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  Sis' Becky's Pickaninny

  Charles W. Chesnutt

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  The short story "Sis' Becky's Pickaninny" of "The Conjure Woman" now follows John as he reproaches McAdoo for all of his superstitious beliefs and how they lack foundation, commenting that these traditions are the reason why Southern Black people are destined for a life of continued acquiescence and little prosperity. This opinion stemmed from McAdoo's assertion that carrying a rabbit foot leads to good luck. John is concerned for Annie's health, since the main reason they moved to the countryside was to improve her health due to her current bouts of depression and anxiety. With this knowledge, McAdoo then relates the story of a young boy who was separated from his mother and orphaned due to a series of events, which could have all been avoided if the mother had simply carried a rabbit's foot. As the story goes, according to McAdoo, Sis' Becky's husband dies, upon which her master trades her in for a horse. Thus leaving her child, named Mose, orphaned and who grows sick, Aunt Peggy goes on to turn him into a mockingbird from time to time so that he can visit his mother. As part of her plan, Aunt Peggy lames the horse for which Sis Becky was traded, ultimately influencing Becky's master to trade her back, and reuniting her with her son once more. McAdoo claims that none of these events would have happened if Sis Becky would have had a rabbit foot with her, a moral that Annie once again understands. Over time, John notices that Annie grows to feel better, which he attributes to her simply surpassing her melancholy. One day, Annie asks John to grab her handkerchief from her blue dress, and as he goes to grab the handkerchief, John discovers a rabbit foot that McAdoo had placed in her room, which can be related to Annie's quick recovery from her ails.

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  After Twenty years - From their...

  O Henry

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  William Sydney Porter was born on 11th September 1862 in Greensboro, North Carolina. At age 3 his mother died from tuberculosis. From an early age it was clear Porter had a large appetite for reading as he absorbed the world around him. 
  He first attended at a school run by his aunt before enrolling at the Lindsey Street High School and then worked at his uncle’s drugstore and gained a pharmacists’ license in 1881.  
  A persistent cough took him to Texas in the hope that a change of climate would help his symptoms. He took on various types of work, initially from ranch hand and cook and then as varied as pharmacist, draftsman, bank teller and journalist. He also began to write, though for now, purely as a hobby. 
  He was a member of several singing and dramatic groups when he met 17 year old Athol Estes, daughter of a wealthy Austin family. Despite her mother’s objection owing to Athol’s tuberculosis, they began courting and in July 1887, they eloped and soon married. 
  Athol, impressed by his writing, encouraged him to get them published. A job as a draftsman at the Texas General Land Office paid a healthy $100 dollars per month and life was good. 
  But then life turned cruel. His son died a few hours after birth although a daughter, Margaret, came the following year.  His job had to be vacated but another was found at the First National Bank of Austin. The bank operated informally and Porter was careless in keeping the books. He lost that job but began writing for the humourous weekly The Rolling Stone and the Houston Post. Some time later the federal Bank auditors went through his former accounts and he was arrested on charges of embezzlement. 
  Porter fled the day before his trial to Honduras. Holed up for several months he began to write.  Athol had become too ill to travel to meet him and learning that her health was deteriorating he surrendered to the court in February 1897.  Bail was obtained so that he could stay with Athol during her final days.  
  Porter was sentenced to five years at the Ohio Penitentiary in Columbus. His pharmacy qualifications got him the job of night druggist.  His sentence also gave him time to write and publish fourteen short stories. In December 1899 in McClure’s Magazine he published a short story as O Henry.  
  He was released two years early in July 1901, and reunited with Margaret, now 11, in Pittsburgh.  He now began his most prolific period of writing; a short story per week for the New York World, while also publishing works in other magazines.  Eventually over 600 of his short stories were published. 
  Porter was a heavy drinker and in 1908 his health, which had deteriorated for several years, took a dramatic turn for the worse, as did his writing. 
  O Henry died of cirrhosis of the liver complicated by diabetes and an enlarged heart on 5th June 1910.<

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  Pre-Approved for Haunting - And...

  Patrick Barb

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  In this new collection, Patrick Barb explores themes of family found and lost, media consumption and the dangers of runaway nostalgia, the supernatural in our lives, and the impact of violence in both the long- and short-term. -A young couple is reunited with their lost son whose favorite fuzzy bear suit connects him to the ghost of a vengeful mama bear while he's alone in the forest. -A jaded screenwriter can’t escape the haunted screenplay that’s ruined his career. -A man returns to his small hometown, where the people are gone and the trees have taken over. -A Slasher and Final Girl brother-sister duo match wits and blades against a sentient, dimension-hopping apocalypse at a never-ending summer camp. From rural backwoods to Park Slope brownstones, Barb's characters face impossible, awful situations, testing their inner strength and understanding of reality. Covering quiet horror, weird fiction, supernatural horror, slasher horror, topical dark fiction, and more, these stories spotlight supposedly familiar terrors and fears in new and unexpected ways..

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  Twilight of the Superheroes -...

  Deborah Eisenberg

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  Deborah Eisenberg is nearly unmatched in her mastery of the short-story form. Now, in her newest collection, she demonstrates once again her virtuosic abilities in precisely distilled, perfectly shaped studies of human connection and disconnection. From a group of friends whose luck in acquiring a luxurious Manhattan sublet turns to disaster as their balcony becomes a front-row seat to the catastrophe of 9/11; to the Roman holiday of a schoolteacher running away from the news of her ex-husband's life-threatening illness, and her unlikely guide, a titled art scout in desperate revolt against his circumstances and aging; to the too painful love of a brother for his schizophrenic sister, whose tragic life embitters him to the very idea of family, Eisenberg evokes "intense, abundant human lives" in which "everything that happens is out there waiting for you to come to it."

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  The Top 10 Short Stories – The...

  Robert Louis Stevenson, Charles...

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  Short stories have always been a sort of instant access into an author’s brain, their soul and heart.  A few pages can lift our lives into locations, people and experiences with a sweep of landscape, narration, feelings and emotions that is difficult to achieve elsewhere. 
   
  In this series we try to offer up tried and trusted ‘Top Tens’ across many different themes and authors. But any anthology will immediately throw up the questions – Why that story? Why that author?  
   
  The theme itself will form the boundaries for our stories which range from well-known classics, newly told, to stories that modern times have overlooked but perfectly exemplify the theme.  Throughout the volume our authors whether of instant recognition or new to you are all leviathans of literature. 
   
  Some you may disagree with but they will get you thinking; about our choices and about those you would have made.  If this volume takes you on a path to discover more of these miniature masterpieces then we have all gained something. 
   
  In these Isles of Imperial Empire the English language is now the lingua franca of the globe.  But between the Home nations tensions remain, they rise and fall, all is not well.  Authors born abroad and returning have new views, unique, a little off-kilter and literature feeds well on this fuel.  Together the men of these islands produce literature of quite sumptuous quality. 
   
  1 - The Top 10 - The British & Irish Men - The 19th Century - An Introduction 
  2 - The Body Snatcher by Robert Louis Stevenson 
  3 - The Signalman by Charles Dickens 
  4 - The Withered Arm by Thomas Hardy 
  5 - The Canterville Ghost - Part 1 by Oscar Wilde 
  6 - The Canterville Ghost - Part 2 by Oscar Wilde 
  7 - The Phantom Rickshaw by Rudyard Kipling 
  8 - The Dream Woman by Wilkie Collins 
  9 - The Story of B24 by Arthur Conan Doyle 
  10 - The Inconsiderate Waiter by J M Barrie 
  11 - Lost Hearts by M R James 
  12 - Youth - Part 1 by Joseph Conrad 
  13 - Youth - Part 2 by Joseph Conrad

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  The Paragon - A Powers Masks and...

  Tao Wong

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  Shocking Revelations by the Paragon! Centuries old secrets revealed! Hidden identities!  
  Learn why the Paragon was missing during the Bareyes-Masgani War. Listen to the Paragon as he relates his full thoughts on the Powers Defense Act. Get his full thoughts of the penultimate superhero on anti-Capes like the Enforcer.  
  You won't want to miss the first ever recorded interview by the Cape of capes!

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