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  A Pair of Silk Stockings - From...

  Kate Chopin

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  Katherine O'Flaherty was born on the 8th February 1850 in St Louis, Missouri to parents of French and Irish descent. 
  At age 5, she was sent to the Sacred Heart Academy and, apart from a 2 year period at home when her father died, remained there until graduating in 1868.  Whilst there she began writing and became an avid reader of almost anything that crossed her path.   
  Kate married Oscar Chopin in 1870 and the couple moved to New Orleans, and later to the rural setting of Cloutierville, Louisiana to raise their 6 children.  
  In 1882 her husband died leaving her in a deep trench of debt.  Despite her best efforts to turn the businesses around they were sold, and she moved the family back to St Louis and the financial help of her mother.  Sadly, her mother died within the year.  Kate, now struggling with depression, pushed herself to write and gained a local reputation as a writer of short stories that captured the local color and vibrancy of her surroundings. 
  By the early 1890’s her short stories were published nationally.  With this widespread audience also came negative reviews, controversy, and cries of immorality as themes such as interracial relationships, the rights of women and other burning issues of the day were written about. 
  Despite the criticism, which unnerved her, she continued to write though in the main her works, around 100 short stories and two novels, were not attributed with any literary worth. 
  Kate Chopin died from a brain haemorrhage in St Louis Missouri on the 22nd of August 1904.  She was 54. 
  For much of the 20th Century her work was forgotten and out of print.  It was only in early 1970’s, with the rise of feminism and the call for a more just society that she was given the status her works had long described and shone a literary light at.  She is now safely revered as one of America’s great authors.

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  Young Man on a Bicycle and The...

  Victor Canning

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  Victor Canning’s light-hearted and cleverly plotted novella set on the beautiful French Riviera 
   
  Young Paul Ashcroft has travelled to the beautiful French Riviera. His goal: to make a lot of money. His methods: more than questionable. Following his motto ‘the world owes me a living’, he steals and swindles – using what he needs for himself and passing on the rest to those less fortunate. 
   
  After coming across the beautiful Villa Triton, he disguises himself as M. Durobat, a middle-aged Frenchman, to inspect the villa and to pawn the owner’s ornaments and paintings. At the local Casino, he becomes acquainted with the rich ladies of the resort. As he steals their jewellery, he blames the robberies on 'Gringo the Greek', a small crook he knew a long time ago.  
   
  But just as Paul's schemes and tricks start to be fruitful and he falls in love with the intriguing Elise Benoit, the real Gringo the Greek appears on the scene, ready to take on the cunning thief who has been blaming him all this time… 
  Praise for Victor Canning: 
   
  ‘Quite delightful … with an atmosphere of quiet contentment and humour that cannot fail to charm’ Daily Telegraph 
   
  ‘What counts for most in the story … is his mounting pleasure in vagabondage and the English scene’ The Times 
   
  ‘A paean to the beauties of the English countryside and the lovable oddities of the English character’ New York Times 
   
  ‘His delight at the beauties of the countryside and his mild astonishment at the strange ways of men are infectious’ Daily Telegraph 
   
  ‘A swift-moving novel, joyous, happy and incurably optimistic’ Evening Standard

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  Horror

  Alexander Kuprin

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  A reminder from the master storyteller Alexander Kuprin - sometimes, there are but a few steps between your own front door and unimaginable horror.

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  The Adventures of Dr Thorndyke

  R. Austin Freeman

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  Written by R.Austin Freeman, The Adventures of Dr Thorndyke (also sometimes known as The Singing Bone) present five tales of crime and forensic detection from the inventor of the inverted detective story:The Case of Oscar BrodskiA lost diamond merchant chances upon the house of a fence and burglar, with fatal consequences...A Case of PremeditationWhere a former prison guard tries his hand at blackmail, to his cost...The Echo of a MutinyOn a lonely lighthouse, a man, hiding from the world, has a chance encounter with the one person he least expected to ever see, and vice-versa...A Wastrel's RomanceDown on his luck, and living by his wits, a disgraced former officer attends a Spinsters ball under false pretences and looking for an easy score to put food on the table, but a chance encounter leaves him running for his life...The Old LagA reformed criminal comes to Dr Thorndyke, claiming he's been framed for murder. The fingerprint evidence seems conclusive... but is all as it appears?Narrated by Michael Ward.

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  The Imp of the Perverse

  Edgar Allan Poe

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  Title: The Imp of the Perverse 
  Author: Edgar Allan Poe 
  Narrator: Jonathan Dunne 
  Original Publication: 1845 
  Public Domain: Yes 
  Series Placement: Number 44 in the Timeless Terrors series 
  Description: 
  The Imp of the Perverse by Edgar Allan Poe is a chilling exploration of the human compulsion toward self-destruction — that sinister whisper urging us to do precisely what we know we must not. Told in Poe’s hypnotic, confessional style, the story begins as a philosophical essay on impulse and perversity, then descends into the fevered confession of a murderer undone by his own mind. 
  This tale reveals Poe at his most psychologically incisive, dissecting guilt, pride, and the dark delight of defiance. Beneath its gothic calm lies a truth as disturbing now as in 1845 — that the greatest horror may be found not in the supernatural, but in the secret architecture of the human soul. 
  Narrated by Amazon bestselling horror author Jonathan Dunne, this performance evokes Poe’s morbid eloquence and the relentless pull of conscience that drives his doomed narrator to madness. While the text is in the public domain, this narration is an original performance and copyright © 2025 Jonathan Dunne. 
  Part of Timeless Terrors, a series devoted to resurrecting the masters of the macabre and uncanny, The Imp of the Perversestands as one of Poe’s most haunting studies of inner torment — a reminder that sometimes, the truest demon wears our own face.

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  Don't Be Discouraged (Unabridged)

  Booker T. Washington

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  Booker Taliaferro Washington (April 5, 1856 - November 14, 1915) was an American educator, author, orator, and adviser to several presidents of the United States. Between 1890 and 1915, Washington was the dominant leader in the African American community and of the contemporary black elite. Washington was from the last generation of black American leaders born into slavery and became the leading voice of the former slaves and their descendants. They were newly oppressed in the South by disenfranchisement and the Jim Crow discriminatory laws enacted in the post-Reconstruction Southern states in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.
  DON'T BE DISCOURAGED: Last Sunday evening I spoke to you for a few minutes regarding the importance of determining to do the right thing in every phase of your school life. There are a few things that enter into student life which, in a very large degree, cause the untrue to fall by the wayside, and which prevent students from doing their very best. Among these things is the disposition to grow discouraged. Very many people, very many students, who otherwise would succeed, who would go through school creditably, graduating with honours, have failed to succeed because they became discouraged.

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