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  The Snowstorm - Author of War &...

  Leo Tolstoy

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  Leo Tolstoy was born in 1828 in the Russian province of Tula to a wealthy noble family. As a child, he had private tutors but he showed little interest in any formal education. When he went to the University of Kazan in 1843 to study oriental languages and law, he left without completing his courses.  Life now was relaxed and idle but with some writing also taking place.  Gambling debts forced an abrupt change of path and he joined the army to fight in the Crimean War.  He was commended for his bravery and promoted but was appalled at the brutality and loss of life.  He recorded these and other earlier experiences in his diaries which formed the basis of several of his works. 
   
  In 1852 ‘Childhood’ was published to immediate success and was followed by ‘Boyhood’ and ‘Youth’. 
   
  His experience in the army and the horrors he witnessed resulted in ‘The Cossacks’ in 1862 and the trilogy ‘Sevastopol Tales’. After the war he travelled around Europe, visiting London and Paris and meeting such luminaries as Victor Hugo and Charles Darwin.  
   
  It was now that Tolstoy began his masterpiece, ‘War and Peace’. Published in 1869 it was an epic work that changed literature. He quickly followed this with ‘Anna Karenina’.  
   
  These successes made Tolstoy rich and helped him accomplish many of his dreams but also brought problems as he grappled with his faith and the lot of the oppressed poor. These revolutionary views became so popular that the authorities now kept him under surveillance.  
   
  He led a life of asceticism and vegetarianism and put his socialist ideals into practice by establishing numerous schools for the poor and food programmes. He also believed in giving away his wealth, which caused much discord with his wife.  
   
  His writing continued to bring forth classics such as ‘The Death of Ivan Ilyich’ and many brilliant and incisive short stories such as ‘How Much Land Does A Man Need’.  
   
  In 1901 Tolstoy was excommunicated from the Church and controversially deselected for the Nobel Prize for Literature. 
   
  Whilst undertaking a pilgrimage by train in October 1910 with his daughter Aleksandra he caught pneumonia in the nearby town of Astapovo.  Leo Tolstoy died on November 9th, 1910, he was 82. 
   
  In this much acclaimed short story Tolstoy’s characters are engulfed by a huge snowstorm which descends upon them and puts the successful conclusion of their journey into perilous doubt.

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  The Rise and Fall of Melchriess

  Martin Lundqvist

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  A flash fiction story about the demoness Melchriess, who uses a nun to be reborn into our world. To stop her, the patron saint of the poor, St Martin, intervenes in an unexpected way.

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  Lord Jim

  Joseph Conrad

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  Jim, a young British seaman, becomes first mate on the Patna, a ship full of pilgrims travelling to Mecca for the hajj. When the ship starts rapidly taking on water and disaster seems imminent, Jim joins his captain and other crew members in abandoning the ship and its passengers. A few days later, they are picked up by a British ship. However, the Patna and its passengers are later also saved, and the reprehensible actions of the crew are exposed. The other participants evade the judicial court of inquiry, leaving Jim to the court alone. He is publicly censured for this action and the novel follows his later attempts at coming to terms with his past. The novel is counted as one of 100 best books of the 20th century.

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  Mary's Christmas

  Laurie R. King

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  One of the preeminent figures in the realm of mystery fiction, New York Times bestselling author Laurie R. King is perhaps most widely celebrated for her works featuring the amiable, if often contentious, partnership between Mary Russell and Sherlock Holmes. From the collection Mary Russell's War, "Mary's Christmas" and "Stately Holmes" deliver the author's signature blend of narrative mastery and historical detail, while shining light on previously unexplored corners of the Russell-Holmes universe.

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  The Necromancer

  Arthur Gray

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  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?

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  The Shadow-Line

  Joseph Conrad

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  Written in 1915, The Shadow-Line is based upon events and experiences from twenty-seven years earlier to which Conrad returned obsessively in his fiction. A young sea captain's first command brings with it a succession of crises: his sea is becalmed, the crew laid low by fever, and his deranged first mate is convinced that the ship is haunted by the malignant spirit of a previous captain.This is indeed a work full of "sudden passions," in which Conrad is able to show how the full intensity of existence can be experienced by the man who, in the words of the older Captain Giles, is prepared to "stand up to his bad luck, to his mistakes, to his conscience." A subtle and penetrating analysis of the nature of manhood, The Shadow-Line investigates varieties of masculinity and desire in a subtext that counters the tale's seemingly conventional surface.

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