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  Aristocratic Education - From...

  Stephen Leacock

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  Stephen P H Butler Leacock FRSC was born on the 30th December 1869 in Swanmore, near Southampton, England, the third of eleven children. 
  The family emigrated to Canada in 1876 to live on a 100-acre farm in Sutton, Ontario.  There Leacock was home-schooled and later enrolled into the elite private school Upper Canada College in Toronto.  Academically he was very strong and enrolled at the University of Toronto to study languages and literature.  He left there after his alcoholic father abandoned the family and finances were too stretched to continue his attendance.  He now enrolled in a three-month course at Strathroy Collegiate Institute to become a qualified high school teacher and with it a regular income. 
  Leacock published humorous articles in many Canadian and US magazines but his real passion was economics and political theory.  In 1899 he enrolled for postgraduate studies at the University of Chicago and earned his PhD in 1903. 
  His marriage to Beatrix Hamilton produced a single child 15 years later.  Over time father and son developed a love-hate relationship, partially caused by his son’s diminutive stature of only four feet.  
  He accepted a post at McGill University and kept it until he retired in 1936.  His work ‘Elements of Political Science’, was adopted as a standard textbook for two decades and was also his most profitable.  He now also began public speaking and lecturing.  
  In 1910, he privately printed some articles as ‘Literary Lapses’.  It was then released by a recognised publisher, and he became a commercially successful writer.  His collections of light-hearted whimsy, parody, nonsense, and satire were now frequently published along with biographies and several award-winning volumes on Canada. 
  Politically Leacock was a difficult creature.  He opposed women’s right to vote, was a champion of Empire but advocated social welfare legislation and wealth redistribution, but he often caused friction with his racist views. 
  Leacock has been forgotten as an economist, but it’s often said that in 1911 more people had heard of him than had heard of Canada.  For the decade after 1915 Leacock was the most popular humorist in the English-speaking world. 
  Stephen Leacock died on 28th March 1944 of throat cancer in Toronto, Canada.  He was 74.

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  Mtdox A Life - By Mtdox

  Mtdox

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  In the heart of a bustling metropolis, where secrets weave through the shadows like a whispered symphony, lies the enigmatic world of  Mtdox A Life. At its center is Pramod, a brilliant but reclusive scientist who has devoted her life to breaking the boundaries between reality and illusion. When her groundbreaking invention, Mtdox, designed to alter perceptions and unearth hidden truths, falls into the wrong hands, the city is thrust into chaos.

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  Weaving Words - Women about Women

  Marjorie Banks, Conchita...

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  'The premise is simple, the execution is passionate: thirteen short stories of fiction from eight emerging women writers. This anthology is a wonderful example of women lifting up other women, of writers supporting writers, of a community coming together to fulfil ambitions and dreams,' writes Cass Moriarty, in the Foreword for Weaving Words.

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  Default Admin Credentials plus...

  A. J. Payler

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  It seemed like the perfect crime… that should have been his first warning. 
    
  Labor Day Weekend, an empty office building down in sleepy Point Loma: basically a sitting-duck target for any second-story man worth a nickel. Especially one with a lifetime of skills to draw upon—not to mention all the magic passcodes tucked comfortably away in his back pocket. 
  Nothing could go wrong, or that was how it seemed… but in the end, he couldn't honestly blame anyone but himself for not seeing it coming.  
  From A. J. Payler, author of The Killing Song, Bank Error in Your Favor, and Terror Next Door comes Default Admin Credentials, a story of struggle against overwhelming odds and unstoppable fear. 
  Also featuring bonus story Dictated, Never Read (as seen in Twenty-two Twenty-eight)!

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  People Who Talk to Stuffed...

  Ao Omae

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  “A captivating exploration of gender dynamics, set against a background of the trying and confusing time of adolescence, when identity is in flux and everything in life is unstable and magical.” —Lydia Conklin, author of Rainbow Rainbow 
  A fresh, thoughtful, and always surprising short story collection from a rising young star in the world of Japanese literature. 
  Composed of the title novella and three short stories, People Who Talk to Stuffed Animals Are Nice sensitively explores gender, friendship, romance, love, human interaction and its absence, and how a misogynistic society limits women and men. 
  In the title story, Nanamori and Mugito, two university students appalled by society’s gendered roles, rebel. Refusing to interact with other people they use stuffed toys for emotional support. Unlike Nanamori and Mugito, their fellow plushie society member Shiraki does not talk to plushies. Pragmatic, she accepts the status quo that boys sometimes make nasty jokes; she believes their behavior resembles the real world. 
  In “Realizing Fun Things Through Water,” a young woman named Hatsuoka must contend with a mother-in-law who swears by cancer-preventing “hyper-organization” water, and a sister who writes fake news for a living. “Bath Towel Visuals” illuminates the mental cost of not just laughing along at mean humor, while “Hello, Thank You I’m Okay” follows a family’s response when their shut-in son announces he wants to throw himself a birthday party. 
  Written in brisk and gentle prose, Ao Omae’s stories capture the subtleties and complexities of his characters’ inner world, individuals struggling to conform in an inflexible society little tolerant of difference. These stories, sometimes comical, sometimes bittersweet, and always thought-provoking, speak to the pain and desires of all who embrace nuance, repudiate traditional sex roles, and long for a gentler and more tolerant world.

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  A Legend - From their pens to...

  Alexander Kuprin

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  Alexander Kuprin was born in Narovchat, Penza in Russia on 7th September 1870. 
  At 3 his Father died and he and mother moved to Moscow. By 10 he was enrolled at the Second Moscow Military High School and there his interest in literature began. The Alexander Military Academy followed and two years later he was a sub-lieutenant and posted to an Infantry Regiment for a further four years. 
  Despite his duties he was a now a keen writer and published his first short story at this time. His military duties also garnered him experiences for his breakthrough work ‘The Duel’.  Leaving the military he left for Kiev to work for local newspapers.  He continued to publish both stories and novels and by 1901 he was in St Petersburg becoming part of a group that included Chekhov, Ivan Bunin, Maxim Gorky and Leonid Andreyev.  
  In the years that followed further controversial works and acclaim followed.  His comments on the regime meant he was also put under secret police surveillance.   
  As World War I erupted, Kuprin opened a military hospital but was then given command of an infantry company in Finland. He was soon discharged on grounds of ill health.  
  The October Revolution saw him praise Lenin, but he warned that the Bolsheviks threatened Russian culture and might cause further widespread suffering to the peasants.  As Civil War raged he took his family to Helsinki and then on to Paris. 
  Exile saw his talents decline further and his succumbing to alcoholism. He became lonely and withdrawn. The family's poverty increased his malaise.   
  In May 1937, the Kuprin’s returned to Moscow.  He now saw his work published but wrote almost nothing new.  In 1938 his health rapidly deteriorated.  Already suffering from a kidney problems and sclerosis, he had now developed cancer of the oesophagus.  
  Alexander Kuprin died on 25th August 1938.

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