Altri libri che potrebbero interessarti

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  The Phantom Hearse

  Mary Fortune

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  The Phantom Hearse means death. Death always comes to the house where it’s sighted on moonlit evenings. But why does wicked old Jones love to talk about it so much? ¶ Mary Helena Fortune was a pioneer in detective fiction, albeit largely a unknown one. She travelled from Canada to Australia in 1855, where for the next fifty years, she contributed to magazines and newspapers under the pseudonyms “Waif Wanderer”, “W.W.”and her own initials “M.H.F.”. She wrote in a variety of genres: poetry, serialized novels, memoirs, and even gothic romance. But most significantly, she wrote over 500 detective stories. Her collection of stories, The Detective’s Album, by W.W. was published in 1871, and was described as, “The first book of detective stories to appear in Australia”. Only one copy is known to remain in existence. ¶ Mary Fortune helped delineate a few of the techniques significant in detective fiction. For example, the forensic manner in which the crime is treated, and delivering the story from the point of view of the detective. The Phantom Hearse also includes a supernatural element, which is also innovative, and synchronous with some Russian crime fiction.

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  South of the Slot - Iconic...

  Jack London

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  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.

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  Destination Unknown - B2+...

  Agatha Christie

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  Collins brings the Queen of Crime, Agatha Christie, to English language learners. 
  Agatha Christie is the most widely published author of all time and in any language. Now Collins has adapted her famous detective novels for English language learners. These carefully abridged versions are shorter with the language targeted at learners of English. 
  Famous scientists from around the world are disappearing and nobody knows why. The one woman who can help uncover the truth is dying after a plane crash. How can they discover where the scientists are without her? 
  Meanwhile, in a hotel room in Casablanca, Hilary Craven decides to end her life. But her suicide attempt is interrupted by a man who offers her an exciting alternative…

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  Five Short Stories by Women

  Sandra Cisneros, Nadine...

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  L.A. Theatre Works presents Five Short Stories by Women:  A quintet of tales from some of America’s most distinguished female authors.Life after High School, by Joyce Carol Oates, Read by Sarah DrewOates takes us to a time in the late 1950s, to South Lebanon High School, and shows us the lives of three people at a time of self-discovery.The Banks of the Vistula, by Rebecca Lee, Read by Emily BerglAn ambitious student wants desperately to make her mark in a linguistics class. Published by Algonquin Books of Chapel Hill ©2013.Never Marry a Mexican, by Sandra Cisneros, Read by Rita MorenoThe story of a woman named Clemencia who remembers her family, her parent’s culture, and her affair with a married man.* In the Cemetery Where Al Jolson Is Buried, by Amy Hempel, Read by Lynn CollinsWhat do you say to someone on their deathbed? Amy Hempel addresses this question head-on, as a young woman describes her visit to a dying friend.Once Upon a Time, by Nadine Gordimer, Read by Alex KingstonThis is anything but a fairy tale. It’s more of a dystopian fantasy - with overtones of the racial inequality in Gordimer’s native South Africa.*From WOMAN HOLLERING CREEK. Copyright © 1991 by Sandra Cisneros. Published by Alfred A. Knopf, Vintage Books and by Vintage Español as EL ARROYO DE LA LLORONA, translation, © 1996 by Liliana Valenzuela. Available on Random House Audiobook read by the author. By permission of Susan Bergholz Literary Services, New York City and Lamy, N.M. All rights reserved.Mixing Engineer: Mark Holden for The Invisible Studios, West Hollywood.

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  The Brown Wallet

  Stacy Aumonier

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  Giles is out of work and deep in debt after being cheated by a business partner. He is desperate to find a way to support his wife Eleanor and his daughter Anna, but he has no obvious marketable skills or talents. His one wealthy relative lends him tiny sums, and is so unpleasant over it that Giles scarcely dares borrow more.Then one day, Giles finds a wallet packed with banknotes in the back of a taxi. The conflict between his needy situation and his acute conscience threaten to become Giles' downfall...until a strange and unexpected stroke of fate intervenes to offer him a new route out of his dilemma.

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  The Right Hand of Doom

  Robert E. Howard

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  Robert Ervin Howard (1906-1936) was an American author who wrote weird fiction and terrifying horror stories.The Right Hand of Doom features one of his most fascinating characters, the puritan Soloman Kane. Kane is staying at an inn where in the taproom a braggard is boasting about having brought the evil necromancer Roger Simeon to justice.Simeon is to be hanged the next day. The necromancer has vowed revenge on the man who betrayed him...and that night, Kane is awakened by strange sounds in the room next to his in the inn. He goes to investigate and witnesses a scene more terrible and bizarre than anything he could ever have imagined....

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