Other books that might interest you

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  The Tale of the Flopsy Bunnies

  Beatrix Potter

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  The Tale of the Flopsy Bunnies is written by the popular children's author Beatrix Potter This is a wonderful bedtime story. The flopsy bunnies fall asleep in Mr. McGregors garden. He puts them in a sack and wants to take them home. But their father and Thomasina Tittlemouse rescue them. The moral of the story is: listen to your parents. Recommended for age 3+.

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  The Moonstone

  Wilkie Collins

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  Hailed as a masterpiece on publication, The Moonstone still thrills as a supreme detective story. But it is also a novel of mounting suspense, as the action follows the Moonstone’s trail.  The gem is tracked from the bloody looting of Seringapatam to the peaceful heart of England and on to the grim slums of London’s East End.  By skilfully using separate narrators with their differing viewpoints, Wilkie Collins deepens the mystery.  Even the great Sergeant Cuff makes a false deduction. The fate of the Moonstone remains uncertain until the final revelation.

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  The Kiss

  Anton Chekhov

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  Anton Pavlovich Chekhov was born on 29th January 1860 in Taganrog, on the south coast of Russia.  
   
  His family life was difficult; his father was strict and over-bearing but his mother was a passionate story-teller, a subject Chekhov warmed to. As he later said; ‘our talents we got from our father, but our soul from our mother’.  
   
  At school Chekhov was distinctly average. At 16 his father mis-managed his finances and was declared bankrupt. His family fled to Moscow. Chekhov remained and eked out a living by various means, including writing and selling short sketches to newspapers, to finish his schooling. That completed and with a scholarship to Moscow University obtained he rejoined his family. 
   
  He was able to help support them by selling satirical sketches and vignettes of Russian lifestyles and gradually obtained further commissions. In 1884, he qualified as a physician and, although it earned him little, he often treated the poor for free, he was fond of saying ‘Medicine is my lawful wife, and literature is my mistress.’ 
   
  His own health was now an issue as he began to cough up blood, a symptom of tuberculosis.  Despite this his writing success enabled him to move the family into more comfortable accommodation.  
   
  Chekhov wrote over 500 short stories which included many, many classics including ‘The Kiss’ and ‘The Lady with a Dog’.  His collection ‘At Dusk’ won him the coveted Pushkin Prize when was only 26.  
   
  He was also a major playwright beginning with the huge success of ‘Ivanov’ in 1887.   
   
  In 1892 Chekhov bought a country estate north of Moscow. Here his medical skills and money helped the peasants tackle outbreaks of cholera and bouts of famine. He also built three schools, a fire station and a clinic.  It left him with less time for writing but the interactions with real people gained him detailed knowledge about the peasantry and their living conditions for his stories.  
   
  His most famous work, ‘The Seagull’ was received disastrously at its premiere in St Petersburg. It was later restaged in Moscow to highlight its psychological aspects and was a huge success. It led to ‘Uncle Vanya’, ‘The Three Sisters’ and ‘The Cherry Orchard’.  
   
  Chekhov suffered a major lung hemorrhage in 1897 while visiting Moscow. A formal diagnosis confirmed tuberculosis and the doctors ordered changes to his lifestyle.  
   
  Despite a dread of weddings the elusive literary bachelor quietly married the actress Olga Knipper, whom he had met at rehearsals for ‘The Seagull’, on 25th May 1901. 
   
  By May 1904 with his tuberculosis worsening and death imminent he set off for the German town of Badenweiler writing cheerful, witty letters to his family and assuring them his health was improving.  
   
  On 15th July 1904 Anton Chekhov died at Badenweiler.  He was 44.

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  Lucy Maud Montgomery: Short...

  Lucy Maud Montgomery

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  This Audiobook contains : - A Golden Wedding - A Redeeming Sacrifice - A Soul That Was Not At Home - Abel And His Great Adventure - Akin To Love - Aunt Philippa And The Men - Bessie's Doll - Charlotte's Ladies - Christmas At Red Butte - How We Went To The Wedding - Jessamine - Miss Sally's Letter - My Lady Jane - Robert Turner's Revenge - The Fillmore Elderberries - The Finished Story - The Garden Spices - The Girl And The Photograph - The Gossip Of Valley View - The Letters - The Life-Book of Uncle Jesse - The Little Black Doll - The Man On The Train - The Romance Of Jedediah - The Tryst Of The White Lady - Uncle Richard's New Year Dinner - White Magic

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  M R James - A Short Story...

  M R James

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  Montague Rhodes James is cited as perhaps the greatest English writer of ghost stories, an opinion few would disagree with. 
   
  James was born on 1st August 1862 at Goodnestone Parsonage in Kent, where his father was Curate but at age 3 the family went to live at Livermere, near Bury St Edmunds in East Anglia.  
   
  From early childhood he had a passion for mediaeval books and antiques. He was educated initially as a boarder at Temple Grove School in East Sheen, west London, before gaining a scholarship to Eton and thence Cambridge where he gained a double first, becoming a distinguished linguist and mediaevalist.  
   
  Before the Great War vacations were usually spent touring Europe absorbing cultures and references for his later writing. 
   
  A man of enormous knowledge it was said he timed his breakfast egg whilst he completed the Times crossword.  
   
  Many of his elegant yet terrifying tales were created by discarding the prevailing gothic cliches and placing his characters and narrative in a realistic setting.  Thereby the stories gained atmosphere and menace on a grand scale and he was famed as the originator of the antiquarian ghost story. 
   
  Although story-telling and writing these 30 or so tales was a hobby, when published their effect transformed the genre and still chill the bones in our more modern times. 
   
  James was also a medievalist scholar and translator whose work remains highly respected. He was also Provost of Eton College between 1918 and 1936. 
   
  M R James died on 12th June 1936 at Eton in Buckinghamshire.  He was 73.   
   
  His classic story ‘Whistle and I’ll Come to You My Lad’ exquisitely reveals how a young professor on holiday chances on a buried whistle and folklore becomes terrifying fact. 
  1 - M R James - An Introduction 
  2 - Oh Whistle and I'll Come to You My Lad by M R James 
  3 - Canon Alberic's Scrap-Book by M R James 
  4 - Count Magnus by M R James 
  5 - The Ash Tree by M R James 
  6 - Lost Hearts by M R James

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  Further Adventures of Robinson...

  Daniel Defoe

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  "The Further Adventures of Robinson Crusoe" is a novel by Daniel Defoe, first published in 1719. Just as in its significantly more popular predecessor, Robinson Crusoe (1719), the first edition credits the work's fictional protagonist Robinson Crusoe as its author. It was published under the considerably longer original title: The Farther Adventures of Robinson Crusoe; Being the Second and Last Part of His Life, And of the Strange Surprising Accounts of his Travels Round three Parts of the Globe. Although intended to be the last Crusoe tale, the novel is followed by a non-fiction book involving Crusoe by Defoe entitled Serious Reflections During the Life and Surprising Adventures of Robinson Crusoe: With his Vision of the Angelick World (1720). The story is speculated to be partially based on Moscow embassy secretary Adam Brand's journal detailing the embassy's journey from Moscow to Peking from 1693 to 1695.The book starts with the statement about Crusoe's marriage in England. He bought a little farm in Bedford and had three children: two sons and one daughter. Our hero suffered a distemper and a desire to see "his island." He could talk of nothing else, and one can imagine that no one took his stories seriously, except his wife. She told him, in tears, "I will go with you, but I won't leave you." But in the middle of this felicity, Providence unhinged him at once, with the loss of his wife.

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