Publisher: Diwan
Characters in From Madid to Heaven unexpectedly find themselves in impossible circumstances. In fourteen short stories, set between Iberia and North Africa, they come nevertheless to face the strange possibility that when nothing is possible, everything may suddenly be possible.
Lafcadio Hearn was born on the 27th June 1850 on the Ionian isle of Levkás in Greece to a British Army officer and a Greek Mother. His father, fearing for his career prospects at being married to a Greek Orthodox wife, sent them to Dublin whilst he continued to advance his career with further postings. Life there was difficult for mother and son. His father returned, wounded and traumatised, when Lafcadio was three. He annulled the marriage and she remarried but had to give up care of Lafcadio to her sister-in law. After brief periods for Catholic education in England and France he emigrated to Ohio in the United States when he was 19, taking on a series of casual jobs before embarking on a career as a journalist, publishing poems and essays in Cincinnati. It was whilst here that he began a side-line in translating, starting with Gautier and Flaubert. He married in 1874 to a 20 year old African-American woman in violation of Ohio's anti-miscegenation law. The marriage soon failed. In 1877 he relocated to New Orleans to write on a variety of themes before picking up a two year assignment from Harper’s to write in the West Indies, where he also wrote his first novel. In 1890 Harper’s sent him to Japan. Here he left journalism and took the remarkable decision to become a schoolteacher in the north of Japan. Enraptured by the culture he was driven to explain it in various Western publications to those who had little, if any, knowledge of its culture. Within the year he had fallen in love with, and married, a high-born Japanese lady, together they would have four children. In 1895 he became a Japanese national and took the name Koizumi Yakumo, Koizumi being his wife’s family name. The following few years, whilst a professor of Literature at the Imperial University of Japan, were his most creative and admired period. Lafcadio Hearn died of heart failure on the 26th of September 1904, in Tokyo, Japan shortly before leaving to deliver a series of lectures at Cornell University in New York State. He was 54. 1 - Lafcadio Hearn - A Short Story Collection - An Introduction 2 - A Dead Secret by Lafcadio Hearn 3 - Before the Supreme Court by Lafcadio Hearn 4 - Diplomacy by Lafcadio Hearn 5 - L'Amour Apres La Mort by Lafcadio Hearn 6 - Of A Promise Broken by Lafcadio Hearn 7 - Stranger Than Fiction by Lafcadio Hearn 8 - The Corpse Rider by Lafcadio Hearn 9 - The Ghostly Kiss by Lafcadio Hearn 10 - The Undying One by Lafcadio Hearn 11 - The Vision of the Dead Creole by Lafcadio HearnShow book
Montague Rhodes James is cited as perhaps the greatest English writer of ghost stories, an opinion few would disagree with. James was born on 1st August 1862 at Goodnestone Parsonage in Kent, where his father was Curate but at age 3 the family went to live at Livermere, near Bury St Edmunds in East Anglia. From early childhood he had a passion for mediaeval books and antiques. He was educated initially as a boarder at Temple Grove School in East Sheen, west London, before gaining a scholarship to Eton and thence Cambridge where he gained a double first, becoming a distinguished linguist and mediaevalist. Before the Great War vacations were usually spent touring Europe absorbing cultures and references for his later writing. A man of enormous knowledge it was said he timed his breakfast egg whilst he completed the Times crossword. Many of his elegant yet terrifying tales were created by discarding the prevailing gothic cliches and placing his characters and narrative in a realistic setting. Thereby the stories gained atmosphere and menace on a grand scale and he was famed as the originator of the antiquarian ghost story. Although story-telling and writing these 30 or so tales was a hobby, when published their effect transformed the genre and still chill the bones in our more modern times. James was also a medievalist scholar and translator whose work remains highly respected. He was also Provost of Eton College between 1918 and 1936. M R James died on 12th June 1936 at Eton in Buckinghamshire. He was 73.Show book
"Peppered with pop culture and brand name references to lend realism, these unnerving stories offer witty yet foreboding observations of humanity’s folly. Readers who relish the blending of genres will be pulled in by the humor, humanity, and horrors." ~ Booklife Reviews by Publishers Weekly Readers' Choice Award-winning author Stacey Longo is back with a collection of darkly funny, spine-tingling fiction that will haunt your dreams long after you've turned the final page. Journey across the Donner Pass with young newlyweds whose dreams of grandeur turn gruesome. Dare to venture to a carny retirement community, where the echoes of past tortures still resonate. In Tempered Glass, Longo masterfully weaves together a tapestry of dread, seamlessly blending psychological terror with supernatural horror. Can you handle the horrors that lie within?Show book
A monster lurks in the Canadian forests. If the legends are to be believed, a small band of hunters is about to meet the Wendigo. The legend of the Wendigo originates from folk stories from the Plains and Great Lakes Native Americans. The creature is a malevolent spirit, known to possess and even eat humans. Algernon Blackwood crafts this ghostly tale masterfully, filling it with atmosphere, tension, and drama.Show book
The Necklace (La Parure) by Guy de Maupassant is a masterful short story of irony, vanity, and societal pressure. First published in 1884, this French literary classic tells the story of Madame Loisel, a woman born into modest means who yearns for wealth and luxury. When she borrows a beautiful necklace to attend a glamorous ball, a single careless decision sets off a chain of events that alters the course of her life. With its sharp social critique and devastating twist ending, The Necklace has become one of the most anthologized and taught short stories in world literature. Maupassant’s clear, concise style and deep understanding of human nature are on full display in this tale of pride, sacrifice, and misplaced values. This full audiobook captures the tension, elegance, and tragic irony of Maupassant’s original French narrative in a voice that blends subtle emotion with literary depth—perfect for fans of classic literature, moral tales, and psychological realism.Show book
John Griffith Chaney was born on January 12th, 1876 in San Francisco. His father, William Chaney, was living with Flora Wellman when she became pregnant. Chaney insisted she have an abortion. Flora's response was to turn a gun on herself. Although her wounds were not severe the trauma made her temporarily deranged. In late 1876 his mother married John London and the young child was brought to live with them as they moved around the Bay area, eventually settling in Oakland where now, calling himself Jack, he completed grade school. Jack worked hard at several jobs, sometimes 12-18 hours a day, but his dream was university. He studied hard and borrowed the money to enrol in the summer of 1896 at the University of California in Berkeley. In 1897, at 21, Jack searched out newspaper accounts of his mother's suicide attempt and for the name of his biological father. He wrote to Chaney, then living in Chicago, who claimed he could not be Jack’s father because he was impotent and casually asserted that London's mother had relations with other men. Jack, devastated by the response, quit Berkeley and went to the Klondike. Other accounts suggest that his dire finances presented Jack with the excuse he needed to leave. In the Klondike Jack began to gather material for his writing but also accumulated many health problems, including scurvy, which together with hip and leg problems he would carry for the rest of his life. During the late 1890's Jack was regularly publishing short stories and by the turn of the century full blown novels. By 1904 Jack had married, fathered two children and was now in the process of divorcing. A stint as a reporter on the Russo-Japanese war of 1904 was equal amounts trouble and experience. But that experience was always put to good use in a continuing and remarkable output of work. In 1905 he married Charmian Kittredge who at last was a soul and companion who brought him some semblance of peace despite his advancing alcoholism and his incurable wanderlust. Twelve years later Jack had amassed both wealth and a literary reputation through such classics as ‘The Call of the Wild’, ‘White Fang’ and many others. He had a reputation as a social activist and was a tireless friend of the workers. Jack London died suffering from dysentery, late-stage alcoholism and uremia, aged only 40, on November 22nd 1916 at his property in Glen Elen in California In ‘South of the Slot’ Jack London reveals yet another facet of his writing talents. In turn of the Century San Francisco, a Professor of Sociology explores the working-class neighbourhoods gradually revealing an alter-ego with his Union loving personality and name. The question is which is his real character.Show book
