom.  
     
  In the years leading up to the Revolution of 1848 Hugo began to lean towards Republicanism and greater freedoms.  With the formation of the Second Republic, he was again elected to the Assembly. 
   
  When Napoleon III seized power in 1851, and established an anti-parliamentary constitution, Hugo openly declared him a traitor to France. This, of course, meant exile where he remained until 1870.  In exile he published his greatest work ‘Les Misérables’, and further widely honoured collections of poetry. 
   
  Returning home he was again elected to the National Assembly and the Senate.  It was the time of the Franco-Prussian war and with Paris under siege and food ever more scarce, he wrote in his diary that he was now "eating the unknown". 
   
  Later he was instrumental in strengthening the rights of artists and copyright, steps which led to the international protections of the Berne Convention.  
   
  Victor Hugo died on 22nd May 1885, aged 83.    
   
  In ‘Claude Gueux’ one prisoner dares to challenge a system and its cruel Governor who takes away his only friend purely out of spite.  The consequences are appalling.

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  Master Zacharius

  Jules Verne

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  Jules Gabriel Verne was born on February 8th, 1828 on Île Feydeau, a small artificial island on the Loire River in Nantes. 
   
  His father wanted his son to take over the family law practice.  Jules started along this course and despite graduating with a licence en droit in January 1851 was soon diverted by the lure of literature and by his own ambitious talents in this direction. 
   
  He wrote for the theatre and for magazines and soon with the publication of his first novel; Five Weeks in a Balloon on January 31st, 1863 he had begun his career as an admired and popular author. 
   
  For many, many years the works flowed, usually no less than and often more than two volumes per year.  His meticulous research and imaginative setting and narratives soon established him as a top selling author and he became both famous and wealthy. 
   
  By publishing firstly as a serialised book and then as a complete book sales swelled as did his reputation. His earnings increased further due to the runaway success from the stage adaptations of Le tour du monde en quatre-vingts jours (1874) and Michel Strogoff (1876), Strangely he was overlooked for honours. He was not even nominated for membership of the Académie Française.   
   
  After the death of both his mother and Hetzel, Jules began to publish darker works but still at a prodigious rate.  In 1888, Jules entered politics and was elected town councillor of Amiens, and then served for fifteen years.  Jules was now entering the last period of his life.  His works continued to flow albeit at a slower pace. His reconciled with his son, Michel who now became an active contributor to his father’s works and, when the senior Verne died, would continue to contribute and publish his father’s works, ensuring that the work was kept in the public eye and the legacy preserved. 
   
  On March 24th, 1905, while ill with diabetes, Jules Verne died at his home at 44 Boulevard Longueville, Amiens. 
   
  As a legacy Jules Verne is forever remembered as ‘The Father of Science Fiction’.  With his rigorous research Jules was not only able to make his works realistic but also to project forward and predict many new things that would eventually come to pass – either in real life or as the basis for others to use in their own science fiction.  Extraordinary indeed.

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