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  The Eye of the Camera - From...

  Fred M White

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  Richard Bernard Heldmann was born on 12th October 1857, in St Johns Wood, North London.  
  By his early 20’s Heldmann began publishing fiction for the myriad magazine publications that had sprung up and were eager for good well-written content.  
  In October 1882, Heldmann was promoted to co-editor of Union Jack, a popular magazine, but his association with the publication ended suddenly in June 1883.  It appears Heldman was prone to issuing forged cheques to finance his lifestyle.  In April 1884 he was sentenced to 18 months hard labour. 
  In order to be well away from the scandal and the damage that this had caused to his reputation Heldmann adopted a pseudonym on his release from jail.  Shortly thereafter the name ‘Richard Marsh’ began to appear in the literary periodicals.  The use of his mother’s maiden name as part of it seems both a release and a lifeline. 
  A stroke of very good fortune arrived with his novel ‘The Beetle’ published in 1897.  This would turn out to be his greatest commercial success and added some much-needed gravitas to his literary reputation.   
  Marsh was a prolific writer and wrote almost 80 volumes of fiction as well as many short stories, across many genres from horror and crime to romance and humour.   His unusual characters, plotting devices and other literary developments have identified his legacy as one of the best British writers of his time.   
  Richard Marsh died from heart disease in Haywards Heath in Sussex on 9th August 1915.  He was 57.

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  Katherine Mansfield - Chapter &...

  Katherine Mansfield

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  Literature is a world of words and wonder, able to take us on almost unimaginable journeys from the wild and fantastic to the grind and minutiae of life. 
   
  An author’s ideas are his building blocks, his architecture of the mind, building a structure on which all else will rest; the narrative, the characters, the words - those few words that begin the adventure. 
   
  In this series we look at some of our leading classic authors across two genres: the short story and the poem.  In this modern world there is an insatiable need to categorise and pigeon-hole everyone and everything.  But ideas, these grains and saplings of the brain, need to roam, to explore and find their perfect literary use vehicle.  Our authors are masters of many literary forms, perhaps known for one but themselves favouring another. 
   
  Story. Poems. Story.  Within these boundaries come all manner of invention and cast of characters.  And, of course, each author has their own way of revealing their own chapter and verse.    
   
  1 - Chapter & Verse - Katherine Mansfield - An Introduction 
  2 - Bliss by Katharine Mansfield 
  3 - Sorrowing Love by Katherine Mansfield 
  4 - Loneliness by Katherine Mansfield 
  5 - A Little Boy's Dream by Katherine Mansfield 
  6 - Fairy Tale by Katherine Mansfield 
  7 - The Candle by Katherine Mansfield 
  8 - Evening Song of the Thoughtful Child by Katherine Mansfield 
  9 - The Wounded Bird by Katherine Mansfield 
  10 - Covering Wings by Katherine Mansfield 
  11 - In the Rangitaki Valley by Katherine Mansfield 
  12 - The Town Between the Hills by Katherine Mansfield 
  13 - Deaf House Agent by Katherine Mansfield 
  14 - Camomile Tea by Katherine Mansfield 
  15 - The Arabian Shawl by Katherine Mansfield 
  16 - The Quarrel by Katherine Mansfield 
  17 - The Garden Party by Katherine Mansfield

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  Anthology of Classic Short...

  Anton Chekhov, Guy de...

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  This is a collection of stories about interesting, unusual, bright human characters and destinies.
  Contents:
  Gusev by Anton Chekhov
  Boule de Suif by Guy De Maupassant
  Alyosha the Pot by Leo Tolstoy
  Mateo Falcone by Prosper Mérimée
  Little Brother by Mary E. Mann
  Bartleby, The Scrivener by Herman Melville
  The Lightning-Rod Man by Herman Melville
  The Ambitious Guest by Nathaniel Hawthorne
  The Darling by Anton Chekhov
  A Simple Heart by Gustave Flaubert

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  August Heat

  W. F. Harvey

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  Title: August Heat 
  Author: W. F. Harvey 
  Narrator: Jonathan Dunne 
  Original Publication: 1910 
  Public Domain: Yes 
  Series Placement: Number 35 in the Timeless Terrors series 
  Description: 
  August Heat by W. F. Harvey is a study in fate and foreboding — a story where coincidence feels like prophecy and the ordinary turns quietly terrifying. On a blistering summer afternoon, an artist sketches the image of a man destined for death. By chance, or by something darker, he meets that very man soon after — and together they face a future that may already be set in stone. 
  Harvey’s understated masterpiece captures the dread of inevitability without a single ghost or monster. Its horror lies in what cannot be changed — the creeping sense that destiny is real, and that some meetings are written long before they occur. 
  Narrated by Amazon bestselling horror author Jonathan Dunne, this performance evokes the suffocating heat, the weight of coincidence, and the chill of realization that closes around both men. While the text itself 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, August Heat stands as a haunting reminder that true terror needs no apparition — only time, silence, and the certainty of what must come.

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  J Alan A - A Short Story...

  A J lan

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  Leslie Harrison Lambert was born on 11th November 1883 in Nottingham. 
   
  After attending Rugby School he trained to be a surveyor. One of his passions was magic and such was his prowess that he joined The Magic Circle, and performed at society events. 
   
  By the beginning of World War I he was an amateur radio ham and volunteered to work at a coastguard station in Norfolk to intercept German radio transmissions. By November 1914 he was with the Admiralty at Naval Intelligence Room 40.  By 1919 this had become part of the new Government Code and Cypher School.  He was still there as World War II erupted across Europe and with many of his colleagues he transferred to Bletchley Park.  There, in Hut 8, he was quoted as saying that "in contrast to his outrageously unconventional stories" that he led his life on "a monotonously regular timetable". Life outside the Intelligence services was very different.  He married but the couple had no children.  They lived at Holland Park with a second home at Potter Heigham for sailing on the Norfolk Broads.  Other interests were as an amateur radio operator, using the call sign G2ST, and an authority on food and wine. 
   
  He contacted the BBC to suggest he might tell one of his own short stories on the radio.  Thus was born A J Alan, and his broadcast of ‘My Adventure in Jermyn Street’, on New Year’s Eve, 1924.  It was an immediate success and although he only broadcast a handful of times a year he was one of the most popular radio personalities of the time.  He spent weeks working on each short story, honing his conversational style, making his stories seem like anecdotes that had peculiarly happened to him.  
   
  A live broadcast was, in fact, a performance.  He used cards to avoid any rustling noises and kept a candle lit in case the lights failed.  His attire was a dinner jacket with eye glass, and a slim black briefcase.  
   
  Many of his stories were subsequently printed in newspapers and magazines. 
   
  By 1937 his health had deteriorated, and he reduced his radio work making his last broadcast on 21st March 1940.  
   
  A J Alan died on 13th December 1941. 
   
  01 - A J Alan - A Short Story Collection - An Introduction 
  02 - My Adventure In Jermyn Street by A J Alan 
  03 - The Hair by A J Alan 
  04 - My Adventure in Norfolk by A J Alan 
  05 - The Diver by A J Alan 
  06 - The 19 Club by A J Alan

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  Thomas Mann - New Selected Stories

  Thomas Mann

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  Lit Hub: Most Anticipated Books of 2023 
   
   
   
  A towering figure in the pantheon of twentieth-century literature, Thomas Mann has often been perceived as a dry and forbidding writer—"the starched collar," as Bertolt Brecht once called him. But in fact, his fiction is lively, humane, sometimes hilarious. In these fresh renderings of his best short work, award-winning translator Damion Searls casts new light on this underappreciated aspect of Mann's genius. 
   
   
   
  The headliner of this volume, "Chaotic World and Childhood Sorrow" (in its first new translation since 1936)—a subtle masterpiece that reveals the profound emotional significance of everyday life—is Mann's tender but sharp-eyed portrait of the "Bigs" and "Littles" of the bourgeois Cornelius family as they adjust to straitened circumstances in hyperinflationary Weimar Germany. Here, too, is a free-standing excerpt from Mann's first novel, Buddenbrooks—a sensation when it was first published. "Death in Venice" (also included in this volume) is Mann's most famous story, but less well known is that he intended it to be a diptych with another, comic story—included here as "Confessions of a Con Artist, by Felix Krull." "Louisey"—a tale of sexual humiliation that gives a first glimpse of Mann's lifelong ambivalence about the power of art—rounds out this revelatory, transformative collection.

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