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  The Young Bull

  Geraint Goodwin

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  Arthur Geraint Goodwin (1903 – 1941) was a Welsh novelist and short story writer. Although Goodwin died at the age of 38 of tuberculosis, the works he has left to posterity remain full of life, fresh and vigorous. "The Young Bull" is the story of a farmer on the Welsh border who is trapped in a hostile and combative marriage which is nonetheless charged with suppressed sexual tension. An episode where he is forced to do battle with his enraged bull and his wife steps into the fray to help serves both as an allegory of his marriage and the catalyst to breaking the barrier between the couple.

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  Top 10 Short Stories The - Men...

  Guy de Maupassant, Leo Tolstoy,...

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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. 
   
  This decade is resplendent with literature and its many prodigiously talented authors who write on as varied a range of subjects as might be thought possible. Yet each is studded with careful literary precision and narrative verve.  It is a remarkable decade. 
   
  1 - The Top 10 - The 1880's - The Men - An Introduction 
  2 - The Horla by Guy de Maupassant 
  3 - How Much Land Does A Man Need by Leo Tolstoy 
  4 - The Body Snatcher by Robert Louis Stevenson 
  5 - The Lady with the Dog by Anton Chekhov 
  6 - The Withered Arm by Thomas Hardy 
  7 - The Canterville Ghost - Part 1 by Oscar Wilde 
  8 - The Canterville Ghost - Part 2 by Oscar Wilde 
  9 - A Horseman in the Sky by Ambrose Bierce 
  10 - The Phantom Rickshaw by Rudyard Kipling 
  11 - The Lady, or the Tiger by Frank Stockton 
  12 - The Signal by Vsevolod Garshin

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  Philomel Cottage

  Agatha Christie

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  The recently married Alix Martin is obsessed with a recurring dream of her new husband’s murder. Each time she can see the murderer clearly, and it’s the mild-mannered man she had previously been engaged to, taking his revenge. But, what’s worse is that at the end of the dream she thanks the murderer. Perplexed, Alix tries to calm herself by spending time in the garden of her picturesque cottage. But her gardener confuses her further by wishing her well on her trip to London—a trip which Alix knows nothing about. Now Alix is scared: is the gardener imagining things, or is she?

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  The Price We Pay

  M.H. Lee

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  What If You Didn't Have To Struggle Anymore?Clark has spent every day of his life fighting to survive his terminal illness and provide for his family, but then all his wishes are unexpectedly answered and he's left asking the question, what now?

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  The Man Upstairs - And Other...

  P. G. Wodehouse

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  Nineteen tales of romantic entanglements from one of British literature’s comedic stars, the author of the Jeeves novels.   First published in 1914, these short stories by P. G. Wodehouse deal with matters of the heart in all their complicated glory. From the struggling artist and his lovely downstairs neighbor in “The Man Upstairs” to a playwright’s romantic rescues in “Deep Waters” to a matrimonial sweepstakes in “The Good Angel,” Wodehouse captures the circumstances—both mundane and mysterious, contrived and spontaneous—that bring two strangers together in love.  Praise for P. G. Wodehouse   “Wodehouse’s idyllic world can never stale. He will continue to release future generations from captivity that may be more irksome than our own. He has made a world for us to live in and delight in.” —Evelyn Waugh   “He exhausts superlatives.” —Stephen Fry   “Pure word music.” —Douglas Adams

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  The Dream of a Ridiculous Man

  Fyodor Dostoevsky

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  Fyodor Mikhailovich Dostoyevsky was born in Moscow on 11th November, 1821 to distinguished multi-ethnic parents from a Lithuanian background.   
   
  His childhood years were at the family home in hospital grounds which also contained an orphanage, an insane asylum and a cemetery for criminals.  The young Fyodor often disobeyed his father by talking to the ill in the hospital gardens.   
   
  His health was compromised at age 9 when he experienced his first epileptic fit. By the time he was a teenager both parents had died and he was now enrolled in a military academy where he graduated and eventually became a Lieutenant in 1842.  He left military service the next year. 
   
  In 1846 he published his first novel ‘Poor Cow’ to great literary acclaim.  His next was unable to emulate that success but his short stories helped provide an income.  Life as an author was definitely difficult. As he began his next work he was arrested and incarcerated for treason and participation in the political and literary Petrashevsky Circle. Although the case was weak and unjustified he was sentenced to 4 years of hard labour followed by 5 years of military service in a Siberian regiment.  
   
  Despite the undoubted hardships and setbacks in his life, and whether they helped or hindered his writing, his talents produced many exceptional works of literature including ‘Crime and Punishment’, ‘The Idiot’ and ‘The Brothers Karamazov’.   
   
  Dostoevsky’s ability to get under the skin of his characters and show the inner workings of their mind was hugely influential and ahead of its time.  Interwoven with this was the influence of the broader social, spiritual and political forces at work in a person's psyche.   
   
  Fyodor Dostoevsky struggled financially and remained in poor health for much of his adult life.  He died from a lung haemorrhage on 9th February, 1881. 
   
  ‘The Dream of a Ridiculous Man’ is one of his many classic short stories that turn a splinter of the ordinary into the spiralling descent of chaos.

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