Publisher: Mike Thomas
Finally The New Revised Edition is Available! The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, by Mark Twain, is a popular 1876 novel about a young boy growing up in the antebellum South on the Mississippi River in the fictional town of St. Petersburg, Missouri.
Perhaps his finest novel, Women in Love continues the story of two sisters, Ursula and Gudrun Brangwen - who first appeared in Lawrence's novel The Rainbow. The story contrasts the passionate love affairs of Ursula and Rupert Birkin, a character often seen as a self-portrait of Lawrence, with that of Gudrun and Gerald Crich, an icily handsome mining industrialist. Birkin, an introspective misanthrope, struggles to reconcile his metaphysical drive for self-fulfillment with Ursula's practical view of sentimental passion. As they fight their way through to a mutually satisfying relationship and eventual marriage, Gudrun and Crich's sadomasochistic love affair careens toward a disastrous conclusion. A dark, disturbing, yet beautiful exploration of love in an increasingly violent and destructive world, Women in Love nevertheless holds out the hope of individual and collective rebirth through human intensity and passion. An Author's Republic audio production.Show book
Joseph Rudyard Kipling (1865-1936) was an English journalist, short-story writer, poet, and novelist. "Little Tobrah" is a disturbing murder story set in India. The eight year old Tobrah stands accused of the murder of his younger blind sister. The evidence is purely circumstantial... and then he recounts his own tale of what happened.Show book
Mikhail Bulgakov was born on 15th May 1891 in Kiev, in the Kiev Governorate of the Russian Empire, into a Russian family. He was one of seven children. In 1901, Bulgakov attended the First Kiev Gymnasium, and developed a keen interest in Russian and European literature, theatre and opera. After the death of his father in 1907, his mother assumed responsibility for his education. After graduating Bulgakov entered the Medical Faculty of Kiev University and then took up a post as physician at the Kiev Military Hospital. At the outbreak of the First World War, he volunteered as a doctor and was sent directly to the front, where he was badly injured at least twice. To suppress chronic pain, especially in the abdomen, he injected morphine. It took years to wean himself off. He now took up medical posts in various towns and in 1919, he was mobilised by the Ukrainian People's Army and assigned to the Northern Caucasus. There, he became seriously ill with typhus and barely survived. After this illness, Bulgakov abandoned his medicine to pursue writing. He moved to Vladikavkaz and had two plays staged there with great success. He wrote too for various newspapers and other outlets, but his critics were many. And growing. When a Moscow's theatre director severely criticised Bulgakov, Stalin personally protected him, saying that a writer of Bulgakov's quality was above ‘party words’ like ‘left’ and ‘right’. Indeed, it is said that Stalin watched ‘The Days of the Turbins’ at least 15 times. It was not to last and by March 1929, Bulgakov's career was ruined when Government censorship stopped publication of any of his work and plays. In despair, Bulgakov wrote a personal letter to Stalin. He requested permission to emigrate. He received a phone call from the Soviet leader, who asked the writer whether he really desired to leave. He replied that a Russian writer cannot live outside of his homeland. Stalin thus gave him permission to continue working. In May 1930, he re-joined the theater, as stage director's assistant. During the last stressful decade of his life, and in poor health, Bulgakov continued to work on ‘The Master and Margarita’, wrote plays, critical works, stories, and continued translations and dramatisations of novels. Many of them were not published, others were derided by critics. On 10th March 1940, Mikhail Afanasyevich Bulgakov died from nephrosclerosis. He was 48. ‘The Master and Margarita’ was not published in any form until the mid-1960’s In this story Bulgakov relates the terrifying and hellish descent into addiction that seems so avoidable and yet so chillingly not.Show book
As the Century draws to a close it shows no sign of its literary talents diminishing. Authors stride into stories with a confidence and knowledge that now speak of a gilded age. We are challenged on many levels but always, always the story delivers a literary triumph. 1 - The Top Ten - The 1890's 2 - B24 by Arthur Conan Doyle 3 - An Occurrence At Owl Creek Bridge by Ambrose Bierce 4 - The Yellow Wallpaper by Charlotte Perkins Gilman 5 - The Open Boat by Stephen Crane 6 - Désirée's Baby by Kate Chopin 7 - A New England Nun by Mary E Wilkins Freeman 8 - The Burial of the Rats by Bram Stoker 9 - The Inconsiderate Waiter by J M Barrie 10 - Gooseberries by Anton Chekhov 11 - The Repairer of Reputations by Robert W ChambersShow book
Set in the fictional town of Arkham, Massachusetts, an unnamed narrator investigates a local area known as the 'blasted hearth.' After failing to extract any information from the Arkham locals, the narrator encounters an old man, Ammi Pierce, who relates the story of a farmer who once lived there. The hearth, he claims, was caused by a meteorite that fell onto the farmer's field in 1882. The Color Out of Space is one of H.P. Lovecraft's best-loved and most critically acclaimed stories. According to the author, it was also his personal favorite.Show book
Around the World in Eighty Days (French: Le tour du monde en quatre-vingts jours) is an adventure novel by the French writer Jules Verne, first published in French in 1872. In the story, Phileas Fogg of London and his newly employed French valet Passepartout attempt to circumnavigate the world in 80 days on a £20,000 wager (£2,242,900 in 2019) set by his friends at the Reform Club. It is one of Verne's most acclaimed works.The story starts in London on Wednesday, 2 October 1872. Phileas Fogg is a rich British gentleman living in solitude. Despite his wealth, Fogg lives a modest life with habits carried out with mathematical precision. Very little can be said about his social life other than that he is a member of the Reform Club, where he spends much of every day. Having dismissed his former valet, James Forster, for bringing him shaving water at 84 °F (29 °C) instead of 86 °F (30 °C), Fogg hires Frenchman Jean Passepartout as a replacement.Show book
