Editorial: ReadOn
"Medusa's Coil" is a short story by H. P. Lovecraft and Zealia Bishop. It was first published in Weird Tales magazine in January 1939, two years after Lovecraft's death. The story concerns the son of an American plantation owner who brings back from Paris a new wife. It mixes elements of Lovecraft's Cthulhu Mythos with the ancient Greek myth of Medusa, but it has also been noted for its racist aspects.
"Just So Stories" is a collection of Rudyard Kipling's animal tales in which we learn about "How the Whale got his Throat", "How the Camel got his Hump", "How the Rhinoceros got his Skin", "How the Leopard got his Spots", "The Elephant's Child", "The Sing-Song of Old Man Kangaroo", "The Beginning of the Armadilloes", "How the First Letter was Written", "How the Alphabet was Made", "The Crab that Played with the Sea", "The Cat that Walked by Himself" and "The Butterfly that Stamped". These witty, inventive stories have delighted generations of children.Ver libro
Anton Chekhov (1860-1904) wrote of the Russian period of depression and pessimism and is the acknowledged leader of the realistic school of the Russian short story. He has been compared to Guy de Maupassant for the masterful way in which he creates an atmosphere and narrates his stories to a climax. No other writer has the same ability to reveal the characters' souls in just two or three pages. Central themes in his works re mediocrity, the tragedy of pettiness, commonplaceness, the meaninglessness and emptiness of everyday life. In "The Encased Man" he describes the life of a schoolmaster whose existence is limited by petty rules, morals, inhibitions and unconscious fears. Despite these traits, the man finds himself on the verge of an unforeseen marriage to a boisterous, energetic, positive woman - in short, his complete opposite. But his character traits rear their heads and destiny rushes in upon him.Ver libro
The greatest Christmas story ever written is brought to life by the inimitable Jason Isaacs. ''If I had my way, every idiot who goes around with Merry Christmas on his lips, would be boiled with his own pudding, and buried with a stake of holly through his heart. Merry Christmas? Bah humbug!' To bitter, miserly Ebenezer Scrooge, Christmas is just another day. But all that changes when the ghost of his long-dead business partner appears, alongside the Ghost of Christmas Past, Present, and Yet to Come, warning Scrooge to change his ways before it's too late.Ver libro
Arthur Gray (1852-1940) wrote under the pseudonym Ingulphus for several years, and it was only in 1919, when his stories were collected as Tedious Brief Tales of Granta and Gramarye under Gray's own name, that the identity of the author was discovered.The Necromancer is a strange tale set in Jesus College Cambridge in the time of Cromwell. A strange, reclusive fellow who specialises in mathematics and astronomy is suspected of necromancy and black magic. A series of deaths in the college from accidents and illnesses are feared to be a result of his conjuring. And then a strange cat is seen leaving his room at night and returning only hours later. What can the strange necromancer be up to?Ver libro
In New Grub Street George Gissing re-created a microcosm of London's literary society as he had experienced it. His novel is at once a major social document and a story that draws us irresistibly into the twilit world of Edwin Reardon, a struggling novelist, and his friends and acquaintances in Grub Street including Jasper Milvain, an ambitious journalist, and Alfred Yule, an embittered critic. Here Gissing brings to life the bitter battles (fought out in obscure garrets or in the Reading Room of the British Museum) between integrity and the dictates of the market place, the miseries of genteel poverty and the damage that failure and hardship do to human personality and relationships.Ver libro
Little Men picks up the story of fiery, headstrong Jo where Good Wives left off. The novel is set at a rather unusual boarding school run by Jo and her husband, where the pupils are encouraged to pillow fight and keep pets. When the penniless but talented orphan Nat Blake shows up on her doorstep, Jo takes him in, and his arrival sets in motion a chain of events that will affect all their lives.Ver libro
