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  The Problem Club

  Barry Pain

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  Welcome to The Problem Club, where logic takes a holiday and wit is the law of the land. In this delightful collection of early 20th-century comic tales by Barry Pain, twelve eccentric gentlemen gather regularly in an upscale London club to tackle bizarre, imaginative challenges—each one a “problem” designed to confound, amuse, and showcase their cleverness. 
  From the unforgettable “Giraffe Problem”—in which each member must devise a scheme to make a woman say, “You ought to have been a giraffe”—to other equally ludicrous puzzles, Pain’s sharp humor and dry British charm shine through. 
  Narrated with elegance and flair by Mike Polischuk, this audiobook is a perfect escape for lovers of clever banter, satirical storytelling, and tales that celebrate the absurd.

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  A Dead Politician the New York...

  Mark Binder

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  Combine a traditional audiobook with live performance from an Audie Award nominee for a deliciously quirky collection set in America's smallest state. 
  The home of H. P. Lovecraft and haunted by Edgar Allen Poe, Rhode Island has long been a nexus of horror.What lurks under the streets of Providence?What is swimming up Narragansett Bay?What do you do with a bloated corpse? 
  Founded as “a lively experiment” by outcasts and rebels, the tiny state of Rhode Island is rich with stories of the odd and improbable. 
  In this audiobook of short stories blending humor and horror, award-winning author and performance storyteller Mark Binder shares tasty tales of insect infestation, killer clams, hot weiners, a Rhody-style honeymoon, and seabirds gone awry. 
  “One of Rhode Island’s Leading Storytellers” – Providence Journal 
  Are these True Stories?  
  "All of my stories are true, and some of them really happened." – Mark Binder

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  Eveline - From their pens to...

  James Joyce

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  James Augustine Aloysius Joyce was born on the 2nd February 1882 in Dublin into a middle-class family, and the eldest of ten surviving siblings 
  Admired as a brilliant student he briefly attended the Christian Brothers-run O'Connell School before excelling at the Jesuit schools of Clongowes and Belvedere.  From there he went on to attend University College Dublin from 1898, studying English, French and Italian 
  In 1902, Joyce was now in his early twenties, and went to Paris to study Medicine but soon abandoned his teachings.  Back in Dublin to attend to his dying Mother he met Nora Barnacle. They bonded immediately into a life-long match. Together they decided to emigrate to Europe.  The couple lived in Trieste, Rome, Paris, and finally Zürich where Joyce pursued a variety of jobs and ventures to supplement his literary pursuits but none of these paid off.  
  After publishing a poetry volume, ‘Chamber Music’, in 1907, his short story collection ‘The Dubliners’, in 1914, helped establish his talent in the rapidly changing world.  
  Although far from home Joyce’s literary heart and works were set in his recollections of Dublin.  Characters are close resemblances of family and friends and indeed enemies.  His landmark work ‘Ulysses’, published in 1922, is set in the streets and alleyways of the city as it parallels Homer’s Odyssey in a variety of styles including its famed stream of consciousness. 
  His pen continued to produce classics of the order of ‘A Portrait of the Artist as A Young Man’ and ‘Finnegan’s Wake’ together with several volumes of poetry and a play ‘The Exiles, in 1918.   
  On the 11th January 1941, Joyce underwent surgery in Zürich for a perforated duodenal ulcer. The next day he fell into a coma. On the 13th after a brief period of lucidity in which he called for his wife and son he passed.  He was 58.

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  Unwritten Novel An - From their...

  Virginia Woolf

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  Adeline Virginia Woolf was born on the 25th January 1882 in South Kensington in London. 
  Although lauded as a founder of modernist writing with such classics as ‘Orlando’, ‘Mrs Dalloway’ and ‘To the Lighthouse’ and, of course, many classic short stories, her background is filled with elements of tragedy that she somehow overcame to become such a revered writer.   Her mother died when she was 13, her half-sister Stella two years later and with it her first of several nervous breakdowns.  Appallingly it was later found that three of her half-brothers had sexually abused her so darkness must have seemed ever present.   
  She began writing professionally at age 20 but her father’s death two years later brought a complete mental collapse and she was briefly institutionalised.  Somehow she found within herself a literary career and with it great innovations in writing; she was a pioneer of “stream of consciousness”.    
  Her tight circle of friends were the founders of the Bloomsbury Group, a movement whose legacy still influences across the arts and society in many way to this day.   
  Whilst the dark periods continued to interrupt her emotional state her rate of work never ceased.  Until, on 28th March 1941, Woolf put on her overcoat, filled up its pockets with stones, and walked into the River Ouse, in Lewes, East Sussex and drowned herself.  Her body was not recovered until the 18th April.  She was 59. 
  She left behind a note which read in part “Dearest, I feel certain that I am going mad again.  I feel we can't go through another of those terrible times.  And I shan't recover this time.  I begin to hear voices, and I can't concentrate.  So I am doing what seems the best thing to do”.

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  Grace Arising

  Emma Lombard

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  GRACE ARISING is the third full-length novel in The White Sails Series. The burgeoning 1840s New Holland wool market is irresistible to entrepreneurial souls prepared to brave the open oceans. Having survived unimaginable tragedy together, Grace and Seamus Fitzwilliam plan a fresh start aboard their new ship, Elias. 
  Lucius Chittenden, the new first mate, comes highly-recommended, and with the return of the trusted crew, the journey promises smooth sailing. The Elias is bursting with goods for the colony as well as shepherds for Gilly Downs, but it is not long before a theft is discovered, souring the mood aboard. 
  While Chittenden’s demand for expedience guarantees blistering speeds, it comes at a cost to the men’s morale, and sets Seamus and Grace at loggerheads. Seamus believes the officer pragmatic, Grace believes him cruel. When Chittenden’s cavalier attitude results in him shooting Seamus, Grace has Chittenden chained to the hold. With Seamus gravely injured, she assumes command of the Elias, taking responsibility for seeing her crew and family to safety. 
  The demands of navigating a tall ship across stormy seas, while trying to keep Seamus alive and managing her children, sees Grace bowed by duty. Sheer grit keeps her at the helm, affecting an air of steadfastness and complete control—but do the sailors see this in her? And will she make it to New Holland in time to save Seamus’s life? 
  Be prepared to be swept away from the smoggy skies of London, across the roiling Indian Ocean, and returned to beloved Gilly Downs in New South Wales as GRACE ARISING delivers more romantic, historical adventure, sea stories. The White Sails Series is historical women's fiction, touted by readers as, if Bridgerton and Pirates of the Caribbean had a love child.

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  The House with the Mezzanine And...

  Anton Chekhov

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  Anton Chekhov was a Russian playwright and short-story writer who is considered to be one of the greatest writers of all time. His career as a playwright produced four classics, and his best short stories are held in high esteem by writers and critics. Along with Henrik Ibsen and August Strindberg, Chekhov is often referred to as one of the three seminal figures in the birth of early modernism in the theatre. Chekhov was a physician by profession. "Medicine is my lawful wife", he once said, "and literature is my mistress." 
   
  Chekhov renounced the theatre after the reception of The Seagull in 1896, but the play was revived to acclaim in 1898 by Konstantin Stanislavski's Moscow Art Theatre, which subsequently also produced Chekhov's Uncle Vanya and premiered his last two plays, Three Sisters and The Cherry Orchard. These four works present a challenge to the acting ensemble as well as to audiences because in place of conventional action Chekhov offers a "theatre of mood" and a "submerged life in the text". The plays that Chekhov wrote were not complex, but easy to follow, and created a somewhat haunting atmosphere for the audience. 
   
  Chekhov at first wrote stories to earn money, but as his artistic ambition grew, he made formal innovations that influenced the evolution of the modern short story. He made no apologies for the difficulties this posed to readers, insisting that the role of an artist was to ask questions, not to answer them. 
   
  Here is perhaps his finest collection. A true audiobook treasure!

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