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  The Canary

  Katherine Mansfield

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  A lonely woman's cherished canary, her only companion, dies, leaving her isolated once more.

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  Bizeban - From their pens to...

  Moritz Jokai

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  Móric Jókay de Ásva was born on the 18th February 1825 in Komárom, then in the Kingdom of Hungary but now part of Slovakia.  
  Due to his timid and delicate constitution he was educated at home until the age of 10 and then sent away to complete his studies at the Calvinist college at Pápa. 
  At 12 his father died, and he was pushed to honour him by replicating his career as a lawyer.  He studied hard and completed the curriculum at Kecskemét and Pest.  He won his first case as a newly graduated lawyer. 
  But he found a career in law to be dull and, encouraged by the positive reaction to his first play, he moved to Pest in 1845.  There he published, first in a newspaper, and then as a novel ‘Hétköznapok’ (‘Working Days’).  It was acclaimed as a masterpiece.  To add to his promise he was appointed as the editor of Életképek, the leading Hungarian journal. 
  In 1848 he married the actress, Róza Laborfalvi.  That same year Europe was awash with revolutions and Jókai, a moderate Liberal, enthusiastically supported the nationalist cause and its decision to depose the Habsburg dynasty.  The attempt failed. 
  He was now classed as a political suspect and threw himself into his literary career, writing dozens of novels, many of them masterpieces, stories, essays and the like.  In total he wrote several hundred volumes, many of them in the local Magyar language which helped arrest its declining relevance in society.  
  By 1867 the political temperature had cooled, and he entered parliament as well as becoming the editor a government journal he had founded.   His skills were much admired and helped the government navigate through several difficult matters.   
  His wife died in 1886 but although grief-stricken he continued to work and to write.  
  In 1897 the king appointed him a member of the upper house.  Two years later he caused a minor scandal by marrying the young 20-year-old actress, Bella Nagy.  At the time he was 74.

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  Battling the Bluestocking

  Martha Keyes

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  Phineas Donovan is possessed of a sharp intellect. Fresh from Cambridge, he obtains a generous live-in position as tutor for the son of the wealthy Lord Bettencourt. If he can prove his value, he has hopes of being given the patronage of his employer, allowing him to take up a position as vicar. There, he can pursue his intellectual endeavors in peace and relative financial comfort. In her humble but informed opinion, Lady Sarah Danneville is possessed of an even sharper intellect. If anyone should be tutoring her younger brother, it is she, not the reserved, bespectacled gentleman her father has employed to do the job. He is not fit to instruct a Danneville of Bettencourt. But as Sarah works to undermine him, Mr. Donovan shows more pluck than she expects, not to mention that he harbors a secret hobby that would be laughable if it weren’t so dreadfully unsophisticated. If she can use this secret against him, she can finally persuade her father she is more than bait to lure a prosperous match. Now, if only she can avoid being drawn into the dearth of sophistication—and Mr. Donovan’s eyes—herself. Battling the Bluestocking is the third in Martha Keyes's The Donovans regency-set romance series. Each book can be treated as a standalone.

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  Anton Chekhov - Six of the Best...

  Anton Chekhov

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  Six has always been a number we group things around – Six of the best, six of one half a dozen of another, six feet under, six pack, six degrees of separation and a sixth sense are but a few of the ways we use this number. 
   
  Such is its popularity that we thought it is also a very good way of challenging and investigating an author’s work to give width, brevity, humour and depth across six of their very best. 
   
  In this series we gather together authors whose short stories both rivet the attention and inspire the imagination to visit their gems in a series of six, to roam across an author’s legacy in a few short hours and gain a greater understanding of their writing and, of course, to be lavishly entertained by their ideas, their narrative and their way with words. 
   
  These stories can be surprising and sometimes at a tangent to what we expected, but each is fully formed and a marvellous adventure into the world and words of a literary master. 
   
   1 - Six of the Best - Anton Chekov - An Introduction 
  2 - Anton Chekhov - An Introduction 
  3 - The Lady with the Dog by Anton Chekhov 
  4 - The Kiss by Anton Chekhov 
  5 - Gooseberries by Anton Chekhov 
  6 - Misery by Anton Chekhov 
  7 - The Student by Anton Chekhov 
  8 - Volodya by Anton Chekhov

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  Let's Go! - The Adventures of...

  Larry Jacobson

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  Let’s Go! is Nonstop action and adventure with just the right amount of light fantasy-fiction. Skip begins searching for his mysterious runaway brother, who was last seen in Tahiti. The search for his brother explodes into a dangerous journey Skip never expected.He meets Kanek, a Tahitian orphan, and together they sail around the world searching for Skip’s brother. They’re surprised and shocked about the dark discoveries they make, but are compelled to keep on the hunt. They become involved way over their heads and danger lurks everywhere as the boys encounter dragons, snakes, crocodiles, man-fish, pirates, and erupting volcanoes. Only having just met, Skip and Kanek must learn to trust each other in these situations and are faced with life or death decisions along their journey. The story is fast-paced, exciting, and dangerous, and at many points, the boys are faced with the question of whether to go on or not. What is important in life? What are the boys’ priorities? They don’t seem to want to give up…but should they?

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  A Very Short Romance - From...

  Vsevolod Garshin

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  Vsevolod Mikhailovich Garshin was born on 14th February 1855 in what is now Dnipro in the Ukraine, but then part of the Russian Empire. 
  After attending secondary school he studied at the Saint Petersburg Mining Institute.  
  Wars between and on behalf of Empires were a regular feature of the decades then.  Garshin volunteered to serve in the Russian army at the beginning of the Russo-Turkish War in 1877.  
  He began as a private in the Balkans campaign and was wounded in action.  By the end of the war, in 1878, he had been promoted to officer rank.  
  By now Garshin, having previously published some articles and reviews in newspapers, wished to devote himself to a literary career.  The decision made he resigned his army commission. 
  His time as a soldier provided rich experiences for his early stories. His first ‘Four Days’ was related as the interior monologue of a wounded soldier left for dead on the battlefield for four days, face to face with the corpse of a Turkish soldier he had killed, gained him early admiration as an author of note.  
  He wrote perhaps only 20 stories, but their influence was immense, although in these more modern times he is barely remembered and lives in the more prolific shadows of others.  His characters are superbly worked into stories that come alive in the intensity and reality of his prose.   
  Garshin’s most well-known story is ‘The Red Flower’, also known as ‘Scarlet Blossom’ and is easily amongst the first rank of stories dealing with mental health issues.  
  Despite early literary success, he himself experienced periodical bouts of mental illness.   
  In one such bout Garshin attempted to commit suicide by throwing himself down the stone stairs leading into his apartment building.  Although not immediately fatal, Vsevolod Garshin died as a result of his injuries in a St Petersburg hospital on 5th April 1888.  He was 33.

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