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  The Story of B24 - From their...

  Arthur Conan Doyle

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  Arthur Conan Doyle was born in Edinburgh, Scotland on 22nd May 1859.  His childhood was blighted by his father’s heavy drinking which for some years broke up the family. Fortunately, wealthy uncles were willing to support them by paying for education and clothing.  
  He was accepted at the University of Edinburgh to study medicine and also began to write short stories the first, ‘The Haunted Grange of Goresthorpe’, was published in Blackwood’s Magazine.  Despite several other stories and some articles in the British Medical Journal his medical studies took priority. 
  When these finished he was appointed as Doctor on the Greenland whaler ‘Hope of Peterhead’ in 1880 and then, after graduation, as ship’s surgeon on the SS Mayumba on its voyage to West Africa. 
  1882 saw a move to Plymouth and his own independent practice. With few patients he resumed writing and completed his first novel, ‘The Mystery of Cloomber’, although most of his output was short stories based on his experiences at sea.  
  He married Louisa Hawkins in 1885. However, two years later he met and fell in love with Jean Elizabeth Leckie, though they remained platonic out of respect for, and loyalty to, his wife. 
  His literary career suddenly burst into life in November 1886 with ‘A Study In Scarlet’, the first of the fabulously successful Sherlock Holmes stories.  
  With two children to support he now revisited his haphazard commercial arrangements and curtailed everything save for commissions from the Strand Magazine.  
  As a sportsman he was remarkably proficient. He was goalkeeper for Portsmouth Association Football Club and played ten first-class cricket matches for the Marylebone Cricket Club as well as captain of the Crowborough Beacon Golf Club in East Sussex.  
  In 1891 tired of writing Holmes stories, he began a series of historical novels and even went so far as to apparently kill off Holmes in a lethal brawl with his arch-nemesis Moriarty. 
  Despite heavy and sustained criticism he continued to write in support of the Boer War, a fact he thought contributed to his knighthood in 1902.  The following year to great relief and acclaim he brought Sherlock Holmes back from the dead in his first outing for a decade. 
  Sadly, his wife Louisa died from TB in 1906 and, a year later, he at last married Jean.  
  During the War and for several years after family deaths had left him depressed. In a search for solace and answers he alighted upon spiritualism and, such was his interest, that he wrote several books on the subject. 
  On 7th July 1930 Conan Doyle was discovered in the hall of Windlesham Manor, his house in East Sussex, clutching his chest dying of a heart attack.  He was 71.

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  Bel Ami or the History of a...

  Guy de Maupassant

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  "Bel-Ami ([bɛlami], "Dear Friend") is the second novel by French author Guy de Maupassant, published in 1885. An English translation titled Bel Ami, or, The History of a Scoundrel: A Novel first appeared in 1903.    The story chronicles journalist Georges Duroy's corrupt rise to power from a poor former cavalry NCO in France's African colonies to one of the most successful men in Paris. Duroy achieves this by manipulating a series of powerful, intelligent, and wealthy women. The novel is set in Paris among the upper-middle class environment of leading journalists and their friends."

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  The Requiem

  Anton Chekhov

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  "The Requiem"  is an 1886 short story by Anton Chekhov.
  Andrey Andreyitch, a shopkeeper, comes to the local village church to ask for prayers for his recently deceased daughter Maria, and is chided by the priest for the wrong kind of language that he'd used in his written request. The shopkeeper's daughter was an actress, and quite a well known one, and he simply fails to understand why the clergymen are so offended by the word 'harlot' with which he described her occupation. The rendition of the prayers awaken in Andrey Andreyitch some tender memories of his beautiful, sensitive and intelligent girl, yet even mentally he keeps referring to her as 'harlot' for he can't see how an actress could be described otherwise.

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  The Odyssey

  Homer Homer

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  The Odyssey is one of two major ancient Greek epic poems attributed to Homer. It is one of the oldest extant works of literature still widely read by modern audiences. As with the Iliad, the poem is divided into 24 books. It follows the Greek hero Odysseus, king of Ithaca, and his journey home after the Trojan War. After the war itself, which lasted ten years, his journey lasted for ten additional years, during which time he encountered many perils and all his crewmates were killed. In his absence, Odysseus was assumed dead, and his wife Penelope and son Telemachus had to contend with a group of unruly suitors who were competing for Penelope's hand in marriage.The Odyssey was originally composed in Homeric Greek in around the 8th or 7th century BCE and, by the mid-6th century BCE, had become part of the Greek literary canon. In antiquity, Homer's authorship of the poem was not questioned, but contemporary scholarship predominantly assumes that the Iliad and the Odyssey were composed independently, and the stories themselves formed as part of a long oral tradition.  Scholars still reflect on the narrative significance of certain groups in the poem, such as women and slaves, who have a more prominent role in the epic than in many other works of ancient literature. This focus is especially remarkable when considered beside the Iliad, which centers on the exploits of soldiers and kings during the Trojan War.The Odyssey is regarded as one of the most significant works in the Western canon. The first English translation of the Odyssey was in the 16th century. Adaptations and re-imaginings continue to be produced across a wide variety of mediums. In 2018, when BBC Culture polled experts around the world to find literature's most enduring narrative, the Odyssey topped the list. Here is the great tale as an exciting extended Icon Audiobook!

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  Hand and Heart - From their pens...

  Elizabeth Gaskell

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  Elizabeth Stevenson was born in Chelsea in London on 29th September 1810.  
  Both parents embedded their strong Unitarian beliefs into Elizabeth who rebelliously was often reluctant to display these religious convictions.  
  The early death of Elizabeth’s mother saw her sent away to be brought up by her maternal aunt in Knutsford, Cheshire.  
  Her father now remarried but Elizabeth spent most of her childhood in Cheshire away from her father and his new family but was supportive towards her half-siblings.  
  Elizabeth’s aunt encouraged her education and particularly to read and express herself through writing.   
  In 1828, her brother John, who worked in the merchant navy, disappeared on a journey to India. This disastrous loss depressed her father, and she went to his household to nurse him for the next year before he died.  
  In 1832, she fell in love with William Gaskell, a Unitarian minister like her father, and married him.  They settled in Manchester. This booming industrial city had a great impact on Elizabeth who felt the need to speak up for poor workers and their exploitation by large industrial companies. A collection of poems and short stories, ‘Sketches among the Poor’ appeared in 1837, co-authored by her husband.  Her first major work, under a pseudonym, was ‘Mary Barton: A Tale of Manchester Life’ published in 1848. 
  During her career she worked continually with Charles Dickens and published much in his various magazines. With him she published ‘Lizzie Leigh’ in 1850 which dealt with the taboo subject of prostitution.  She was an excellent writer and impressed her many Victorian literary peers. Much of her writing reflects her work as a social critic highlighting the exploitation of the working class and the situation of women in society.  
  On 12th November 1865, Elizabeth Gaskell died in Holybourne, Hampshire, after suffering from a heart attack a month earlier.

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  The Oblong Box

  Sampi Books, Edgar Allan Poe

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  "The Oblong Box" is a short story by Edgar Allan Poe that explores human mysteries and obsessions. The narrative follows a man who, during a sea voyage, becomes intrigued by a strange oblong box brought on board by a friend, triggering a series of enigmatic events and surprising revelations.

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