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  Oscar Wilde's Stories for...

  Oscar Wilde

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  Oscar Fingal O'Flahertie Wills Wilde was born on the 16th October 1854 in Dublin, Ireland.  The son of Dublin intellectuals Oscar proved himself an outstanding classicist at Trinity College and then at Oxford.  
   
  Wilde then moved to London and its fashionable cultural and social circles.  With his biting wit, flamboyant dress, and glittering conversation, Wilde became one of the most well-known personalities of his day. 
   
  His only novel, ‘The Picture of Dorian Gray’ was published in 1890 and he then moved on to writing for the stage with ‘Salome’ in 1891.  His society comedies were enormous hits and turned him into one of the most successful writers of late Victorian London. 
   
  Whilst his masterpiece, ‘The Importance of Being Earnest’, was on stage in London, Wilde had the Marquess of Queensberry, the father of his lover, Lord Alfred Douglas, prosecuted for libel.  The trial unearthed evidence that caused Wilde to drop his charges and led to his own arrest and trial for gross indecency. He was convicted and imprisoned for two years hard labour. It was to break him. 
   
  On release he left for France. There he wrote his last work, ‘The Ballad of Reading Gaol’ in 1898.  He died destitute in Paris at the age of forty-six sipping champagne a friend had brought with the line ‘Alas I am dying beyond my means’. 
   
  One of his most beloved legacies has been his five children’s stories which are gathered here in this volume.   
   
  Much of the writing is very modern, even for today.  He explores a range of themes in his own inimitable way, from friendship, generosity and sacrifice through bravado and bragging to the religious overtones of death.   
   
  Whilst they are firm children’s favourites they also enchant parents and adults.

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  H P Lovecraft Volume 2

  H. P. Lovecraft

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  Howard Phillips Lovecraft is among the greatest American writers of fantasy and the supernatural. Born in 1890, a native of Providence, Rhode Island, his health was uncertain from childhood and he led a sheltered early life. His semi-invalidism enabled him to read omnivorously, and as a shy imaginative child he began to invent what would in his adult life become a whole macabre fantastic world of his own, peopled by creatures out of his own weird imagination. As an adult he was retiring, almost a recluse. Tall, thin and pale, but with bright alert eyes, he was much given to wandering his native city in the dark hours of the night, and he became a devoted student of its antiquities. He began to write early, but had nothing published nationally until he was in his twenties. He set many of his stories around the imaginary town of Arkham, and invented an entire mythology of his own, its core being the demoniac cult of Cthulhu, based on the lore or legend that the world was at one time inhabited by another race who, in practising black magic, lost their foothold or were expelled, yet live outside, ever ready to take possession of this earth again. Since his early death in 1937 his stories have increasingly grown in popularity. He encouraged younger writers, and a number of authors have continued to develop in their own stories the cult of Cthulhu. In this volume our tales are The Call Of Cthulhu and Reanimator.  They are read for you by Garrick Hagon who began his acting career as a boy, playing the part of the Prince of Wales to Alec Guiness’s RICHARD III at the Stratford Shakespeare Festival in Ontario. He Has done much radio drama, and his long list of television appearances include Colditz and Dr Who. Among his many films are Star Wars, Cry Freedom, A Bridge Too Far and Batman.

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  Edith Nesbit: Man Size in Marble...

  Edith Nesbit

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  Edith Nesbit is more famously known as a writer of children’s stories such as The Railway Children.  But in this volume we explore her short stories of the macabre and ghostly sort.  Born in 1858 in Kennington, then part of Surrey and now London.  Her early life was one of constant house changes before meeting, age 17, Hubert Bland who she was to marry three years later – whilst she was 7 months pregnant.  Additionally Bland kept his affair with another woman going throughout.  The two children of this relationship were raised by Edith as her own as well as their own three.  They founded the Fabian Society in 1884.   Thought of as the first modern writer for children she also wrote for adults producing over 50 books in total as well as a collections of poetry which we shall explore in a separate volume.  These stories are brought to your ears in eerie detail by George Irving.

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  Moon Orchard - An audiobook...

  Seetha Nambiar Dodd, Lin Blythe,...

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  A mother’s own childhood experiences of bigotry are triggered when her son is picked on for the colour of his skin. Another mother pre-judges a parent at the school drop-off on the basis of her appearance. A disparate group of travellers on the trans-Siberian railway in the 1930s share memories of Chinese culture, history and politics. And an Australian-Chinese visitor finds herself both fascinated and estranged riding a subway in modern-day China.  
  Moon Orchard presents a range of Asian Australian voices exploring identity and experience in a variety of writing styles from prose to poetry to spoken word. Includes by ‘Fair Enough’ by Seetha Nambiar Dodd, ‘And/Or’ by Lin Blythe, ‘Time and Prejudice’ by Rohini Keegan Alexander, ‘Clockwork’ by Christine Pang, ‘The Quiet Places I Walk’ by Isabelle Quilty, ‘West of Chita’ by B. Fanlin, ‘I Owe You’ by Janet Bi Li Chan and ‘Succumbing to Dystopia’ by Angela Jin. With special guest, Hawaiian-based Vietnamese multi-media artist, azianami, performing ‘Memories Butterflies’. 
  Edited by Sophie Amos and Luzelle Sotelo. 
  The Moon Orchard project is supported by the New South Wales Government through Create NSW.

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  All Aunt Hagar's Children - Stories

  Edward P. Jones

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  In fourteen sublime stories, the bestselling and Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The Known World shows that his grasp of the human condition is firmer than ever. 
  Returning to the city that inspired his first prizewinning book, Lost in the City, Jones has filled this new collection with people who call Washington, D.C., home. Yet it is not the city's power brokers that most concern him but rather its ordinary citizens. All Aunt Hagar's Children turns an unflinching eye to the men, women, and children caught between the old ways of the South and the temptations that await them in the city, people who in Jones's masterful hands, emerge as fully human and morally complex, whether they are country folk used to getting up with the chickens or people with centuries of education behind them. With the legacy of slavery just a stone's throw behind them and the future uncertain, Jones's cornucopia of characters will haunt readers for years to come.

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  The Suicide Club

  Robert Louis Stevenson

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  First published in 1878, The Suicide Club is a collection of three gruesome adventure stories which combine into a single narrative, recounting the exploits of Floritzel, Prince of Bohemia and his trusty confidante Colonel Geraldine as they infiltrate a secret society of dubious individuals intent on losing their own lives. 
  
  
  The stories are: 
  
  
  Story of the Young Man with the Cream Tarts 
  The Prince and the Colonel are out incognito in London, when they meet a strange young man giving free cream tarts to all he meets. He introduces them to the Suicide Club, a horrific society whose members gamble with their own lives each night. Our heroes succeed in disbanding the club and its president is sent abroad "for disposal" with Geraldine's brother. 
  
  
  Story of the Physician and the Saratoga Trunk
  In the Latin Quarter of Paris, an unsuspecting American tourist finds himself at the heart of a dastardly plot. He is lured away by an attractive countess, only to discover a dead body in his bed on his return. His kind neighbour, Dr. Noel, arranges to hide the body in a trunk which is smuggled to London in the baggage of Prince Floritzel and Colonel Geraldine. When Floritzel discovers the plot, he also finds that the body is that of Geraldine's brother - and the President of the Suicide Club has escaped. 
  
  
  The Adventure of the Hansom Cab 
  In London, Lieutenant Brackenbury Rich is taken by a mysterious hansom cabman to a house where an odd party is underway. The host turns out to be Colonel Geraldine in disguise, who whisks him off to a secret location where Prince Floritzel and the President of the Suicide Club are to fight a final duel to the death.

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