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  The Time Machine The Lost...

  H. G. Wells

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  Herbert George Wells was an English writer. Prolific in many genres, he wrote dozens of novels, short stories, and works of social commentary, history, satire, biography, and autobiography. His work also included two books on recreational war games. Wells is now best remembered for his science fiction novels and is often called the "father of science fiction", along with Jules Verne.During his own lifetime, however, he was most prominent as a forward-looking, even prophetic social critic who devoted his literary talents to the development of a progressive vision on a global scale. A futurist, he wrote a number of utopian works and foresaw the advent of aircraft, tanks, space travel, nuclear weapons, satellite television, and something resembling the World Wide Web. His science fiction imagined time travel, alien invasion, invisibility, and biological engineering. Wells's earliest specialized training was in biology, and his thinking on ethical matters took place in a specifically and fundamentally Darwinian context. He was also an outspoken Socialist from a young age, often (but not always, as at the beginning of the First World War) sympathizing with pacifist views. His later works became increasingly political and didactic, and he wrote little science fiction, while he sometimes indicated on official documents that his profession was that of a journalist. Novels such as Kipps and The History of Mr. Polly, which describe lower-middle-class life, led to the suggestion that he was a worthy successor to Charles Dickens, but Wells described a range of social strata and even attempted a diagnosis of English society as a whole.

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  A Lickpenny Lover - From their...

  O Henry

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  William Sydney Porter was born on 11th September 1862 in Greensboro, North Carolina. At age 3 his mother died from tuberculosis. From an early age it was clear Porter had a large appetite for reading as he absorbed the world around him. 
  He first attended at a school run by his aunt before enrolling at the Lindsey Street High School and then worked at his uncle’s drugstore and gained a pharmacists’ license in 1881.  
  A persistent cough took him to Texas in the hope that a change of climate would help his symptoms. He took on various types of work, initially from ranch hand and cook and then as varied as pharmacist, draftsman, bank teller and journalist. He also began to write, though for now, purely as a hobby. 
  He was a member of several singing and dramatic groups when he met 17 year old Athol Estes, daughter of a wealthy Austin family. Despite her mother’s objection owing to Athol’s tuberculosis, they began courting and in July 1887, they eloped and soon married. 
  Athol, impressed by his writing, encouraged him to get them published. A job as a draftsman at the Texas General Land Office paid a healthy $100 dollars per month and life was good. 
  But then life turned cruel. His son died a few hours after birth although a daughter, Margaret, came the following year.  His job had to be vacated but another was found at the First National Bank of Austin. The bank operated informally and Porter was careless in keeping the books. He lost that job but began writing for the humourous weekly The Rolling Stone and the Houston Post. Some time later the federal Bank auditors went through his former accounts and he was arrested on charges of embezzlement. 
  Porter fled the day before his trial to Honduras. Holed up for several months he began to write.  Athol had become too ill to travel to meet him and learning that her health was deteriorating he surrendered to the court in February 1897.  Bail was obtained so that he could stay with Athol during her final days.  
  Porter was sentenced to five years at the Ohio Penitentiary in Columbus. His pharmacy qualifications got him the job of night druggist.  His sentence also gave him time to write and publish fourteen short stories. In December 1899 in McClure’s Magazine he published a short story as O Henry.  
  He was released two years early in July 1901, and reunited with Margaret, now 11, in Pittsburgh.  He now began his most prolific period of writing; a short story per week for the New York World, while also publishing works in other magazines.  Eventually over 600 of his short stories were published. 
  Porter was a heavy drinker and in 1908 his health, which had deteriorated for several years, took a dramatic turn for the worse, as did his writing.  
  O Henry died of cirrhosis of the liver complicated by diabetes and an enlarged heart on 5th June 1910.

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  Evil Clergyman The (Unabridged)

  H. P. Lovecraft

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  "The Evil Clergyman" is an excerpt from a letter written by American horror fiction writer H. P. Lovecraft in 1933. After his death, it was published in the April 1939 issue of Weird Tales as a short story. The story was later adapted into the unreleased 1987 anthology film Pulse Pounders. The letter, to his friend Bernard Austin Dwyer, recounted a dream that Lovecraft had had. Although Lovecraft frequently based stories on his dreams, An H. P. Lovecraft Encyclopedia notes that " is difficult to say how HPL would have developed this conventional supernatural scenario.

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  Oliver Twist Volume 1

  Charles Dickens

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  In "Oliver Twist," Charles Dickens crafts an unforgettable journey of the orphaned Oliver, whose life unfolds in the grim underbelly of 19th-century London. Escaping the cruel workhouse, Oliver is drawn into a den of thieves led by the cunning Fagin. Amidst harrowing trials, Oliver's innocence and quest for belonging reveal unyielding resilience. Dickens intricately weaves themes of social justice and compassion, spotlighting the indomitable human spirit.

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  Tales For Every Season

  Ivan Bunin

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  One of the last true classics of Russian literature and 1933 Nobel Laureate for literature, Ivan Bunin brings you a series of relationship tales as diverse as the seasons and far more engrossing.

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  Oz: The Complete Collection

  L. Frank Baum

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  Here you will find the complete OZ Collection:1. The Wonderful Wizard of Oz Starts at Chapter 1 2. The Marvelous Land of Oz Starts at Chapter 253. Ozma of Oz Starts at Chapter 494. Dorothy and the Wizard in Oz Starts at Chapter 705. The Road to Oz Starts at Chapter 906. The Emerald City of Oz Starts at Chapter 1147. The Patchwork Girl of Oz Starts at Chapter 1448. Tik-Tok of Oz Starts at Chapter 1729. The Scarecrow of Oz Starts at Chapter 19710. Rinkitink in Oz Starts at Chapter 22111. The Lost Princess of Oz Starts at Chapter 24512. The Tin Woodman of Oz Starts at Chapter 27113. The Magic of Oz Starts at Chapter 29514. Glinda of Oz Starts at Chapter 318

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