Other books that might interest you

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  The Mirror Crack'd from Side to...

  Anonymous

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  In Agatha Christie’s classic mystery, The Mirror Crack’d from Side to Side, a fatal dose of poison meant for a glamorous movie star fells her ardent admirer instead—and Miss Marple is there to unmask a murderer. 
  One minute, silly Heather Babcock had been babbling on at her movie idol, the glamorous Marina Gregg. The next, Heather suffered a massive seizure, poisoned by a deadly cocktail. 
  It seems likely that the cocktail was intended for the beautiful actress. But while the police fumble to find clues, Miss Marple begins to ask her own questions, because as she knows—even the most peaceful village can hide dark secrets.

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  Top 10 Short Stories The - The...

  Charles Dickens

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  Short stories have always been a sort of instant access into an author’s brain, their soul and heart.  A few pages can lift our lives into locations, people and experiences with a sweep of landscape, narration, feelings and emotions that is difficult to achieve elsewhere. 
   
  In this series we try to offer up tried and trusted ‘Top Tens’ across many different themes and authors. But any anthology will immediately throw up the questions – Why that story? Why that author?  
   
  The theme itself will form the boundaries for our stories which range from well-known classics, newly told, to stories that modern times have overlooked but perfectly exemplify the theme.  Throughout the volume our authors whether of instant recognition or new to you are all leviathans of literature. 
   
  Some you may disagree with but they will get you thinking; about our choices and about those you would have made.  If this volume takes you on a path to discover more of these miniature masterpieces then we have all gained something. 
   
  In this small corner of England, just across from Europe, some of England’s finest literary talent was born, raised and created short stories that still thrill the soul and ravish the brain with a verve and talent that is second to none.  In their words true genius is often found. 
   
  1 - The Top 10 - English Authors of the South-East - An Introduction 
  2 - The Signalman by Charles Dickens 
  3 - The Man Who Could Work Miracles by H G Wells 
  4 - Oh Whistle and I'll Come to You My Lad by M R James 
  5 - The Death Room by Edgar Wallace 
  6 - The Unfortunate Bride or The Blind Lady a Beauty by Aphra Behn 
  7 - Pink Flannel by Ford Maddox Ford 
  8 - Sophy Mason Comes Back by E M Delafield 
  9 - Mrs Amworth by E F Benson 
  10 - Freckles by William Pett Ridge 
  11 - Frida, or The Lover's Leap, A Legend of the West Country by R D Blackmore

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  Top 10 Short Stories The -...

  Franz Kafka, Guy de Maupassant,...

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  Short stories have always been a sort of instant access into an author’s brain, their soul and heart.  A few pages can lift our lives into locations, people and experiences with a sweep of landscape, narration, feelings and emotions that is difficult to achieve elsewhere. 
   
  In this series we try to offer up tried and trusted ‘Top Tens’ across many different themes and authors. But any anthology will immediately throw up the questions – Why that story? Why that author?  
   
  The theme itself will form the boundaries for our stories which range from well-known classics, newly told, to stories that modern times have overlooked but perfectly exemplify the theme.  Throughout the volume our authors whether of instant recognition or new to you are all leviathans of literature. 
   
  Some you may disagree with but they will get you thinking; about our choices and about those you would have made.  If this volume takes you on a path to discover more of these miniature masterpieces then we have all gained something. 
   
  Those taken away by their own hand leave many questions and many sorrows.  In this volume ten of our vaunted authors share stories of tragedy and the early demise of characters who take a tortured path of no return. 
   
  01 - The Top 10 - Suicide - An Introduction 
  02 - In the Penal Colony by Franz Kafka 
  03 - Suicides by Guy de Maupassant 
  04 - The Victory by Rabindranath Tagore 
  05 - Paul's Case by Willa Cather 
  06 - Claude Gueux by Victor Hugo 
  07 - The Mourner by Mary Shelley 
  08 - A Slav Soul by Alexander Kuprin 
  09 - Cohen of Trinity by Amy Levy 
  10 - A Passion in the Desert by Honoré de Balzac 
  11 - The Quadroons by Lydia Maria Child

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  The Exiles

  Vivian Stuart

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  VOYAGE TO THE LAST FRONTIER...
  The first book in the dramatic and intriguing story about the colonisation of Australia: a country built on blood, passion, and dreams.
  They were transported from 1780s' England, packed like cattle in cargo compartments: scammers and prostitutes, thieves and murderers — doomed to build His Majesty's new colony in Captain Cook's anchorage in Botany Bay.
  It was a cruel fate even for the toughest of individuals but especially for 15-year-old Jenny Taggart, who was sentenced to lifelong exile for a crime she did not commit. Will there be a future for her in this unknown country, or will she succumb to a rough and brutal life?
  Rebels and outcasts, they fled halfway across the earth to settle the harsh Australian wastelands. Decades later — ennobled by love and strengthened by tragedy — they had transformed a wilderness into a fertile land. And themselves into The Australians.

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  Compassion - A powerful tale...

  Vicente Blasco Ibáñez

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  Vicente Blasco Ibáñez was born in Valencia, Spain on 29th January 1867.  
   
  At university, he studied law and graduated in 1888 but never felt the urgency to practice - he was more interested in politics, journalism, literature and women.   
   
  Politically he was a militant Republican partisan and, in his youth, founded a newspaper, El Pueblo (The People). The newspaper was taken to court many times and he made many enemies. In one incident he was shot and almost killed. In 1896, Ibáñez was arrested and sentenced to a few months in prison. 
   
  Despite this colourful background he found time to write novels. His first published work was ‘La Araña Negra’ (The Black Spider) in 1892, a work that he later repudiated although at the time it was a useful vehicle for him to express his anti-clerical views. 
   
  In 1894, he published ‘Arroz y Tartana’ (Airs and Graces), about a late 19th Century widow in Valencia trying to keep up appearances in order to marry her daughters well.   
   
  Ibáñez’s next sequence of books studied rural life in the farmlands of Valencia and failed to gain much of an audience.   
   
  His writing now took on a new direction with its now familiar sensational and melodramatic themes in 1908 with ‘Sangre y Arena’ (Blood and Sand), which follows the career of Juan Gallardo from his poor beginnings as a child in Seville, to his rise to becoming a famous matador in Madrid 
   
  However, his greatest success was ‘Los Cuatro Jinetes del Apocalipsis (The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse) in 1916, which tells a tangled tale of the French and German sons-in-law of an Argentinian land-owner who find themselves fighting on opposite sides in the First World War.  It was a literary and commercial sensation and became the best-selling book of 1919.  It also propelled Rudolph Valentino to stardom in the 1921 film. 
   
  Ironically his fame in the English-speaking world has come not as a novelist but as the stories behind some of Hollywood’s greatest silent movies. 
   
  Vicente Blasco Ibáñez died in Menton, France on January 28th, 1928, the day before his 61st birthday.

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  Barren Grounds

  B. Michael Radburn

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  In 1960s Sydney, a killer stalks the streets – and one cop will risk everything to stop him. 
   
  The calling card of the killer known as ‘The Jeweller’ is as elegant as it is gruesome: a pair of ring fingers, separated from their owners, encircled by a band of wire, and delivered directly to Senior Detective Joe Capello. When the Jeweller taunts Joe and his team into meeting him in the diseased grounds of Barren Park, the consequences of that evening will have permanent repercussions for everyone involved. And for Joe, it gets personal.  
   
  Two years later, Joe is off the force, but no less obsessed with the Jeweller and his horrific crimes. When a new parcel arrives at his home, Joe is invited back onto the task force and given the opportunity to redeem himself. But vindication relies on Joe finally capturing The Jeweller and now he has to decide if he’s willing to do what it takes – whatever it takes – to finally bring this case to a close.

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