Other books that might interest you

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  Shadow - A Parable

  Edgar Allan Poe

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  Title: Shadow – A Parable 
  Author: Edgar Allan Poe 
  Narrator: Jonathan Dunne 
  Original Publication: 1835 
  Public Domain: Yes 
  Series Placement: Number 42 in the Timeless Terrors series 
  Description: 
  “Shadow – A Parable” by Edgar Allan Poe is a brief yet profound meditation on death, memory, and the fragile line between the living and the departed. Set amid the aftermath of pestilence, seven figures gather in a dimly lit chamber, haunted by the ghostly presence of a shifting shadow that speaks not to the ear but to the soul. 
  First published in 1835, this early work reveals Poe’s mastery of atmosphere and allegory — a fusion of Biblical solemnity and gothic despair. The story’s vision of mortality and the dissolution of self foreshadows the existential darkness that would come to define Poe’s later works. 
  Narrated by Amazon bestselling horror author Jonathan Dunne, this performance imbues Poe’s haunting prose with a spectral intensity — a voice that rises from the silence of the grave to whisper of humanity’s inevitable end. While the text is in the public domain, this narration is an original performance and copyright © 2025 Jonathan Dunne. 
  Part of Timeless Terrors, a series devoted to resurrecting the masters of the macabre, Shadow – A Parable stands as an eerie meditation on the universality of death — a moment when even the proudest voices of the living fall silent beneath the eternal shadow.

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  The Unreliable Nature Writer

  Claire Carroll

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  The Unreliable Nature Writer is the eagerly-awaited debut collection of exhilarating, macabre and dreamy short stories from Claire Carroll. Shortlisted for The White Review Prize and winner of the Short Fiction Wild Writing Prize, Carroll portrays an unsettlingly hot, vaguely familiar world of humans facing the strain of intimate and global anxieties – trying to live alongside new technologies, failing environments and unknowable natural crises. Delightful to read and unsettling to imagine, these are haunting stories about love, loss, strangely-exposing housing applications and cows.

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  Count Magnus - From their pens...

  M R James

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  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.

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  Antarctica - Stories

  Claire Keegan

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  The compassionate, witty, and unsettling short stories collected here announced Claire Keegan as one of Ireland's most exciting and versatile new talents and earned comparison to the works of Joyce Carol Oates, Alison Lurie, Raymond Carver, and others. From the titular story about a married woman who takes a trip to the city with a single purpose in mind—to sleep with another man—Antarctica draws listeners into a world of obsession, betrayal, and fragile relationships. 
   
   
    
  In "Love in the Tall Grass," Cordelia wakes on the last day of the twentieth century and sets off along the coast road to keep a date, with her lover, that has been nine years in the waiting. In "Passport Soup," Frank Corso mourns the curious disappearance of his nine-year-old daughter and tries desperately to reach out to his shattered wife who has gone mad with grief. Throughout the collection, Keegan's characters inhabit a world where dreams, memory, and chance can have crippling consequences for those involved. 
   
   
    
  A Los Angeles Times Best Book of 2001, and recipient of the prestigious Rooney Prize for Irish Literature, the William Trevor Prize, Antarctica is a rare and arresting debut.

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  The Gift of the Magi

  O. Henry

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  "The Gift of the Magi" is a short story by O. Henry first published in 1905. The story tells of a young husband and wife and how they deal with the challenge of buying secret Christmas gifts for each other with very little money. As a sentimental story with a moral lesson about gift-giving, it has been popular for adaptation, especially for presentation at Christmas time. The plot and its twist ending are well-known, and the ending is generally considered an example of comic irony. It was allegedly written at Pete's Tavern on Irving Place in New York City.The story was initially published in The New York Sunday World under the title "Gifts of the Magi". It was first published in book form in the O. Henry Anthology The Four Million in April 1906.Among the most significant works O. Henry: "The Duplicity of Hargraves", "A Retrieved Reformation", "The Cop and the Anthem", "The Gift of the Magi", "The Skylight Room", "After Twenty Years", "Conscience in Art", "The Caballero's Way", "The Last Leaf", "The Third Ingredient", "The Ransom of Red Chief", "Makes the Whole World Kin".

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  Top 10 Short Stories The -...

  Robert Louis Stevenson, HP...

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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. 
   
  In this volume the wonders of Sci-Fi and its inventions are twisted with the darkness of horror to reveal narratives that grip us in inventive ways.  Perhaps only pens of the calibre of Lovecraft, Stevenson, Wells and their literary colleagues can so easily lure our senses into dark and terrifying times.   
   
  1 - The Top 10 Short Stories - Classic Sci Fi Horror - An Introduction 
  2 - Re-Animator - Part 1 by H P Lovecraft 
  3 - Re-Animator - Part 2 by H P Lovecraft 
  4 - The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll & Mr Hyde - Part 1 by Robert Louis Stevenson 
  5 - The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll & Mr Hyde - Part 2  by Robert Louis Stevenson 
  6 - A Thousand Deaths by Jack London 
  7 - The Operation by Violet Hunt 
  8 - Moxon's Master by Ambrose Bierce 
  9 - The Voice in the Night by William Hope Hodgson 
  10 - Carnivorine by Lucy Hamilton Hooper 
  11 - The Blue Laboratory by L T Meade 
  12 - Rappaccini's Daughter - Part 1 by Nathaniel Hawthorne 
  13 - Rappaccini's Daughter - Part 2 by Nathaniel Hawthorne

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