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  Vampyre The - A Tale

  John William Polidori

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  John William Polidori was born on 7th September 1795 in London to Gaetano Polidori, an Italian political émigré scholar, and Anna Maria Pierce, an English governess. He was the eldest of 8 children. 
   
  From 1804 Polidori was a pupil at the recently formed Ampleforth College. In 1810 he proceeded to the University of Edinburgh, where he wrote a thesis on sleepwalking and received his degree as a doctor of medicine on 1st August 1815. He was 19. 
   
  In 1816, Dr. Polidori was given the job of Byron’s personal physician and accompanied him on a trip through Europe. The publisher John Murray offered Polidori £500 to keep a diary of their travels. At the Villa Diodati, Byron’s rented villa at Lake Geneva in Switzerland, the pair met with Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin, Percy Bysshe Shelley, and Mary's stepsister, Claire Clairmont. 
   
  One night in June, after the company had read aloud from a French collection of German horror tales, Byron suggested they each write a ghost story. There were to be two outstanding works from that evening; ‘Frankenstein’ by Mary Shelley and Polidori’s ‘The Vampyre’ which would be the first published modern vampire story in English. 
   
  Dismissed by Byron, Polidori traveled in Italy and then returned to England. His story, ‘The Vampyre’, was published in the April 1819 issue of New Monthly Magazine without his permission. Much to the annoyance of both Polidori and Byron it was the latter who was credited as author.   
   
  Polidori also had published ‘Ximenes, The Wreath & Other Poems’ in 1819 and his long theological and sacred poem ‘The Fall of the Angels’ in 1821 as well as two plays, essays and his diary.  
   
  Despite his youth Polidori was increasingly worn down by gambling debts and depression.   
   
  John William Polidori died on 24th August 1821 at the age of only 25 in London.  Although his death was recorded as death by natural causes, strong evidence asserts that it was suicide by means of cyanide.

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  Country of the Blind The...

  H. G. Wells

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  'The Country of the Blind' is the strange story of a mountain guide who accidently falls off a cliff ledge in the Andes. He survives the fall unhurt, and finds himself in a remote valley where a tribe lives completely cut off from the rest of the world. A hereditary illness has meant that for 15 generations all the members of the tribe have been born blind. As a result, they now have a highly evolved sense of hearing, scent and touch. 'In the land of the blind, the one-eyed man is king,' thinks the mountaineer. But he finds that the gift of sight is far less useful or appreciated that he had expected in the country of the blind.

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  Yet More Strange Tales

  Edgar Allan Poe, Arthur Conan...

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  A third collection of eighteen classic tales of the weird and supernatural by some of the best known writers in these genres.E.Nesbit - “In the Dark” and “No. 17”Edgar Allan Poe - “The Cask of Amontillado” and “The Facts in the Case of M. Valdemar”Arthur Conan Doyle - “The New Catacomb”M.R. James - “Wailing Well” and “Rats”Saki - “ The Hounds of  Fate” and “The Peace of Mowsle Barton”Hugh Walpole - “Field with Five Trees” and “The Silver Mask”E.F. Benson - “The Thing in the Hall” and “The Wishing Well”Guy de Maupassant - “The Hand” and “Mother Sauvage”Ambrose Bierce - “Moxon's Master” and “John Bartine's Watch”Wilkie Collins - “A Stolen Letter”Public Domain (P)2016 Spiders' House Audio/Roy Macready

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  The Adventures of Baron Munchausen

  Rudolf Erich Raspe

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  From travelling to the moon to fighting a 40-foot-long crocodile and riding a cannonball through the air, Baron von Munchausen’s incredible account of his own adventures has entertained readers since its initial appearance in 1785. The obvious comedy of the book, which lies in Munchausen’s boasts about his own adventures, is heightened by the calm and objective way in which he frames his narrative. The Baron appears to fully believe the death-defying episodes with which he regales his listeners.The stories of Baron von Munchausen have loomed large in popular culture and have been the subject of several films, most notably that directed by Terry Gilliam in 1988, while many notable artists have found inspiration in the adventures.

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  The Great Gatsby

  Francis Scott Fitzgerald

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  The Great Gatsby, F. Scott Fitzgerald's third book, stands as the supreme achievement of his career. First published in 1925, this quintessential novel of the Jazz Age has been acclaimed by generations of readers. The story of the mysteriously wealthy Jay Gatsby and his love for the beautiful Daisy Buchanan, of lavish parties on Long Island at a time when The New York Times noted "gin was the national drink and sex the national obsession," it is an exquisitely crafted tale of America in the 1920s.

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  Five Children and It

  Edith Nesbit

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  After moving into a house in kent, five children go exploring and in a gravel pit, find a Sand Fairy, known as a "Psammead" who says he will give them one wish each day. What follows are eleven misadventures where it is discovered that making a good wish is actually much harder than it first appears... The first in E.Nesbit's "The Psammead" trilogy, published in the Strand Magazine from 1902.  
  Narrated by Michael

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