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  O Henry - Six of the Best -...

  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 humorous 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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  The Beast in the Cave

  H. P. Lovecraft

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  This audiobook is narrated by an AI Voice. Between 1903 and 1908, Lovecraft created many stories and sketches, about which we know nothing today beyond the fact that they existed. Almost all met the same fate: death in the flames at the hands of their creator. Lovecraft saved only two texts – "The Alchemist" (1908) and "The Beast in the Cave." 
   
  The sketch of the story was created as early as the spring of 1904, but Lovecraft needed some time in the Providence Public Library to get to know the location where he set the story, i.e., Mammoth Cave in Kentucky (now a national park). The plot can be summarized in one sentence: a tourist gets lost in a vast cave, where he encounters the titular beast. 
   
  It is immediately apparent how much Lovecraft had progressed in prose writing since he penned the weak "The Mysterious Ship" three years earlier. The story is mature, with a well-developed psychology of the main character. In the 1930s, the author considered "The Beast in the Cave" to be the first of his works, chronologically, that held any value for him. It is the first story that bears such a clear resemblance to the writer's later works. I particularly note the fact that Lovecraft uses for the first time the phenomenon of the so-called "terminal climax," where the climax coincides with the last sentence of the story. Another striking example of this technique can be found in "Pickman's Model." 
   
  The story was not published until 1918, just after Lovecraft returned to writing prose (from 1908 to 1917 he was exclusively engaged in studies and poetry). Lovecraft was convinced to publish it by his friend from the amateur writers' society, W. Paul Cook.

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  Beryl the Croucher and the Rest...

  Thomas Burke

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  Thomas Burke was born Sydney Thomas Burke on November 29th, 1886 in Eltham, London (at the time it was part of Kent). 
  An author in the early years of the 20th Century Burke brought his skills of pen and eye to parts of London, specifically the Limehouse district of the East End, to write with drive and vigour about the characters he met and the places that he knew.  Whether he turned that material into fiction or non-fiction the words seep quality.  His publications ranged from these wonderful vignettes of down-at-heel London to writings on homosexuality and the English Countryside. 
  Thomas Burke died in the Homeopathic Hospital in Queens Square, Bloomsbury on 22 September 1945.

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  The Darling and Other Stories -...

  Anton Chekhov

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  The woman who has no opinions except her husband's, and takes a new one with each husband - together with stories from across his career. Tolstoy read The Darling aloud to visitors and wept, and insisted Chekhov had meant to mock her and had accidentally written something holy. This edition pairs the ten stories with 58 plates of painting bound alongside the text, among them works by Vladimir Makovsky, Maksymilian Gierymski and Karl Friedrich Lessing, in Constance Garnett's translation.

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  Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge An

  Ambrose Bierce

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  An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge by Ambrose Bierce is a gripping short story that masterfully blends psychological suspense with the brutal realities of war. Set during the American Civil War, the narrative follows Peyton Farquhar, a Southern planter condemned to hang from a railroad bridge for attempting to sabotage Union forces. As the noose tightens, Farquhar experiences a vivid and surreal escape that blurs the line between illusion and reality. Bierce’s haunting prose and twist ending make this tale a classic of American literature, renowned for its exploration of time, perception, and the cruel ironies of fate.

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  Confessions of a City Girl: San...

  Juliette Sobanet

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  From the Amazon bestselling author of Sleeping with Paris comes a sexy and hilarious novella that will have you laughing, swooning, and reaching for your yoga mat… 
  When overworked CIA agent Liz Valentine sets off for a yoga retreat on the gorgeous beaches of San Diego, the last thing she expects to find is love. But when one oh-so-enlightened yoga instructor catches her eye—and her heart—Liz must decide if the loveless life of a secret agent is truly what she wants after all.

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