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  A Warning to the Curious - From...

  M R James

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  Montague Rhodes James is cited as perhaps the greatest English writer of ghost stories, an opinion few would disagree with. 
  James was born on 1st August 1862 at Goodnestone Parsonage in Kent, where his father was Curate but at age 3 the family went to live at Livermere, near Bury St Edmunds in East Anglia.  
  From early childhood he had a passion for mediaeval books and antiques. He was educated initially as a boarder at Temple Grove School in East Sheen, west London, before gaining a scholarship to Eton and thence Cambridge where he gained a double first, becoming a distinguished linguist and mediaevalist.  
  Before the Great War vacations were usually spent touring Europe absorbing cultures and references for his later writing. 
  A man of enormous knowledge it was said he timed his breakfast egg whilst he completed the Times crossword.  
  Many of his elegant yet terrifying tales were created by discarding the prevailing gothic cliches and placing his characters and narrative in a realistic setting.  Thereby the stories gained atmosphere and menace on a grand scale and he was famed as the originator of the antiquarian ghost story. 
  Although story-telling and writing these 30 or so tales was a hobby, when published their effect transformed the genre and still chill the bones in our more modern times. 
  James was also a medievalist scholar and translator whose work remains highly respected. He was also Provost of Eton College between 1918 and 1936. 
  M R James died on 12th June 1936 at Eton in Buckinghamshire.  He was 73.

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  Count of Monte Cristo The -...

  Alexandre Dumas

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  Thrown in prison for a crime he has not committed, Edmond Dantes is confined to the grim fortress of If. There he learns of a great hoard of treasure hidden on the Isle of Monte Cristo and he becomes determined not only to escape, but also to unearth the treasure and use it to plot the destruction of the three men responsible for his incarceration. Dumas' epic tale of suffering and retribution, inspired by a real-life case of wrongful imprisonment, was a huge popular success when it was first serialized in the 1840s.
  VOLUME 5: Three days after the scene we have just described, namely towards five o'clock in the afternoon of the day fixed for the signature of the contract between Mademoiselle Eugénie Danglars and Andrea Cavalcanti, whom the banker persisted in calling prince, a fresh breeze was stirring the leaves in the little garden in front of the Count of Monte Cristo's house.

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  Thérèse Raquin - Audiobook

  Émile Zola, Classic Audiobooks,...

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  Thérèse Raquin is Émile Zola's chilling psychological novel about passion, guilt, and the destructive power of suppressed desire. Trapped in a loveless marriage, Thérèse begins a dangerous affair with her husband's friend, leading to a crime that will haunt them both. As their shared guilt festers, Zola examines the dark corners of human conscience with cold precision.Written in stark, naturalistic style, this early masterpiece shocked readers of the 19th century and still unsettles today. Thérèse Raquin is a gripping and tragic exploration of moral decay, suffocating domesticity, and the consequences of forbidden love.

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  Gusev

  Anton Chekhov

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  "Gusev"  is an 1890 short story by Anton Chekhov.
  Several discharged soldiers return home from the Far East by ship. Confined to the hospital cabin, they are all apparently dying of consumption and seemingly indifferent to their condition. Among them are Gusev, a mild, racist, slightly dim man, and the mysterious Pavel Ivanovich, an ardent "protester" who often goes on diatribes (many of which Gusev either misunderstands or ignores) about his lifelong commitment to telling people "the truth to their faces". Ivanovich is proud of having riled every single person around him during his three years' service in the East, and thinks all the other men present are fools. He later reveals that he is the son of a priest and had to disguise himself as a peasant to buy his third-class ticket. One day, while Gusev is asleep, Pavel Ivanovich dies. One of the other soldiers, seeing that Gusev will also die shortly, helps him up to the ship's deck, where they look at the waves crashing into one another. Several days later, Gusev dies. His body is sewn into a sailcloth sack and weighted. After a short prayer, it is thrown into the ocean, where a shark bites at it. Up above, the ocean begins to reflect the colors of the sky, "...tender, joyous, passionate colours for which it is hard to find a name in human speech".

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  Chase The (Unabridged)

  Herman Melville

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  Herman Melville August 1, 1819 - September 28, 1891) was an American novelist, short story writer, and poet of the American Renaissance period. Among his best-known works are Moby-Dick (1851); Typee (1846), a romanticized account of his experiences in Polynesia; and Billy Budd, Sailor, a posthumously published novella. Although his reputation was not high at the time of his death, the 1919 centennial of his birth was the starting point of a Melville revival, and Moby-Dick grew to be considered one of the great American novels.
  THE CHASE: That night, in the mid-watch, when the old man as his wont at intervals stepped forth from the scuttle in which he leaned, and went to his pivot-hole, he suddenly thrust out his face fiercely, snuffing up the sea air as a sagacious ship's dog will, in drawing nigh to some barbarous isle. He declared that a whale must be near.

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  Second Best

  D H Lawrence

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  'Second Best' was written by D H Lawrence in 1912. In this delicate story of boy-girl love, Lawrence is at his best, intertwining the feelings of the two lovers with the natural world around them, the countryside, flowers and fields and the moles who are sacrificed to bring the lovers together. The young girl may consider her lover 'second best' but his passion and honesty ring true.

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