Verlag: Wildside Press
Khallaf the Strong inflicted dire tortures on Hamed the Attar, and would have done him to death had not a beautiful woman intervened. Classic historical fantasy, first published in the Spring 1931 issue of Oriental Stories magazine. Introduction by Karl Wurf.
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. ‘The Old South’ is usually seen as an alluring, almost mysterious mythological land that the rest of America could never be. Side by side poverty and the genteel well-to-do have lived, on one side disparaging, on the other envious. Literary talents here are everywhere, detailing and witnessing for generations to come the inequality and iniquity that fuel much of its famed literature. 1 - The Top 10 - US Authors of the South - An Introduction 2 - The Million Pound Bank Note by Mark Twain 3 - The Caballero's Way by O Henry 4 - On the Gull's Road by Willa Cather 5 - The Stones of the Village by Alice Dunbar Nelson 6 - A Cullenden of Virginia by Thomas Wolfe 7 - The Octoroon's Revenge by Ruth D Todd 8 - The City of Refuge by Rudolph Fisher 9 - The Difference by Ellen Glasgow 10 - Skulls in the Stars by Robert E Howard 11 - The Strange Looking Man by Fanny Kemble JohnsonZum Buch
Shrewsbury, 1866. Julian Lockyer is an imposing gentleman in his late fifties. Having reserved a room for the night at the Station Hotel, he asks to be called early in the morning because he has a train to catch. Repeated attempts are made to wake him but there is no response. After forcing the door, the horrified hotel staff discover the bloodied corpse but with the knife still in his hand ... could he have killed himself in such a brutal manner? The Railway Detective is summoned by his boss Tallis to journey to Shrewsbury and investigate. If it is a simple case of suicide, Colbeck believes that he may be back home that same evening and no need to trouble his sergeant. But when he reaches Shrewsbury, one mystery is solved. The stationmaster tells Colbeck that the dead man is a director of the Great Western Railway company and he was due to takeover as Chairman. Colbeck wonders if this was a case of murder rather than suicide...Zum Buch
Vicente Blasco Ibáñez was born in Valencia, Spain on 29th January 1867. At university, he studied law and graduated in 1888 but never felt the urgency to practice - he was more interested in politics, journalism, literature and women. Politically he was a militant Republican partisan and, in his youth, founded a newspaper, El Pueblo (The People). The newspaper was taken to court many times and he made many enemies. In one incident he was shot and almost killed. In 1896, Ibáñez was arrested and sentenced to a few months in prison. Despite this colourful background he found time to write novels. His first published work was ‘La Araña Negra’ (The Black Spider) in 1892, a work that he later repudiated although at the time it was a useful vehicle for him to express his anti-clerical views. In 1894, he published ‘Arroz y Tartana’ (Airs and Graces), about a late 19th Century widow in Valencia trying to keep up appearances in order to marry her daughters well. Ibáñez’s next sequence of books studied rural life in the farmlands of Valencia and failed to gain much of an audience. His writing now took on a new direction with its now familiar sensational and melodramatic themes in 1908 with ‘Sangre y Arena’ (Blood and Sand), which follows the career of Juan Gallardo from his poor beginnings as a child in Seville, to his rise to becoming a famous matador in Madrid However, his greatest success was ‘Los Cuatro Jinetes del Apocalipsis (The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse) in 1916, which tells a tangled tale of the French and German sons-in-law of an Argentinian land-owner who find themselves fighting on opposite sides in the First World War. It was a literary and commercial sensation and became the best-selling book of 1919. It also propelled Rudolph Valentino to stardom in the 1921 film. Ironically his fame in the English-speaking world has come not as a novelist but as the stories behind some of Hollywood’s greatest silent movies. Vicente Blasco Ibáñez died in Menton, France on January 28th, 1928, the day before his 61st birthday.Zum Buch
In a fading gold town, the seams of violence run deep. 'I was like a man washed ashore on an island, half mad and only my warrant card and blood-soaked uniform to vouch for me. But I had to act as if I knew what the hell to do.' In Autumn of 1912, mounted trooper Augustus Hawkins arrives at his new post in the fading gold town of Colley, NSW. On his first day, he is ambushed by a hidden gunman, his junior officer is killed before his eyes, and he escapes back to town to find the police station burning to the ground. Someone has it in for the mounted troopers. A traumatised veteran of the Boer War, and a stranger to Colley, Hawkins is deeply shaken and ill-equipped to solve the case. But with only green troopers and a drunken, incompetent detective available to hunt down the murderer, he is forced to take the lead. Soon he finds that Colley hides a lot more than gold beneath its surface, for anyone who knows where to dig. In Skull River, Gus Hawkins returns for a gripping and immersive hunt through a small town at the edge of a troubled empire. With black humour, Fioretti weaves a story that's both a cracking murder mystery and a razor-sharp portrayal of a country on the verge of transformation.Zum Buch
A captivating, nuanced portrait of the life of Véra Nabokov, who dedicated herself to advancing her husband's writing career, playing a vital role in the creation of his greatest works. Véra Nabokov (1902-1991) was in many ways the epitome of the wife of a great man: keenly aware of her husband's extraordinary talent, she decided to make his success her ultimate goal, throughout fifty-two years of marriage until his death in 1977. The first reader of his texts, Véra worked as typist and editor. She organized their lives in exile, as they traveled to Berlin, Paris, Switzerland, and, most importantly, the US, where she convinced Vladimir to focus on writing novels in English. She not only controlled the family's finances and contract negotiations, but also attempted to control his friendships—particularly with women—going so far as to audit his classes. In this rich, sweeping novel, Monika Zgustova immerses us in the daily life of this remarkable couple, offering insights into their complex personal and professional relationships, as well as the real people behind characters such as Lolita. Véra considered herself an independent woman, but was she really, when her husband took up so much space? And without Véra, could Nabokov have become one of the twentieth century's greatest writers?Zum Buch
In this fourth book in bestselling author Peter Brandvold's exciting Bloody Joe western series, the stakes are higher than ever before, and the action is hotter than hellfire! Del Norte Town Marshal "Bloody" Joe Mannion and his junior deputy, Henry "Stringbean" McCallister, run down an especially violent as well as beguiling outlaw in the pretty form of Mathilda Calderon. The senorita is just one pretty girl, but she fights like a leg-trapped puma, leaving Mannion with an arm full of buckshot and Stringbean hurting where a man just shouldn't be attacked, gallblastit! Senorita Calderon is wanted not only for aiding and abetting the commission of a federal crime but to testify in a court trial against her boyfriend, the notorious border bandito and revolutionario, Diego Hidalgo, who stole three Gatling guns from the US Army, wiping out a dozen soldiers in the deadly process. Hidalgo and three members of his gang were captured by the Army. The US Marshal for the Southwestern District has sent three deputy US marshals to retrieve the senorita from Del Norte, and to escort her to Tucson. Bloody Joe believes she will not only identify Hidalgo as the leader of the gang who stole the Gatling guns but will also testify as to the guns' whereabouts.Zum Buch
