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  Morphine - This story is perhaps...

  Mikhail Bulgakov

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  Mikhail Bulgakov was born on 15th May 1891 in Kiev, in the Kiev Governorate of the Russian Empire, into a Russian family.  He was one of seven children. 
   
  In 1901, Bulgakov attended the First Kiev Gymnasium, and developed a keen interest in Russian and European literature, theatre and opera.  After the death of his father in 1907, his mother assumed responsibility for his education.  After graduating Bulgakov entered the Medical Faculty of Kiev University and then took up a post as physician at the Kiev Military Hospital. 
   
  At the outbreak of the First World War, he volunteered as a doctor and was sent directly to the front, where he was badly injured at least twice.  To suppress chronic pain, especially in the abdomen, he injected morphine.  It took years to wean himself off. 
   
  He now took up medical posts in various towns and in 1919, he was mobilised by the Ukrainian People's Army and assigned to the Northern Caucasus.  There, he became seriously ill with typhus and barely survived.  
   
  After this illness, Bulgakov abandoned his medicine to pursue writing.  He moved to Vladikavkaz and had two plays staged there with great success.  He wrote too for various newspapers and other outlets, but his critics were many.  And growing. 
   
  When a Moscow's theatre director severely criticised Bulgakov, Stalin personally protected him, saying that a writer of Bulgakov's quality was above ‘party words’ like ‘left’ and ‘right’.   Indeed, it is said that Stalin watched ‘The Days of the Turbins’ at least 15 times. 
   
  It was not to last and by March 1929, Bulgakov's career was ruined when Government censorship stopped publication of any of his work and plays. 
   
  In despair, Bulgakov wrote a personal letter to Stalin.  He requested permission to emigrate.  He received a phone call from the Soviet leader, who asked the writer whether he really desired to leave. He replied that a Russian writer cannot live outside of his homeland.  Stalin thus gave him permission to continue working. In May 1930, he re-joined the theater, as stage director's assistant.  
   
  During the last stressful decade of his life, and in poor health, Bulgakov continued to work on ‘The Master and Margarita’, wrote plays, critical works, stories, and continued translations and dramatisations of novels.  Many of them were not published, others were derided by critics.  
   
  On 10th March 1940, Mikhail Afanasyevich Bulgakov died from nephrosclerosis.  He was 48. 
   
  ‘The Master and Margarita’ was not published in any form until the mid-1960’s 
   
  In this story Bulgakov relates the terrifying and hellish descent into addiction that seems so avoidable and yet so chillingly not.

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  Until Proven Innocent -...

  KC Johnson, Stuart Taylor

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  What began that night shocked Duke Universityand Durham, North Carolina.      And it continues to captivate the nation:  the Duke lacrosse team members‘ alleged rape of an African-American stripper and the unraveling of the case against them.      In this ever-deepening American tragedy, Stuart Taylor Jr. and KC Johnson argue, law enforcement, a campaigning prosecutor, biased journalists, and left-leaning academics repeatedly refused to pursue the truth while scapegoats were made of these young men, recklessly tarnishing their lives.      The story harbors multiple dramas, including the actions of a DA running for office; the inappropriate charges that should have been apparent to academics at Duke many months ago; the local and national media, who were so slow to take account of the publicly available evidence; and the appalling reactions of law enforcement, academia, and many black leaders.Until Proven Innocent is the only book that covers all five aspects of the case (personal, legal, academic, political, and media) in a comprehensive fashion. Based on interviews with key members of the defense team, many of the unindicted lacrosse players, and Duke officials, it is also the only book to include interviews with all three of the defendants, their families, and their legal teams.            Taylor and Johnson‘s coverage of the Duke case was the earliest, most honest, and most comprehensive in the country, and here they take the idiocies and dishonesty of right- and left-wingers alike head on, shedding new light on the dangers of rogue prosecutors and police and a cultural tendency toward media-fueled travesties of justice. The context of the Duke case has vast import and contains likable heroes, unfortunate victims, and memorable villains—and in its full telling, it is captivating nonfiction with broad political, racial, and cultural relevance to our times.

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  50+ Great Novellas and Short...

  Washington Irving, Charlotte...

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  This collection is a compilation of novels and short stories by some of the greatest masters of fiction literature.
  The collection includes works spanning over 150 years from the beginning of the 19th century to the second half of the 20th century.
  The works vary in genre, including humorous, lyrical, psychological, romantic, detective, fantastic, adventurous, and mystical prose.
  It features classics of American, British, Irish, French, German, and Russian literature.
  Some of the outstanding authors included in this collection: Washington Irving, Edgar Allan Poe, Charles Dickens, Herman Melville, Leo Tolstoy, Guy de Maupassant, Arthur Conan Doyle, Franz Kafka, Fyodor Dostoyevsky, H. P. Lovecraft,  John Galsworthy , Ernest Hemingway, Ray Bradbury, Agatha Christie, and many more.
  This book is intended for teachers and true literature enthusiasts.
   
  Washington Irving. Rip van Winkle
  Charlotte Bronte. Napoleon and the Spectre
  Mary Shelley. The Mortal Immortal
   
  Edgar Allan Poe
  The Cask of Amontillado
  The Black Cat
   
  Ivan Turgenev. First Love
  Charles Dickens. Nobody's Story
  Herman Melville. Bartleby, The Scrivener
   
  Mark Twain
  A Complaint about Correspondents, Dated in San Francisco
  Answers to Correspondents
  Among the Fenians
   
  Mary Elizabeth Braddon. The Cold Embrace
  Harriet Beecher Stowe. The Parson's Horse Race
  Joel Chandler Harris. The Wonderful Tar Baby Story
  Guy de Maupassant. The Piece of String
   
  Leo Tolstoy
  The Death Of Ivan Ilyich
  God Sees The Truth, But Waits
   
  Oscar Wilde. The Happy Prince
  Jerome K. Jerome. Three Men in a Boat
  Kate Chopin. The Awakening
  H. G. Wells. The Star
   
  Anton Chekhov
  Gooseberries
  A Malefactor
   
  Arthur Conan Doyle
  Lot No. 249
  The Crime Of The Brigadier
   
  Rudyard Kipling. The Cat That Walked By Himself
  Jack London. To Build A Fire
  H. H. Munro, or Saki. Gabriel-Ernest
  O. Henry. The Caballero's Way
  Charlotte Perkins Gilman. The Cottagette
  James Joyce. The Dead
  Franz Kafka. In the Penal Colony
  Fyodor Dostoyevsky. The Christmas Tree And The Wedding
  John Galsworthy. The Broken Boot
  F. Scott Fitzgerald. The Offshore Pirate
  G. K. Chesterton. The Blue Cross
   
  Ivan Bunin
  The Grammar Of Love
  Gentle Breathing
   
  Aleksandr Kuprin. The Outrage - A True Story
   
  Ernest Hemingway
  Up in Michigan
  Out of Season
  My Old Man
   
  Ray Bradbury
  A Little Journey
  Zero Hour
   
  H. P. Lovecraft. The Shadow over Innsmouth
   
  Mikhail Bulgakov
  The Cup Of Life
  The Beer Story
  Moonshine Springs
   
  Agatha Christie
  The Mystery of Hunter's Lodge
  The Million Dollar Bond Robbery
  The Adventure of the Egyptian Tomb

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  Vlad the Impaler - Facts about...

  Kelly Mass

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  Not too many people realize that the story of Dracula was based on a really sadistic ruler in Romania. Vlad the Impaler, or Vlad the Third, was a merciless despot who tried to make an example out of his opponents by impaling them and displaying them in public. He also enjoyed bathing in dead people’s blood and did some other gross, inhumane things. He was the terror of Eastern Europe for many years. 
  What made this tyrant so effective at warfare, so vicious in his raids, and so brutal when he captured enemies? 
  How was his relationship with the Pope in Rome? 
  Which other conquerors were fighting him at the time? 
  Why was there so much friction with the Ottoman Empire? 
  Learn about this, as well as his background, his marriage, his death, and his legacy. Find out why vampire stories have been derived from this dictator, and why he has been listed as one of the evilest people in history.

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  Game Birds and Gun Dogs - True...

  Joseph B. Healy

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  Let legendary outdoor writer and editor Vin Sparano (Outdoor Life Magazine) take you into the great outdoors with stories about hunters, their dogs, and the upland game and waterfowl they hunt.Hunters will experience all the emotion they do in the outdoors in the comfort of their easy chair: the smell of an autumn forest, the friendship of a trusted hunting dog, the joy of the hunt, the satisfaction of a fine meal.Listeners will be grateful to have joined these hunts!

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  The Book of Grief and Hamburgers

  Stuart Ross

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  A poignant meditation on mortality from a beloved Canadian poet
  		 
  A writer friend once pointed out that whenever Stuart Ross got close to something heavy and “real” in a poem, a hamburger would inevitably appear for comic relief. In this hybrid essay/memoir/poetic meditation, Ross shoves aside the heaping plate of burgers to wrestle with what it means to grieve the people one loves and what it means to go on living in the face of an enormous accumulation of loss. Written during the second wave of the COVID-19 pandemic, shortly after the sudden death of his brother left him the last living member of his family and as a catastrophic diagnosis meant anticipating the death of his closest friend, this meditation on mortality — a kind of literary shiva — is Ross’s most personal book to date. More than a catalogue of losses, The Book of Grief and Hamburgers is a moving act of resistance against self-annihilation and a desperate attempt to embrace all that was good in his relationships with those most dear to him.

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