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  A Dead Woman's Secret - From...

  Guy de Maupassant

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  Henri René Albert Guy de Maupassant was born on August 5th, 1850 near Dieppe in France.  
  Maupassant’s early life was badly torn when at age 11 (his younger brother Hervé was then five) his mother, Laure, a headstrong and independent-minded woman, risked social disgrace in order to obtain a legal separation from her husband. 
  After the separation, Laure kept custody of her two boys. With the father now forcibly absent, Laure became the most influential and important figure in the young boy's life.   
  Maupassant’s education was such that he rebelled against religion and other societal norms but a developing friendship with Gustave Flaubert began to turn his mind towards creativity and writing. 
  After graduation he volunteered for the Franco-Prussian war. With its end he moved to Paris to work as a clerk in the Navy Department.  Gustave Flaubert now took him under his wing.  Acting as a literary guardian to him, he guided the eager Maupassant to debuts in journalism and literature.  For Maupassant these were exciting times and the awakening of his creative talents and ambitions. 
  In 1880 he published what is considered his first great work, ‘Boule de Suif’, (translated as as ‘Dumpling’, ‘Butterball’, ‘Ball of Fat’, or ‘Ball of Lard’) which met with a success that was both instant and overwhelming.  Flaubert at once acknowledged that it was ‘a masterpiece that will endure.’ Maupassant had used his talents and experiences in the war to create something unique.  
  This decade from 1880 to 1891 was to be the most pivotal of his career.  With an audience now made available by the success of ‘Boule de Suif’ Maupassant organised himself to work methodically and relentlessly to produce between two and four volumes of work a year.  The melding of his talents and business sense and the continual hunger of sources for his works made him wealthy. 
  In his later years he developed a desire for solitude, an obsession for self-preservation, and a fear of death as well as a paranoia of persecution caused by the syphilis he had contracted in his youth.  
  On January 2nd, 1892, Maupassant tried to commit suicide by cutting his throat.  Unsuccessful he was committed to the private asylum of Esprit Blanche at Passy, in Paris.  It was here on July 6th, 1893 that Henri René Albert Guy de Maupassant died at the age of only 42.

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  A Cullenden of Virginia - From...

  Thomas Wolf

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  Thomas Clayton Wolfe was born at the family home, 92 Woodfin Street, in Asheville, North Carolina on October 3rd, 1900.  
  Aged 15, Wolfe began his studies at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (UNC) where he enrolled in a playwriting course. Wolfe graduated in 1920 and enrolled at the Graduate School for Arts and Sciences at Harvard. Here he studied playwriting under the tutelage of George Pierce Baker. In 1922 he received his master's degree from Harvard.  
  Wolfe now began the transition from studying to commercial playwright. He went to New York in November, 1923 trying to sell his plays to Broadway.  The Theatre Guild came close to producing Welcome to Our City but in the end declined.  Wolfe now believed his style of writing was more suited to fiction.  Grasping the opportunity this afforded him he sailed to England in October 1924 to write and from there on to France, Italy and Switzerland. 
  In 1926 Wolfe began writing a novel, O Lost. This would eventually become Look Homeward, Angel. It was based on his years in Asheville. The original manuscript of O Lost was over 1100 pages. Maxwell Perkins, one of the great book editors of the age, worked at his publishers, Scribner’s and he began to focus the book, cutting and re-shaping it to center it on the character of Eugene.   
  The novel was published in 1929. It was a success.   
  Wolfe now committed the next 4 years to writing a multi-volume epic entitled The October Fair.  At Scribner’s Perkins once more decided to edit it down to a single volume; Of Time and the River.  It was even more successful than his first. It was hailed as the literary event of 1935 and cemented his reputation as one of America’s foremost novelists.  
  In 1938, after submitting his new opus, which ran to an incredible one million words, to his new editor, Edward Aswell, Wolfe left to tour the West, a part of the country he had never before visited. Whilst travelling Wolfe became ill with pneumonia and spent three weeks in a Seattle hospital. Complications arose. The prognosis was serious.  He was diagnosed with miliary tuberculosis of the brain. 
  On September 6th, he was sent to Baltimore's Johns Hopkins Hospital for treatment. The ensuing operation revealed that the disease had overrun the entire right side of his brain.  
  Thomas Clayton Wolfe never regained consciousness and died shortly before his 38th birthday on September 15th, 1938.

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  Slice of Lonely | Vol 1

  Gabriel Caste

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  Slice of Lonely is a collection of delicate 60 second short stories. Each story is narrated by a different actor creating a thoughtful and immersive tapestry of storytelling.

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  The Murderer - Bulgakov expertly...

  Mikhail Bulgakov

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  Mikhail Bulgakov was born on 15th May 1891 in Kiev, in the Kiev Governorate of the Russian Empire, into a Russian family.  He was one of seven children. 
   
  In 1901, Bulgakov attended the First Kiev Gymnasium, and developed a keen interest in Russian and European literature, theatre and opera.  After the death of his father in 1907, his mother assumed responsibility for his education.  After graduating Bulgakov entered the Medical Faculty of Kiev University and then took up a post as physician at the Kiev Military Hospital. 
   
  At the outbreak of the First World War, he volunteered as a doctor and was sent directly to the front, where he was badly injured at least twice.  To suppress chronic pain, especially in the abdomen, he injected morphine.  It took years to wean himself off. 
   
  He now took up medical posts in various towns and in 1919, he was mobilised by the Ukrainian People's Army and assigned to the Northern Caucasus.  There, he became seriously ill with typhus and barely survived.  
   
  After this illness, Bulgakov abandoned his medicine to pursue writing.  He moved to Vladikavkaz and had two plays staged there with great success.  He wrote too for various newspapers and other outlets, but his critics were many.  And growing. 
   
  When a Moscow's theatre director severely criticised Bulgakov, Stalin personally protected him, saying that a writer of Bulgakov's quality was above ‘party words’ like ‘left’ and ‘right’.   Indeed, it is said that Stalin watched ‘The Days of the Turbins’ at least 15 times. 
   
  It was not to last and by March 1929, Bulgakov's career was ruined when Government censorship stopped publication of any of his work and plays. 
   
  In despair, Bulgakov wrote a personal letter to Stalin.  He requested permission to emigrate.  He received a phone call from the Soviet leader, who asked the writer whether he really desired to leave. He replied that a Russian writer cannot live outside of his homeland.  Stalin thus gave him permission to continue working. In May 1930, he re-joined the theater, as stage director's assistant.  
   
  During the last stressful decade of his life, and in poor health, Bulgakov continued to work on ‘The Master and Margarita’, wrote plays, critical works, stories, and continued translations and dramatisations of novels.  Many of them were not published, others were derided by critics.  
   
  On 10th March 1940, Mikhail Afanasyevich Bulgakov died from nephrosclerosis.  He was 48. 
   
  ‘The Master and Margarita’ was not published in any form until the mid-1960’s 
   
  Here Bulgakov relates a story as told by a doctor describing the terrible things that humanity is capable of doing in times of war.

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  Bonneville Stories

  Mark Doyon

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  In the town of Bonneville, good people lose limbs, fight lightning, and slip into sinkholes. They pitch over bicycles, tumble off ladders, and expire without warning. They spin the wheel and take their chances. It’s all in a day’s work. 
  Some blame God, others blame kismet, and still others rail against random happenstance. All told, maybe there are no accidents.

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  Killer Aboard - A John Otter Novel

  Sean Blaise

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  A killer strikes on a sail training ship half way across the Atlantic Ocean. Communications with shore have been severed. The killer can be anyone on board. Can Captain John Otter weather the storm, keep his students safe, and find the killer in time?

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