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  News from the New American...

  Jay Neugeboren

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  “[W]andering Jews stray far from their geographical, cultural and spiritual homes . . . [in] an evocative collection from a confident storyteller” (Publishers Weekly).   Prize-winning novelist Jay Neugeboren’s third collection of short stories focuses on Jews in various states of exile and expatriation—strangers in strange lands, far from home. These dozen tales, by an author whose stories have been selected for more than fifty anthologies, including Best American Short Stories and O. Henry Prize Stories, span the twentieth century and vividly capture brief moments in the lives of their characters: a rabbi in a small town in New England struggling to tend to his congregation and himself, retirees who live in Florida but dream of Brooklyn, a boy at a summer camp in upstate New York learning about the Holocaust for the first time, Russians living in Massachusetts with the family who helped them immigrate, an American soldier as he grieves for members of his family murdered in a Nazi death camp. These are just a sampling of the lives illuminated in this moving collection. Set in various times and places, these poignant stories are all tales of personal exile that also illuminate that greater diaspora—geographical, emotional, or spiritual—in which many of us, whether Jews or non-Jews, live. “[A] brilliant collection.” ―The Jewish Advocate   “From the opening pages, the stories never cease to startle us, and they force us to rethink who we are in this strange new century of ours when all of us are adrift.” —Jerome Charyn, award-winning author of Big Red

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  The Registered Packet

  J. S. Fletcher

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  Joseph Smith Fletcher (1863-1935) was a British journalist and author. He wrote more than 230 books on a wide variety of subjects, both fiction and nonfiction. He was one of the leading writers of detective fiction in the Victorian 'golden age' of the short story.'The Registered Packet' is the story of Martineau, a young man returning home by ship after a two-year absence. On the ship he meets a stranger and volunteers to deliver a small parcel for him to the nearest post office, in order that his fellow traveller might catch his train. But on arrival in Hull, Martineau inadvertently leaves his bag in the cab. He is able to track down the vehicle and find his bag again, but to his horror the packet which was entrusted to him has disappeared. He and his brother set off in search of the missing package...and what follows is an extraordinary tale.

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  The Reverend Father Gaucher's...

  Alphonse Daudet

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  Alphonse Daudet (1840-1897) was one of France's finest storytellers.The Reverend Father Gaucher's Elixir is set in a dilapidated monastery in Provence. The order has fallen on hard times and the future of the entire monastery is in jeopardy. But the order's simpleton cow-herd, Brother Gaucher, has an unexpected idea. His old Auntie Bégon had in her later years invented a marvellous herbal elixir. By producing, bottling, and selling this, Brother Gaucher believes the order can become as rich as the Trappists and the monks of Chartreuse.The Prior is enthusiastic and Brother Gaucher sets to work, and before long the whole monastery is thriving. Brother Gaucher - now elevated to Father Gaucher - works alone and in secret in his distillery producing the wonderful and sought-after brew. But it is not long before Father Gaucher starts behaving very oddly...and his madness threatens to destabilize the whole monastery....

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  The Star

  H. G. Wells

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  Herbert George Wells (1866-1946) was a prolific English writer of science fiction stories and novels and is frequently credited as being the father of science fiction. "The Star" is the story of a shooting star which is discovered hurtling towards our solar system. It is on a collision course with Neptune. When the celestial crash occurs, the two planets combine into a gigantic burning star which is being drawn rapidly and irresistably towards our sun. But on what trajectory? Will it hit any other planets on its way? What about the earth?

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  Old Fashioned Landowners -...

  Nikolai Gogol

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  Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol was born on 1st April 1809 to a father, descended from Ukrainian Cossacks and a mother with a military background in the Ukrainian town of Sorochyntsi, then part of the Russian Empire and rich in Cossack traditions and folklore.   
   
  His father wrote poetry and plays which the young Gogol helped stage at his uncle’s home theatre.  This helped ignite in him a love of literature and blossomed when he attended, what is now, the Nizhyn Gogol State University at the age of 12.  Here he participated in school theatre productions and refined his mastery of his native Ukrainian and also the Russian of his Imperial masters. 
   
  In 1828 he went to St Petersburg and unsuccessfully tried to begin a career as an actor after finding that with no money and no connections the civil service was barred to him. 
   
  Embezzling money from his mother he embarked on a trip to Germany. When the money ran out, he returned to St Petersburg but the experiences were used in a series of stories he contributed to periodicals.  These tales were steeped in his childhood memories of the Ukrainian landscape and peasantry enlivened with the supernatural of its folklore woven with realistic events of the day.  He wrote in Russian in a whimsical, colloquial style with a smattering of Ukrainian words and phrases that provided an authenticity.  Eight stories were published as ‘Evenings on a Farm near Dikanka’.  Seemingly all at once fame and fortune arrived. Gogol was hailed by his contemporaries, including Pushkin, as a pre-eminent writer of Russian literature.   
   
  His success continued with his brilliant plays ‘The Inspector General’ and the comedy ‘The Marriage for the Theatre’, both being highly acclaimed.   
   
  In 1834 he became Professor of Medieval History at the University of St. Petersburg but with little academic or teacher training, failed to adequately fulfil many of his duties and soon resigned this post.  With no obligations and using his earnings from his writing, which now included the impressionistic and immortal ‘Dead Souls’, Gogol travelled around Europe, spending the most time in Rome where he studied art, read Italian literature and developed a passion for opera.  
   
  In the 1840s Gogol became preoccupied with a need to purify his soul and embarked on a pilgrimage to Jerusalem. In tandem he fell under the influence of a strict and austere spiritual ascetic who persuaded him to observe strict fasts that, allied with his depression and deteriorating health, contributed to his death on 21st April 1852 at the age of only 43. 
   
  In ‘Old Fashioned Land Owners’ Gogol describes a peaceful setting and a peaceful couple who have grown old together.  But foreboding makes an entrance and life is now a series of cruel twists that breaks everything.

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  Rudyard Kipling - The Short Stories

  Rudyard Kipling

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  The Short Stories of Rudyard Kipling. Rudayrd Kipling was one of the most popular writers of prose and poetry in the late 19th and 20th century and awarded the Nobel Prize for literature in 1907.  Born in Bombay on 30th December 1865 but, as was the custom of the British in India, he and his sister were sent back to England when he was 5.  The ill treatment and cruelty by the couple who they boarded with in Portsmouth, Kipling himself suggested contributed to the onset of his literary life.  This was further enhanced by his return to India at the age of 16 to work on a local paper as not only did this result in writing constantly but also made him explore issues of identity and national allegiance which pervade much of his work.  Whilst he is best remembered for his classic children’s stories and the popular poem If, he is also regarded as a major innovator in the art of the short story.  This audiobook provides fine example of this skill and is read by Ghizela Rowe and Richard Mitchley.

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