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  Gauntlets and Conches - A Short...

  Gordon Bonnet, Marlon S Hayes

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  Since the beginning of human interaction, there have been storytellers who have spun tales to inspire and capture the imagination. In homage to Golding's Lord of the Flies and the act of flinging a gauntlet before a duel, these two writers, Gordon Bonnet, and Marlon S. Hayes, have shown their multi-genre talents. 
  Two guys in a bar, grandmas, fathers and sons, and myths are a few of the themes in this collection, and the results are noteworthy, entertaining, and soul filling. What if an opportunity arose to have a conversation with one's younger self? Or, what if the pictures on the wall started whispering warnings? Ever imagined how an orc might view humans? What about an epic road trip across America's heartland where anger and grief also ride along? Exactly. 
  It's a duel of well-written short stories, with each writer inspiring the other to continue to ascend with their storytelling skills. It's not a competition, simply an acknowledgement of each other's talents.

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  Diplomacy - From their pens to...

  Lafcadio Hearn

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  Lafcadio Hearn was born on the 27th June 1850 on the Ionian isle of Levkás in Greece to a British Army officer and a Greek Mother. 
  His father, fearing for his career prospects at being married to a Greek Orthodox wife, sent them to Dublin whilst he continued to advance his career with further postings.  Life there was difficult for mother and son.  His father returned, wounded and traumatised, when Lafcadio was three.  He annulled the marriage and she remarried but had to give up care of Lafcadio to her sister-in law.   
  After brief periods for Catholic education in England and France he emigrated to Ohio in the United States when he was 19, taking on a series of casual jobs before embarking on a career as a journalist, publishing poems and essays in Cincinnati.  It was whilst here that he began a side-line in translating, starting with Gautier and Flaubert.  He married in 1874 to a 20 year old African-American woman in violation of Ohio's anti-miscegenation law.  The marriage soon failed. 
  In 1877 he relocated to New Orleans to write on a variety of themes before picking up a two year assignment from Harper’s to write in the West Indies, where he also wrote his first novel. 
  In 1890 Harper’s sent him to Japan.  Here he left journalism and took the remarkable decision to become a schoolteacher in the north of Japan.   Enraptured by the culture he was driven to explain it in various Western publications to those who had little, if any, knowledge of its culture.  Within the year he had fallen in love with, and married, a high-born Japanese lady, together they would have four children.   
  In 1895 he became a Japanese national and took the name Koizumi Yakumo, Koizumi being his wife’s family name. 
  The following few years, whilst a professor of Literature at the Imperial University of Japan, were his most creative and admired period.   
  Lafcadio Hearn died of heart failure on the 26th of September 1904, in Tokyo, Japan shortly before leaving to deliver a series of lectures at Cornell University in New York State.  He was 54.

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  Porch Swings Parlors & Pryin’...

  Anne Warner, Edna Ferber, Booth...

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  In the towns where the porch lights glow late, the screen doors creak often, and no secret stays secret for long, life unfolds with charm, chatter, and more than a touch of mischief. 
  Porch Swings, Parlors & Pryin’ Eyes invites you into parlors both prim and peculiar, where romances are whispered behind teacups, rivalries simmer at choir practice, and widows form committees with suspicious speed. Within these sixteen short stories, you’ll find aging sopranos and checker champions, tangled telegrams and moonlit deacons, poker parties gone sideways and gossip spun tighter than a handmade scarf. 
  Each tale captures the distinct rhythms of small-town American life in the late 19th and early 20th centuries—with all its humor, heartbreak, and sly subversion of social norms. These are stories not just of people, but of places—of communities that cradle, confine, and sometimes surprise those who call them home. 
  Pull up a chair, pour something sweet, and don’t be surprised if someone starts talkin’ about you next. 
  Featuring the work of renowned authors and some hidden gems of classic American fiction, including: 
  The Gay Old Dog, by Edna Ferber 
  Melinda's Humorous Story, by May McHenry 
  Friends in San Rosario, by O. Henry 
  The Associated Widows, by Katharine M. Roof 
  The Tale of the Tangled Telegram, by Wilbur D. Nesbit 
  A Village Singer, by Mary E. Wilkins Freeman 
  A New England Nun, by Mary E. Wilkins Freeman 
  The Scarf, by Madeline Yale Wynne 
  The Champion Checker-Player of Ameriky, by James Whitcomb Riley 
  How The Widow Won The Deacon, by William James Lampton 
  Evan Anderson's Poker Party, by Benjamin Stevenson 
  A Rivermouth Romance, by Thomas Bailey Aldrich 
  Not According to Schedule, by Mary Stewart Cutting 
  A Reward of Merit, by Booth Tarkington 
  Sand Flat Shadows, by Carl Sandburg 
  Mrs. Lathrop's Love Affair, by Anne Warner

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  A Little Journey

  Ray Bradbury

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  In "A Little Journey," published in August 1951, we meet an elderly woman in search of enlightenment who buys a ticket on a rocket. Like other more famous Bradbury's stories, "A Little Journey" demonstrates the author's characteristic blending of the sentimental and the transcendent, the homely and the mystical. 
   
  Ray Douglas Bradbury, American novelist, short story writer, essayist, playwright, screenwriter and poet, was born August 22, 1920 in Waukegan, Illinois. He graduated from a Los Angeles high school in 1938. Although his formal education ended there, he became a "student of life," selling newspapers on L.A. street corners from 1938 to 1942, spending his nights in the public library and his days at the typewriter. His reputation as a writer of courage and vision was established with the publication of The Martian Chronicles in 1950, which describes the first attempts of Earth people to conquer and colonize Mars, and the unintended consequences.

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  The Garden Party

  Katherine Mansfield

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  A seemingly idyllic garden party for the wealthy Sheridan family takes a dark turn when they learn of a death in their working-class neighborhood. The story explores themes of social class, privilege, and the juxtaposition of life and death.

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  The Moving Finger - An detective...

  Rose Champion de Crespigny

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  Annie Rose Charlotte Key was born on 9th November 1859 in Kensington, London. 
   
  With a privileged background—her father was an admiral, her mother a Lady, Rose began her creative life as a painter before a stab at writing local history settled her into popular fiction. 
   
  Her works were solidly written and often described as having a ‘certain graceful facility’. 
   
  Her marriage to Philip Augustus Champion de Crespigny in 1878 resulted in a family of 4 children and a name of status. 
   
  Rose was a leading member of the Ridley Art Club, the Lyceum Club in Piccadilly, and of the British College of Psychic Science.  Victorian society had a particular fascination with spiritualism and in ‘The Moving Finger’ Rose uses the theme as a background to introduce her popular occult detective Norton Vyse into her series of short stories.  
   
  Rose Champion de Crespigny died on 10th February 1935.  She was 75.

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