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  Désirée's Baby - From their pens...

  Kate Chopin

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  Katherine O'Flaherty was born on the 8th February 1850 in St Louis, Missouri to parents of French and Irish descent. 
  At age 5, she was sent to the Sacred Heart Academy and, apart from a 2 year period at home when her father died, remained there until graduating in 1868.  Whilst there she began writing and became an avid reader of almost anything that crossed her path.   
  Kate married Oscar Chopin in 1870 and the couple moved to New Orleans, and later to the rural setting of Cloutierville, Louisiana to raise their 6 children.  
  In 1882 her husband died leaving her in a deep trench of debt.  Despite her best efforts to turn the businesses around they were sold, and she moved the family back to St Louis and the financial help of her mother.  Sadly, her mother died within the year.  Kate, now struggling with depression, pushed herself to write and gained a local reputation as a writer of short stories that captured the local color and vibrancy of her surroundings.  
  By the early 1890’s her short stories were published nationally.  With this widespread audience also came negative reviews, controversy, and cries of immorality as themes such as interracial relationships, the rights of women and other burning issues of the day were written about. 
  Despite the criticism, which unnerved her, she continued to write though in the main her works, around 100 short stories and two novels, were not attributed with any literary worth. 
  Kate Chopin died from a brain haemorrhage in St Louis Missouri on the 22nd of August 1904.  She was 54. 
  For much of the 20th Century her work was forgotten and out of print.  It was only in early 1970’s, with the rise of feminism and the call for a more just society that she was given the status her works had long described and shone a literary light at.  She is now safely revered as one of America’s great authors.

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  The Monkey's Paw

  W. Jacobs

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  Title: The Monkey’s Paw 
  Author: W. W. Jacobs 
  Narrator: Jonathan Dunne 
  Original Publication: 1902 
  Public Domain: Yes 
  Series Placement: Number 6 in the Timeless Terrors series 
  Description: 
  The Monkey’s Paw by W. W. Jacobs is a classic tale of supernatural horror and the peril of tampering with fate. First published in 1902 in the collection The Lady of the Barge, it tells the chilling story of the White family, who come into possession of a mysterious monkey’s paw said to grant three wishes. 
  What begins as a curious indulgence soon spirals into tragedy, as each wish carries unforeseen and terrible consequences. Jacobs weaves a tightly paced narrative filled with suspense, dread, and an unforgettable warning about the costs of interfering with destiny. 
  This recording, narrated by Amazon bestselling horror author Jonathan Dunne, brings to life the eerie atmosphere and relentless tension of one of the most enduring cautionary tales in English literature. While the text is in the public domain, this performance is an original work and copyright © 2025 Jonathan Dunne. 
  Listeners should prepare for a haunting story that lingers long after the final word.

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  The Student - From their pens to...

  Anton Chekhov

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  Anton Pavlovich Chekhov was born on 29th January 1860 in Taganrog, on the south coast of Russia.  
  His family life was difficult; his father was strict and over-bearing but his mother was a passionate story-teller, a subject Chekhov warmed to. As he later said; ‘our talents we got from our father, but our soul from our mother’.  
  At school Chekhov was distinctly average. At 16 his father mis-managed his finances and was declared bankrupt. His family fled to Moscow. Chekhov remained and eked out a living by various means, including writing and selling short sketches to newspapers, to finish his schooling. That completed and with a scholarship to Moscow University obtained he rejoined his family. 
  He was able to help support them by selling satirical sketches and vignettes of Russian lifestyles and gradually obtained further commissions. In 1884, he qualified as a physician and, although it earned him little, he often treated the poor for free, he was fond of saying ‘Medicine is my lawful wife, and literature is my mistress.’ 
  His own health was now an issue as he began to cough up blood, a symptom of tuberculosis.  Despite this his writing success enabled him to move the family into more comfortable accommodation.  
  Chekhov wrote over 500 short stories which included many, many classics including ‘The Kiss’ and ‘The Lady with a Dog’.  His collection ‘At Dusk’ won him the coveted Pushkin Prize when was only 26.  
  He was also a major playwright beginning with the huge success of ‘Ivanov’ in 1887.   
  In 1892 Chekhov bought a country estate north of Moscow. Here his medical skills and money helped the peasants tackle outbreaks of cholera and bouts of famine. He also built three schools, a fire station and a clinic.  It left him with less time for writing but the interactions with real people gained him detailed knowledge about the peasantry and their living conditions for his stories.  
  His most famous work, ‘The Seagull’ was received disastrously at its premiere in St Petersburg. It was later restaged in Moscow to highlight its psychological aspects and was a huge success. It led to ‘Uncle Vanya’, ‘The Three Sisters’ and ‘The Cherry Orchard’.  
  Chekhov suffered a major lung hemorrhage in 1897 while visiting Moscow. A formal diagnosis confirmed tuberculosis and the doctors ordered changes to his lifestyle.  
  Despite a dread of weddings the elusive literary bachelor quietly married the actress Olga Knipper, whom he had met at rehearsals for ‘The Seagull’, on 25th May 1901. 
  By May 1904 with his tuberculosis worsening and death imminent he set off for the German town of Badenweiler writing cheerful, witty letters to his family and assuring them his health was improving.  
  On 15th July 1904 Anton Chekhov died at Badenweiler.  He was 44.

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  The Generous Gambler - From...

  Charles Pierre Baudelaire

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  Charles Pierre Baudelaire was born on April 9th 1821 in Paris to an amateur artist mother and professional father.  His father died when Charles was 6 but his mother remarried shortly after to Lieutenant Colonel Jacques Aupick who later became a prominent ambassador.  Consequently Charles received a good education and was encouraged to enter the legal profession by both parents but instead wanted to pursue the life of the writer and had already developed an appetite, whilst studying law, for prostitutes and alcohol that inevitably led to debt and his parents disapproval. 
  Baudelaire's literary published work began with well received art reviews and essays.  He was a pioneering translator which included the works of Edgar Allan Poe but his most remarkable, famous and memorable works was his poetry and in particular his volume entitled The Flowers of Evil ('Les Fleurs du Mal').  The principal subject of these innovative styled poems about the changing nature of beauty in the modern industrialised Paris were sex and death and included lost innocence, lesbianism, alcohol, depression and urban corruption. This work created a huge controversy that led to the successful prosecution of both Baudelaire and his publisher for creating an offense against public morals. However, the book did find an appreciative audience including Victor Hugo who wrote to Baudelaire: 'Your fleurs du mal shine and dazzle like stars... I applaud your vigorous spirit with all my might'.  The poems were hugely influential and in 1949 the judgement was officially reversed and Baudelaire recognised for his incredible talent. 
  He died within a year of suffering a severe stroke on 31st August, 1867 and was buried in the Montparnasse Cemetery.

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  A New Trade

  Andrew Wareham

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  The Navy has its new submarines and must discover what to do with them. They cannot fall back upon Nelson as a precedent, and Their Lordships of the Admiralty are at a loss to create a strategy.Gilbert Maltravers is given a new E Class boat and sent off to the Mediterranean, in the hope that the Admiral Commanding there will find something useful for him to do. He leaves his new wife behind and sails off to do his duty, hoping that somebody will know what his duty should be.It is the end of 1914 and the Navy has suffered humiliating defeats. Something must be done.

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  Bad Houses

  John Elizabeth Stintzi

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  A boisterous collection of surreal, darkly humourous short stories that will delight fans of George Saunders and Kelly Link
  		 
  From John Elizabeth Stintzi, the mind that created the daringly bizarre novel My Volcano, comes an electrifying collection of strange and dark tales.
  		 
  In the surreal, often precarious realities of Bad Houses, a doctor discovers a double-edged cure for the Ebola virus, a college student loses a different body part each time they return home for the summer, Midas's hairdresser strives to keep his secrets, and a young girl develops a fascination with the trolls who harvest her father's pumpkin patch. At once humourous and horrifying, these stories will inevitably take residence in your mind.
  		 
  Present throughout Bad Houses is a deep and abiding sense of humanity sprinkled with a dash of alienation, guilt, and instability. Filtered through a fabulist lens, these stories contemplate the struggles of modern existence. Each character lives their own haunted life, trying to navigate the path from bad houses to good homes.

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