Publisher: Charles River Editors
Edgar Allan Poe (19 January 1809 7 October 1849) was an American writer best known for stories of mystery and horror. Poe also wrote poetry, including the well known poem The Raven. Not much is known about Poes untimely death, but it cannot be debated that he has had a great influence on American literature.
A hypnotic collection of speculative fiction about compassion, love, and human resilience in the technological hyper-age, from Alexander Weinstein, author of Children of the New World. Universal Love welcomes listeners to a near-future world where our everyday technologies have fundamentally altered the possibilities and limits of how we love one another. In these gripping stories, a young boy tries to understand what keeps his father tethered to the drowned city they call home. A daughter gets to know her dead mother's hologram better than she ever knew her living mother. And, at a time when unpleasant memories can be erased, a man undergoes electronic surgery to have his depression, and his past, forever removed. In an age when technology offers the easiest cures for loneliness, the characters within these stories must wrestle with what it means to stay human in an increasingly cybernetic future, and how love can endure even the most alluring upgrades. In the vein of Weinstein’s critically-acclaimed first collection, Universal Love is a visionary audiobook, written with one foot in the real world and one stepping bravely into the future.Show book
The truth is, as a character in this provocative new collection puts it, 'passionate, beautiful, and hideous, it can make you happy and it can torture you, and it's always liberating.' In 'After the Season,' a man of humble means falls quickly in love with a woman belonging to a much elevated financial status and wrestles with his feelings and his beliefs about the rich. A son takes his distant father to a Bach festival in 'Johann Sebastian Bach on Ruegen' only to learn that perhaps he was the one who was never really present in their relationship. And in 'The Night in Baden-Baden' a man who's caught in a lie changes his ways - by sleeping with another woman only after being accused.Show book
From one of our most important contemporary writers, The Doll-Master and Other Tales of Terror is a bold, haunting collection of six stories. In the title story, a young boy becomes obsessed with his cousin's doll after she tragically passes away from leukemia. As he grows older, he begins to collect "found dolls" from the surrounding neighborhoods and stores his treasures in the abandoned carriage house on his family's estate. But just what kind of dolls are they? In Gun Accident, a teenage girl is thrilled when her favorite teacher asks her to house-sit, even on short notice. But when an intruder forces his way into the house while the girl is there, the fate of more than one life is changed forever. In Equatorial, set in the exotic Galápagos, an affluent American wife experiences disorienting assaults on her sense of who her charismatic husband really is, and what his plans may be for her. In The Doll-Master and Other Tales of Terror, Joyce Carol Oates evokes the "fascination of the abomination" that is at the core of the most profound, the most unsettling, and the most memorable of dark mystery fiction.Show book
Christian Johann Heinrich Heine was born in Düsseldorf, Germany on 13th December 1797 to assimilated Jewish parents. Heine studied law at the universities of Bonn, Göttingen, and Berlin but his greater commitment was to studying poetry and literature. He converted to Protestantism in order to obtain work as there were draconian anti-Jewish laws in force at the time. He was part of the German Romantic movement but also responsible in part for ushering in the post-Romantic crisis and the presumed failure of art as unable to overcome or explain the growing traumas of modernity. However, his literary reputation was cemented in the second half of the 1820’s with his poetry collection ‘The Book of Songs’ together with his collection of ‘Pictures of Travel’ stories that blended fact and fiction together into commercial and critical successes. After the July 1830 Revolution in France, he went to live in Paris, where he remained until his death. Here he wrote much in the way of essays discussing the political and cultural scene in France together with volumes of social criticism on Germany. By 1835, his works had been banned by the German government. His lifelong subsidised lifestyle ended in 1844 when his uncle died leaving him nothing. He turned once more to lyric poetry and created perhaps his finest poetical works. A trip to Germany resulted in the long satirical poem ‘Germany. A Winter's Tale’. His second volume of poetry, ‘New Poems’ in 1844, included poems that had originally appeared in Karl Marx’s newspaper ‘Forward’ and continued the satirical style he now preferred. In May 1848, Heine, in poor health, fell and was paralyzed and confined to his bed. He called it his ‘mattress-grave’ and only death would remove him from it. He was also experiencing eye problems and suffering from chronic lead poisoning. Heinrich Heine died on 17th February 1856. He was 58. ‘Gods in Exile’ is perhaps a prophetic piece on his own life. The old gods are overthrown by the new novelty of Christianity. What will be their role now? Is there life after for them?Show book
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749-1832) is widely recognized as Germany's greatest poet and writer. His early works are rooted in the German Sturm und Drang movement, which was also the early phase of German Romanticism.'The Bride of Corinth' was written as part of a ballad-writing competition which Goethe was engaged in with Friedrich von Schiller. It tells the grisly tale of star-crossed lovers who were betrothed as children. The bride's family has converted from the old magical gods to the newfangled Christianity and no longer wish their daughter to marry a pagan.When the bridegroom, having grown to manhood, arrives to claim his bride, he is welcomed by the mother, who shows him a room where he can sleep and recover from his journey. While he sleeps, his betrothed slips into his room and wakes him. While they consummate their marriage, the bridegroom makes a horrifying and macabre discovery....Show book
A colourful palette of short stories featuring artists and their love of paintings. "Rose Rose" by Barry Pain "The Cat" by E. F. Benson "The Model Millionaire" by Oscar Wilde "A Queer Night in Paris" by Guy de Maupassant "Portrait of a Lady" by Jerome K. Jerome "Miss Harriet" by Guy de Maupassant "The Oval Portrait" by Edgar Allan Poe "My Adventure at Chislehurst" by A. J. Alan "The Stalled Ox" by Saki "The Room in the Tower'" by E. F. BensonShow book
