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  5 Years Next Sunday

  Idza Luhumyo

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  Pili’s locs are dark, fluffy, and soon hitting the five-year mark. Her family treats her like an outcast until Seth, a white man, comes into their lives. He leaves Zubeda, his ex-girlfriend, for Pili and opens a shop for her parents. He gives Neema, her mother, and Baba all the money they need to fulfil their dreams. 
  But it hasn’t rained for the past four years, and the drought is unfathomable. Her parents convince Pili and themselves that there is no need for rain for as long as they have Seth. 
  It’s only a couple of weeks to the five-year mark. Honey, a strange white woman who is also Seth’s friend, draws unusually close to Pili. She investigates what makes Pili’s hair special. She is set to find out why Seth loves Pili instead of her. 
  Pili is naïve enough to reveal to Honey that she has the rain in her hair. The slim white woman convinces her to cut it. When she does, the unexpected happens, and Pili is severely punished. Just like her Sangazimis, her father’s sisters before were!

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  A Man with Two Lives - From...

  Ambrose Bierce

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  Ambrose Gwinnett Bierce was born on 24th June 1842 at Horse Cave Creek in Meigs County, Ohio. His parents were poor but they introduced him to literature at an early age, instilling in him a deep appreciation of books, the written word and the elegance of language.  
  Growing up in Koscuisko County, Indiana poverty and religion were defining features of his childhood, and he would later describe his parents as “unwashed savages” and fanatically religious, showing him little affection but always quick to punish. He came to resent religion, and his introduction to literature appears to be their only positive effect. 
  At age 15 Bierce left home to become a printer’s devil, mixing ink and fetching type at The Northern Indian, a small Ohio paper. Falsely accused of theft he returned to his farm and spent time sending out work in the hopes of being published. 
  His Uncle Lucius advised he be sent to the Kentucky Military Institute. A year later he was commissioned as an Officer.  As the Civil War started Bierce enlisted in the 9th Indiana Infantry Regiment.  
  In April 1862 Bierce fought at the Battle of Shiloh, an experience which, though terrifying, became the source of several short stories. Two years later he sustained a serious head wound and was off duty for several months. He was discharged in early 1865.  
  A later expedition to inspect military outposts across the Great Plains took him all the way to San Francisco. He remained there to become involved with publishing and editing and to marry, Mary Ellen on Christmas Day 1871.  They had a child, Day, the following year.  
  In 1872 the family moved to England for 3 years where he wrote for Fun magazine. His son, Leigh, was born, and first book, ‘The Fiend’s Delight’, was published.  
  They returned to San Francisco and to work for a number of papers where he gained admiration for his crime reporting. In 1887 he began a column at the William Randolph Hearst’s San Francisco Examiner.  
  Bierce’s marriage fell apart when he discovered compromising letters to his wife from a secret admirer. The following year, 1889 his son Day committed suicide, depressed by romantic rejection. 
  In 1891 Bierce wrote and published the collection of 26 short stories which included ‘An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge’.  Success and further works including poetry followed.  
  Bierce with Hearst’s resources helped uncover a financial plot by a railroad to turn 130 million dollars of loans into a handout. Confronted by the railroad and asked to name his price Bierce answered “my price is $130 million dollars. If, when you are ready to pay, I happen to be out of town, you may hand it over to my friend, the Treasurer of the United States”.  
  He now began his first foray as a fabulist, publishing ‘Fantastic Fables’ in 1899.  But tragedy again struck two years later when his second son Leigh died of pneumonia relating to his alcoholism.  
  He continued to write short stories and poetry and also published ‘The Devil’s Dictionary’.  
  At the age of 71, in 1913 Bierce departed from Washington, D.C., for a tour of the battlefields where he had fought during the civil war. At the city of Chihuahua he wrote his last known communication, a letter to a friend. It’s closing words were “as to me, I leave here tomorrow for an unknown destination,” Ambrose Bierce then vanished without trace.

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  Drowning In Their Darkness

  M.H. Lee

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  What If You Couldn't Say No To Others But They Never Knew?Empathy should have its limits. But for Freya it doesn't. When others are around she finds herself bending to their will, unable to tell anyone what she wants, unable to assert herself or defend herself. Can she find a way forward or will she forever be drowning in their darkness?PG-13

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  Unwritten Novel An - A Classic...

  Virginia Woolf

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  Have you ever invented a life for someone you barely know? On a quiet train, an unnamed narrator fixates on a melancholy woman she calls “Minnie Marsh” and constructs an entire life for her -filled with family dramas, hidden desires, and unspoken conflicts. But how much of what we imagine reflects reality, and how much reveals our own inner world? Virginia Woolf’s "An Unwritten Novel" (based on a timeless public domain story) is a masterful exploration of perception, imagination, and the fragile boundary between observation and invention. Through her signature stream-of-consciousness style, Virginia Woolf immerses you in the narrator’s vivid fantasies, only to shatter them with a glimpse of the stranger’s real life. Step into a world where a simple train ride sparks a complex tapestry of imagined lives - and discover how much we see in others is really a reflection of ourselves. Listen now and let Woolf’s hauntingly introspective tale linger in your mind long after the final word.

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  The Ghost in the Cupboard Room -...

  Wilkie Collins

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  Wilkie Collins was born on 8th January 1824 in Marylebone, London.  
  The family moved several times in his early years before, at 12, they travelled to France and Italy for 2 years where the sights and atmosphere made a deep and lasting impression on him. 
  He resumed his education at Mr Cole’s private boarding school in Highbury, Islington.  Here, he began his literary career under unusual circumstances: the school bully would give him no peace until he had been told a bedtime story.  This ‘little brute’ helped create one of England’s greatest writers.  
  On leaving school, in 1841, he became a clerk at a tea merchant before, 2 years later, publishing his first short story.  However, his first novel was rejected and remained so during his lifetime.  
  A brief stint at Lincoln’s Inn to please his father and to acquire a steady income was halted by his father’s death.  Collins then wrote and published his fathers’ memoirs.  He then completed his legal education though he would never practice.  
  In March 1851, he was introduced to Charles Dickens and there now started a period of sustained literary output and a remarkable lifelong friendship.  His stories were published in Dicken’s magazines, and he toured with Dicken’s theatrical before the two of them travelled to the Continent. 
  By the early 1860’s worrying signs of ill-health appeared with rheumatic gout.  As it worsened, he sought respite and cures in German spa towns and gave up writing to help his recuperation. 
  His personal life had become very complicated.  He was living with the widowed Caroline Graves and conducting an affair with a much younger Martha Rudd.  With the serialised release of ‘The Moonstone’ and vicious attacks of gout Caroline left him and married another.  Collins was now prescribed opium and was soon its lifelong dependent.  Martha bore him two children and with the return of a now divorced Caroline Graves he now divided his time between the two women. 
  In 1874 he set aside writing to tour North America on a reading tour. 
  Throughout his later years he continued to write and publish.  In all 30 novels, 14 plays, 60 short stories and over a 100 non-fiction essays as well as many more collaborations with Dickens. 
  In 1884 the Society of Authors elected him as it’s Vice-President. 
  Wilkie Collins died from a paralytic stroke on September 23rd, 1889, in London. He was 65.

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  The Sire de Malétroit's Door

  Robert Louis Stevenson

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  This audiobook is narrated by an AI Voice. In the midst of the Hundred Years' War, Denis de Beaulieu, a young cavalier, seeks refuge in a mysterious house. Little does he know that stepping through its doors will trap him in a dangerous game.

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