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  The Great Gatsby - The Deluxe...

  Francis Scott Fitzgerald

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  “Gatsby believed in the green light, the orgastic future that year by year recedes before us.” 
  Step into the glittering yet hollow world of the 1920s—a realm of champagne, jazz, and restless ambition. In The Great Gatsby, F. Scott Fitzgerald peers beyond the shimmer of the American Dream, revealing the illusions and disillusionment at its core. 
  The novel unfolds in the summer of 1922 through the eyes of Nick Carraway, a Yale graduate and World War I veteran who rents a modest home in West Egg, Long Island. His enigmatic neighbor, Jay Gatsby, is a self-made millionaire famed for extravagant parties but haunted by a singular obsession: to reclaim Daisy Buchanan, the woman he once loved. Daisy, trapped in wealth and a loveless marriage, becomes both the object of Gatsby’s dream and a symbol of its emptiness. 
  At its heart, The Great Gatsby is a meditation on illusion, identity, and the cost of desire. It is both a tragic love story and a sharp critique of the American Dream—its promises, its failures, and its corruption. 
  Written in the Jazz Age, Fitzgerald’s lyrical prose captures a generation intoxicated by success yet shadowed by disillusionment. A century later, the novel endures because it speaks to the dreamer in us all, chasing a light always just out of reach.

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  Three Ghost Stories

  Charles Dickens

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  A small collection of short ghost stories, penned by Charles Dickens, narrated here by Michael Ward. "The Haunted House" When the narrator witnesses a dreary house in rural England, he is soon told the place is deeply haunted. But is it really? "The Trial for Murder" Haunted by visions of a murdered man, the narrator is called to Jury duty, and see's in the dock, the man accused of his murder... "The Signalman" The narrator strikes up a friendship with a local railway signalman, who confides in him that he is haunted by a mysterious spectre, what can it all mean? 
  Narrated by Michael Ward.

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  Christmas Formula - From their...

  Stella Benson

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  Stella Benson was born on the 6th January 1892 in Easthope, Shropshire to parents who were landed gentry. 
  Her early years involved frequent household moves which was difficult for the child as she suffered from ill-health.  Some of her early education was spent at schools in Germany and Switzerland and by 10 she had developed a lifelong habit of keeping a diary. 
  In the following years her parents separated, and she rarely saw her father. When she did, he encouraged to pause her writing until she had further experience and could better make sense of the world.  When he died, she learned he had been an alcoholic. 
  A winter spent in the West Indies provided material for her first novel ‘I Pose’ published the following year in 1915. 
  During the War years she became involved in the women's suffrage movement and dedicated time outside of writing to support the troops and help the poor. 
  In 1918 she decided to travel spending much time in California, where she also tutored at the University of California, and continued to write.  In China she met her future husband and after marrying in London, journeyed with him to his various Custom postings through Nanning, Beihai, and Hong Kong and the Far East. 
  The works continued to flow novels, short stories, travel essays all helped to build a deserved and burgeoning reputation. 
  Although her works are now in the forgotten and neglected department her writing style, characters, and narratives more than capably demonstrate her obvious talents.   
  Stella Benson died of pneumonia on the 7th December 1933, at Hạ Long in the Vietnamese province of Tonkin.  She was 40.

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  On a Tricycle (Unabridged)

  H. G. Wells

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  Herbert George "H. G." Wells (1866 - 1946) was an English writer.
  He was prolific in many genres, including the novel, history, politics, social commentary, and textbooks and rules for war games. Wells is now best remembered for his science fiction novels and is called a "father of science fiction"
  ON A TRICYCLE: I sat on the parapet of the bridge, and swung my feet over the water that frothed and fretted at the central pier below. Above the bridge the stream broadened into a cress-bespangled pool, over which the sapphire dragon-flies hovered, and its earlier course was hidden by the big oak trees that bent towards each other from either bank.

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  The Phantom of the Opera

  Gaston Leroux

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  "The Phantom of the Opera" is a novel by French writer Gaston Leroux, first published as a serialized work in 1909-1910. The story is a romantic thriller that revolves around a mysterious, disfigured musical genius known as the Phantom, who lives beneath the Paris Opera House. He falls in love with Christine, a beautiful young soprano, and becomes obsessed with her, leading to a dramatic series of events that include kidnapping and murder. The novel has been adapted into numerous films, plays, and, most famously, a musical by Andrew Lloyd Webber

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  South of the Slot - Iconic...

  Jack London

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  John Griffith Chaney was born on January 12th, 1876 in San Francisco.   
   
  His father, William Chaney, was living with Flora Wellman when she became pregnant.  Chaney insisted she have an abortion.  Flora's response was to turn a gun on herself.  Although her wounds were not severe the trauma made her temporarily deranged. 
   
  In late 1876 his mother married John London and the young child was brought to live with them as they moved around the Bay area, eventually settling in Oakland where now, calling himself Jack, he completed grade school. 
   
  Jack worked hard at several jobs, sometimes 12-18 hours a day, but his dream was university.  He studied hard and borrowed the money to enrol in the summer of 1896 at the University of California in Berkeley. 
   
  In 1897, at 21, Jack searched out newspaper accounts of his mother's suicide attempt and for the name of his biological father. He wrote to Chaney, then living in Chicago, who claimed he could not be Jack’s father because he was impotent and casually asserted that London's mother had relations with other men.  Jack, devastated by the response, quit Berkeley and went to the Klondike. Other accounts suggest that his dire finances presented Jack with the excuse he needed to leave. 
   
  In the Klondike Jack began to gather material for his writing but also accumulated many health problems, including scurvy, which together with hip and leg problems he would carry for the rest of his life. 
   
  During the late 1890's Jack was regularly publishing short stories and by the turn of the century full blown novels. 
   
  By 1904 Jack had married, fathered two children and was now in the process of divorcing.  A stint as a reporter on the Russo-Japanese war of 1904 was equal amounts trouble and experience. But that experience was always put to good use in a continuing and remarkable output of work. 
   
  In 1905 he married Charmian Kittredge who at last was a soul and companion who brought him some semblance of peace despite his advancing alcoholism and his incurable wanderlust. 
   
  Twelve years later Jack had amassed both wealth and a literary reputation through such classics as ‘The Call of the Wild’, ‘White Fang’ and many others. He had a reputation as a social activist and was a tireless friend of the workers.   
   
  Jack London died suffering from dysentery, late-stage alcoholism and uremia, aged only 40, on November 22nd 1916 at his property in Glen Elen in California 
   
  In ‘South of the Slot’ Jack London reveals yet another facet of his writing talents. In turn of the Century San Francisco, a Professor of Sociology explores the working-class neighbourhoods gradually revealing an alter-ego with his Union loving personality and name.  The question is which is his real character.

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