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  Pure Hollywood - And Other Stories

  Anonymous

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  Hailed by George Saunders as “a truly gifted writer,” with Pure Hollywood, Pulitzer Prize finalist and O. Henry Prize winner Christine Schutt returns to the short-story form that launched her acclaimed career and her inimitable style John Ashbery once described as “pared down but rich, dense, fevered, exactly right and even eerily beautiful.” 
    
  In eleven captivating tales, Pure Hollywood brings us into private worlds of corrupt familial love, intimacy, longing, and danger. From an alcoholic widowed actress living in desert seclusion to a young mother whose rejection of her child has terrible consequences, a newlywed couple who ignore the violent warnings of a painter burned by love to an eerie portrait of erotic obsession, each story in Pure Hollywood is an imagistic snapshot of what it means to live and learn, love and hurt. 
    
  In league with short-story virtuosos J.D. Salinger, Katherine Mansfield, and Guy de Maupassant, Schutt gives us sharply suspenseful and masterfully dark interior portraits of ordinary lives, infused with her signature observation and surprise. Timeless, incisive, and precise, these tales are a rush of blood to the head, portals through which we open our eyes and see the world anew. 
    
  “Don’t be fooled by its size. This book is a masterwork that hits way harder than its weight class, and achieves what great fiction always achieves—it commands us to be aware.”—Matt Sumell, author of Making Nice

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  God Sees the Truth But Waits

  Leo Tolstoy

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  "God Sees the Truth, But Waits"  is a short story by Russian author Leo Tolstoy first published in 1872. The story, about a man sent to prison for a murder he did not commit, takes the form of a parable of forgiveness. English translations were also published under titles "The Confessed Crime", "Exiled to Siberia", and "The Long Exile". The concept of the story of a man wrongfully accused of murder and banished to Siberia also appears in one of Tolstoy's previous works, War and Peace, during a philosophical discussion between two characters who relate the story and argue how the protagonist of their story deals with injustice and fate. Along with his story The Prisoner of the Caucasus, Tolstoy personally considered this work to be his only great artistic achievement.

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  The Pit and the Pendulum

  Edgar Allan Poe

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  Terror. Torture. Time running out. 
  Edgar Allan Poe’s The Pit and the Pendulum plunges listeners into the claustrophobic mind of a prisoner of the Spanish Inquisition, who awakens in utter darkness to face a series of psychological and physical torments. Chained beneath a slowly descending pendulum blade, surrounded by monstrous iron walls and the yawning mouth of a deadly pit, he must summon every ounce of courage, reason, and instinct to survive. 
  Nathan Edwards delivers a gripping narration of Poe’s masterwork of suspense, where every detail intensifies the dread and every moment ticks closer to the edge of madness. A landmark in Gothic literature and psychological horror, this story explores fear not through monsters, but through isolation, anticipation, and the diabolical ingenuity of man. 
  Perfect for fans of horror, dark suspense, classic literature, and the art of pure storytelling.

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  The Canary

  Katherine Mansfield

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  A lonely woman's cherished canary, her only companion, dies, leaving her isolated once more.

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  Her Lover - From their pens to...

  Maxim Gorky

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  Alexei Maximovich Peshkov was born on 28th March 1868, in Nizhny Novgorod, Russia. 
  Better known as Maxim Gorky he was orphaned at 11 and ran away from home at 12.  At 19 he had already attempted suicide and thereafter travelled, by foot, across the Russian Empire for 5 years. 
  His first book ‘Essays & Stories’ in 1898 was a sensation and so began a long career as an author of short stories, novels and plays.  Gorky saw writing as a moral and political act that would help to change the unjust world around him.  He was an ardent early advocate of the emerging Marxist movement and publicly opposed the Tsarist regime leading several times to his arrest.  
  In 1904 he began his own theatre but the censor banned every play and Gorky was forced to abandon the project. 
  But Gorky was a financially successful author, editor, and playwright and gave monies to political parties as well as for civil rights and social reform.  The brutal shooting of workers, which set in motion the Revolution of 1905, pushed Gorky more decisively toward radical solutions.  
  In 1906 he went to the United States to raise funds for the Bolsheviks. Those experiences including a scandal over travelling with his lover and not his wife deepened his contempt for the ‘bourgeois soul.’ 
  Gorky now moved to Capri in Italy, both for health reasons and to escape the increasingly repressive times in Russia.  
  An amnesty for the 300th anniversary of the Romanov dynasty saw him return to Russia in 1914. His politics remained close to the Bolshevik cause.  But soon, after the 1918 revolution, his essays referred to Lenin as a tyrant for his senseless arrests and repression.  He was soon appealing to the outside world for food aid after the catastrophic crop failure. 
  In October 1921 Gorky returned to Italy, now in Fascist hands, and settled in Sorrento until 1932.  His health worsened with the onset of tuberculosis. 
  He wrote several successful books there but now decided to find an understanding with the communist regime. Stalin invited him home and his return was hailed as a major propaganda victory.  He was decorated with the Order of Lenin, and a province, a park, and various streets re-named in his honour. 
  But he had his faults too.  In 1933, Gorky co-edited a book on the White Sea-Baltic Canal and denied even a single prisoner died during its construction, but thousands had. As well, knowing that some Nazis were homosexual, a phrase was attributed to him that said ‘exterminate all homosexuals and fascism will vanish’.  Although he was himself was quoting another he was decidedly homophobic. 
  With the increase of Stalinist repression in 1935 Gorky was placed under unannounced house arrest. 
  Maxim Gorky died on the 18th June 1936 from pneumonia.  He was 68. 
  Stalin and Molotov were among those who carried Gorky's urn of ashes at his funeral.

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  The Dunwich Horror — Part 3 of 10

  H. P. Lovecraft

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  Title: The Dunwich Horror — Part 3 of 10 
  Author: H. P. Lovecraft 
  Narrator: Jonathan Dunne 
  Original Publication: 1929 
  Public Domain: Yes 
  Series Placement: Timeless Terrors No. 62 — Part 3 of 10 
  Description: 
  Welcome to Timeless Terrors No. 62, continuing H. P. Lovecraft’s chilling masterpiece of cosmic dread: The Dunwich Horror. 
  The strange occurrences at the Whateley farmhouse intensify. Wilbur Whateley’s unnatural growth and mysterious abilities are only the beginning, as the unseen presence in the attic grows ever more powerful. Shadows move where they should not, the hills tremble with otherworldly force, and the village whispers of terror spread farther than ever. 
  Locked away with his grandfather, Wilbur nurtures a secret that is too vast, too alien, and too hungry to remain hidden. Every sound, every shadow, hints at the approaching horror, and the villagers’ fear grows alongside the incomprehensible forces at work. 
  Narrated by Amazon-bestselling horror author Jonathan Dunne, this performance brings Lovecraft’s cosmic horror vividly to life, exploring the thin boundary between human reality and ancient, unknowable forces. 
  This is Part 3 of a 10-part complete audiobook. Stay tuned — the nightmare continues.

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