Altri libri che potrebbero interessarti

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  The Legend of Sleepy Hollow -...

  Washington Irving

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  Washington Irving was born on 3rd April, 1783, the youngest of 11, in New York. 
    
  Irving found his real interests away from school in literature and the theatre.  An outbreak of yellow fever at 15 moved him away from Manhattan and into the surrounding countryside providing valuable settings for later works such as ‘The Legend of Sleepy Hollow’. 
   
  By 19 Irving was writing regularly to the New York Morning Chronicle, commenting on the theatrical and social scenes.  When his health began to fail, he was sent on the Grand Tour of Europe.  Bizarrely he ignored most of the great sights on offer to concentrate on developing his social and conversational powers.  His health, though, did improve.  
   
  In 1806, back in New York to study law, he scraped a pass at the bar and then founded with several others the literary magazine Salmagundi. Irving nicknamed the city ‘Gotham City’, a name still in use today.  Moderately successful, the magazine spread Irving’s reputation beyond New York. 
   
  In 1809 while mourning the death of his teenage fiancée Irving finished his first significant book, ‘A History of New-York from the Beginning of the World to the End of the Dutch Dynsasty, by Diedrich Knickerbocker’.  It satirised local history, local historians and politics.  It received great critical acclaim. 
   
  Unfortunately his family’s established trading company was now facing great upheavals and Irving was dispatched to England to try to sort it out.  After two years he could see no way out but bankruptcy.  This left him in England with no real employment prospects, and so he returned to writing.  
   
  He sent some short stories back to New York to be published as ‘The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon, Gent’.  The first part included ‘Rip Van Winkle’ and was extremely successful.  The sixth part contained ‘The Legend of Sleepy Hollow’.  
   
  Beset by literary piracy, with no copyright law at the time, he set about publishing legitimate copies in England to outwit the bootleggers.  From now on Irving published concurrently in America and England in order to render piracy obsolete.  
   
  In August 1824, he published ‘Tales of a Traveller’, which included the famed ‘The Devil and Tom Walker’.  
   
  In 1826, the American Minister to Spain, invited him to Madrid where he could examine the many historical documents that he had access to.  Irving reveled in both the size of the libraries he was granted access to and their rich quality.  Historical works flowed from his pen further enhancing his reputation and fortune.   
   
  Following the completion of ‘Tales of the Alhambra’ in 1832, Irving returned to America after 17 years abroad. He was now a figurehead of American literature and dispensed advice to Edgar Allan Poe amongst others.  Irving also became an advocate for American copyright legislation.  
   
  A later appointment as Minister to Spain in 1842 left him disheartened at the antics of the various political factions he encountered.  It also afforded him no time to write as he had hoped.  
   
  On his return home he began an ‘Author’s Revised Edition’ of his works agreeing an unprecedented deal for 12 per cent of the retail profits.  
   
  Washington Irving died of a heart attack at his ‘Sunnyside’ home on the 28th November 1859 at the age of 76, a few months after completing his five volume George Washington biography, in whose honour he had been named.  
   
  ‘The Legend of Sleepy Hollow’ is a story almost everyone has encountered.  An enormous success at the time it is now an undeniable American Spooky classic.

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  A Descent into the Maelstrom

  Edgar Allan Poe

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  Venture into the swirling abyss of fear, awe, and survival with A Descent into the Maelstrom by Edgar Allan Poe—a gripping tale of nautical horror and existential revelation from the master of gothic fiction. 
  In this haunting and philosophical short story, Poe delivers a mesmerizing account of one man’s encounter with a terrifying natural phenomenon: the legendary Maelstrom, a monstrous whirlpool off the coast of Norway. As the narrator recounts his near-death experience—being swept into the vortex along with his brothers—listeners are taken on a harrowing journey through the relentless forces of nature and the fragile psyche of a man staring into the abyss. 
  More than just a suspenseful sea story, this tale explores the boundaries of human perception, the thin line between fear and reason, and the instinct for survival in the face of overwhelming terror. Poe’s masterful prose immerses you in a world of roiling seas, towering cliffs, and psychological dread, evoking both cosmic wonder and existential despair. 
  Whether you're a lover of classic literature, a fan of horror and gothic fiction, or someone who relishes tales of maritime suspense and psychological depth, this audiobook offers a powerful listening experience. The language is poetic, the setting is vast and vivid, and the emotional journey is unforgettable. 
  Brought to life with atmospheric narration and chilling intensity, this full-length audio performance captures every nuance of Poe’s dark vision. It’s a story of being pulled into literal and metaphorical depths—a meditation on mortality, humility, and the sublime terror of nature. 
  Settle in, press play, and let yourself be drawn into the swirling horror of one of Poe’s most breathtaking and philosophical adventures.

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  A Very Short Romance - From...

  Vsevolod Garshin

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  Vsevolod Mikhailovich Garshin was born on 14th February 1855 in what is now Dnipro in the Ukraine, but then part of the Russian Empire. 
  After attending secondary school he studied at the Saint Petersburg Mining Institute.  
  Wars between and on behalf of Empires were a regular feature of the decades then.  Garshin volunteered to serve in the Russian army at the beginning of the Russo-Turkish War in 1877.  
  He began as a private in the Balkans campaign and was wounded in action.  By the end of the war, in 1878, he had been promoted to officer rank.  
  By now Garshin, having previously published some articles and reviews in newspapers, wished to devote himself to a literary career.  The decision made he resigned his army commission. 
  His time as a soldier provided rich experiences for his early stories. His first ‘Four Days’ was related as the interior monologue of a wounded soldier left for dead on the battlefield for four days, face to face with the corpse of a Turkish soldier he had killed, gained him early admiration as an author of note.  
  He wrote perhaps only 20 stories, but their influence was immense, although in these more modern times he is barely remembered and lives in the more prolific shadows of others.  His characters are superbly worked into stories that come alive in the intensity and reality of his prose.   
  Garshin’s most well-known story is ‘The Red Flower’, also known as ‘Scarlet Blossom’ and is easily amongst the first rank of stories dealing with mental health issues.  
  Despite early literary success, he himself experienced periodical bouts of mental illness.   
  In one such bout Garshin attempted to commit suicide by throwing himself down the stone stairs leading into his apartment building.  Although not immediately fatal, Vsevolod Garshin died as a result of his injuries in a St Petersburg hospital on 5th April 1888.  He was 33.

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  Jack London - Six of the Best -...

  Jack London

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  Six has always been a number we group things around – Six of the best, six of one half a dozen of another, six feet under, six pack, six degrees of separation and a sixth sense are but a few of the ways we use this number. 
   
  Such is its popularity that we thought it is also a very good way of challenging and investigating an author’s work to give width, brevity, humour and depth across six of their very best. 
   
  In this series we gather together authors whose short stories both rivet the attention and inspire the imagination to visit their gems in a series of six, to roam across an author’s legacy in a few short hours and gain a greater understanding of their writing and, of course, to be lavishly entertained by their ideas, their narrative and their way with words. 
   
  These stories can be surprising and sometimes at a tangent to what we expected, but each is fully formed and a marvellous adventure into the world and words of a literary master. 
   
  1 - Six of the Best - Jack London - An Introduction 
  2 - Jack London - An Introduction 
  3 - An Odyssey of the North by Jack London 
  4 - To Build a Fire by Jack London 
  5 - A Piece of Steak by Jack London 
  6 - The White Silence by Jack London 
  7 - A Thousand Deaths by Jack London 
  8 - In a Far Country by Jack London

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  Weird Tales: Best of the Early...

  Harry Houdini

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  Thirteen tales of terror—from the macabre and morbid to unexplainable stories of the occult—from such authors as Harry Houdini, H. P. Lovecraft, and others.    First hitting newsstands in 1923, Weird Tales magazine quickly became a literary monster in discovering and publishing the best horror, sci-fi and fantasy writers of its day.   The pulp magazine was one of the earliest publications, if not the first, to feature strange tales of occultism and alien invasions that simply didn’t fit into any other magazine at that time.   The stories struck a chord with those early audiences, and as a result, Weird Tales created a subgenre as “weird” could be attached itself to various genres.   Marquee names like master magician Harry Houdini and cosmic horror creator H. P. Lovecraft graced the magazine’s pages during those early years with several debut stories, alongside authors who were already giants in their own right—Otis Adelbert Kline, Seabury Quinn, and Greye La Spina. Maybe lesser known, but no less influential, writers like Frank Belknap Long Jr., Mary S. Brown, Lyllian Huntley Harris, Hasan Vokine, Arthur J. Burks, and H. Warner Munn turned out disturbing yarns that have stood the test of time only to be resurrected nearly a century later.   This collection features those early authors across thirteen spooky stories from the impactful years of 1923 to 1925 that are best enjoyed at the witching hour.   Reading ritual aside, you’ve been warned.

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  Polaris

  H.P. Lovecraft

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  Title: Polaris 
  Author: H. P. Lovecraft 
  Narrator: Jonathan Dunne 
  Original Publication: 1920 
  Public Domain: Yes 
  Series Placement: Number 43 in the Timeless Terrors series 
  Description: 
  Polaris by H. P. Lovecraft is a dreamlike descent into obsession, identity, and cosmic futility. Set beneath the eerie shimmer of the North Star, it unfolds as both a tale of ancient war and a fevered vision of a soul caught between two worlds — the waking and the eternal. 
  The narrator, haunted by dreams of a lost city beneath the Arctic light, becomes convinced he is the reincarnation of a watchman doomed to fail in his sacred duty. As memory, madness, and destiny blur, Polaris becomes a meditation on guilt and the insignificance of man beneath the indifferent stars. 
  Narrated by Amazon bestselling horror author Jonathan Dunne, this performance captures Lovecraft’s hypnotic rhythm and the slow unravelling of sanity that defines his early cosmic vision — the sense that truth may be glimpsed only in dreams, and that awakening brings no escape. While the text is in the public domain, this narration is an original performance and copyright © 2025 Jonathan Dunne. 
  Part of Timeless Terrors, a series devoted to resurrecting the masters of the macabre and uncanny, Polaris endures as an early glimpse of Lovecraft’s cosmic dread — a haunting reminder that even the stars above may whisper our doom.

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