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  A Piece of Steak - American...

  Jack London

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  John Griffith Chaney was born on January 12th, 1876 in San Francisco.   
   
  His father, William Chaney, was living with Flora Wellman when she became pregnant.  Chaney insisted she have an abortion.  Flora's response was to turn a gun on herself.  Although her wounds were not severe the trauma made her temporarily deranged. 
   
  In late 1876 his mother married John London and the young child was brought to live with them as they moved around the Bay area, eventually settling in Oakland where now, calling himself Jack, he completed grade school. 
   
  Jack worked hard at several jobs, sometimes 12-18 hours a day, but his dream was university.  He studied hard and borrowed the money to enrol in the summer of 1896 at the University of California in Berkeley. 
   
  In 1897, at 21, Jack searched out newspaper accounts of his mother's suicide attempt and for the name of his biological father. He wrote to Chaney, then living in Chicago, who claimed he could not be Jack’s father because he was impotent and casually asserted that London's mother had relations with other men.  Jack, devastated by the response, quit Berkeley and went to the Klondike. Other accounts suggest that his dire finances presented Jack with the excuse he needed to leave. 
   
  In the Klondike Jack began to gather material for his writing but also accumulated many health problems, including scurvy, which together with hip and leg problems he would carry for the rest of his life. 
   
  During the late 1890's Jack was regularly publishing short stories and by the turn of the century full blown novels. 
   
  By 1904 Jack had married, fathered two children and was now in the process of divorcing.  A stint as a reporter on the Russo-Japanese war of 1904 was equal amounts trouble and experience. But that experience was always put to good use in a continuing and remarkable output of work. 
   
  In 1905 he married Charmian Kittredge who at last was a soul and companion who brought him some semblance of peace despite his advancing alcoholism and his incurable wanderlust. 
   
  Twelve years later Jack had amassed both wealth and a literary reputation through such classics as ‘The Call of the Wild’, ‘White Fang’ and many others. He had a reputation as a social activist and was a tireless friend of the workers.   
   
  Jack London died suffering from dysentery, late-stage alcoholism and uremia, aged only 40, on November 22nd 1916 at his property in Glen Elen in California 
   
  In ‘A piece of Steak’ an ageing prizefighter seeks one last win. Not for glory, or to revisit fame, but simply to put food on the table and keep his family together.  But to do that he must beat a highly rated up and coming adversary.

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  Wings of the Dove

  Henry James

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  The vivacious Kate Croy finds herself torn between love and money, friendship and ambition; “the crown of Henry James’s achievement.” Now a critically acclaimed film. 
  The vivacious Kate Croy finds herself torn between love and money, friendship and ambition; “the crown of Henry James’s achievement.” Now a critically acclaimed film. 
  Kate Croy is a beautiful but impoverished young woman forced to live with her successful but astringent Aunt, Maude Lower. Lower intends Kate to marry the aristocratic Lord Mark, but she is already in love with a journalist, Merton Densher. Though their lack of money prevents the two from marrying, the destitute couple soon become friends with Milly Theale, an American heiress with an ambiguous ailment and an obvious affection for Densher. As Theale’s health grows worse, Kate weaves a web of intrigue that pushes Densher into Theale’s arms in the hopes of securing her fortune. Theale retreats to Venice in the last throes of her sickness, and Densher, realizing the extent of Kate’s manipulation, forces her to choose between money and love. 
  This classic fiction, a testament to Henry James's top-tier storytelling, further explores the intricate web of love, ambition, and manipulation. The narrative, as vivacious as Kate Croy herself, delves deeper into the complexities of human relationships and the lengths one would go for wealth. 
  For fans of Wilkie Collins (The Woman in White), George Eliot (Middlemarch), Jane Austen (Mansfield Park), Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell (Cranford by Elizabeth Gaskell), and Majestic Classics (Dracula Illustrated).

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  The Prussian Officer

  D. H. Lawrence

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  Twelve short stories from the author of such classics as Sons and Lovers and Lady Chatterly’s Lover. D. H. Lawrence’s first collection of short stories, The Prussian Officer and Other Stories, was published in England in 1914, and contains some of his best works, chronicling accounts of the time and place—from old mining communities to pre–First World War Germany. This definitive edition of these writings presents Lawrence’s stories as he intended them. They have been cleaned of corruptions and errors, as well as providing a history of each story and of the whole collection.

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  The Beast in the Cave

  H. P. Lovecraft

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  In this story by H.P. Lovecraft, the line between man and beast is blurred. The Beast in the Cave follows the story of a man who gets separated from his group of tourists. They’ve all come to see the mammoth cave, but the man fears that it might be the last wonder he sees as he continues to wander further from his group. Eventually, his torch runs out of fuel and he is left with no other choice but to fend off approaching inhuman footsteps with the toss of a rock. When the tour guide finally finds our protagonist, they discover the horrifying, dying figure of another who was lost in the cave years ago.  

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  The Sad Story of a Vampire

  Count Eric Stanislaus Stenbock

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  Count Eric Stenislaus Stenbock (1860-1895) was an aristocrat of German-Estonian origin who lived in England. He wrote weird, macabre fantasy fiction and was a favorite of H. P. Lovecraft. He was well known for his eccentric lifestyle, keeping snakes, salamanders, and toads in his bedroom, and owned a bear, a reindeer, and a fox. He had a life-size doll with him at all times which he claimed was his son. 
  
  
  "The Sad Story of a Vampire" is a peculiar tale about a vampire who arrives, invited by the family father when he has been stranded at the nearest railway station owing to a missed connection...and who moves into the house and begins to sap the strength of the young son of the family.

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  The Awakening

  Kate Chopin

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  Unsatisfied with the expectations of Creole society and unhappy with her family life, Edna Pontellier begins to fall in love with the dapper Robert Lebrun. Lebrun's flirtations, along with the lifestyle of renown musician Mademoiselle Reisz, rejuvenates Edna's sense of freedom and independence. However, an affair with the womanizer Alcee Arobin provides Edna with a taste of the danger that comes with living outside of social convention. Trapped between the life she is expected to live and the life she longs to lead, will Edna find happiness?

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