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  Mac Travis Adventures Box Set...

  Steven Becker

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  Three books from bestselling author Steven Becker 
  Wood’s Reef 
  It's easy to become invisible in the Florida Keys. Mac Travis was doing his best to keep a low profile: diving, fishing, and enough salvage work to pay his bills. It's a good life until he discovers something while spearfishing that could change the pristine Keys forever. His drunken crewman soon lets out the secret and his life is instantly changed. 
  Wood’s Wall 
  Mac Travis is laying low: Fishing, Diving and doing enough salvage work to pay his bills until three fishermen trolling the Gulf Stream discover a square grouper. Besides the drugs, the package contains a secret that changes their lives and jeopardizes the very existence of the Keys. When his wayward deckhand brings him part of the package, he and his girlfriend Mel, are drawn into the chase that has dire consequences for the Keys. 
  Wood’s Wreck 
  Mac Travis is doing enough salvage work to pay his bills until he is forced to save his name and everything he owns. When a down on her luck trust fund heiress and his wayward deckhand are caught using his boat to poach lobster, both his boat and house are confiscated. The plot thickens when Mac and his girlfriend Mel, discover a connection between her non-profit’s money laundering scheme and a CIA ring smuggling baseball players from Cuba.The forces collide in this action-packed thriller box set featuring plenty of boating, SCUBA diving, fishing and flavored with a generous dose of Conch Republic counterculture.

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  My Own True Ghost Story - From...

  Rudyard Kipling

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  Joseph Rudyard Kipling was born in Mumbai, India on 30th December 1865.   
  As was the custom in those days, he and his sister were sent back to England when he was 5.  The ill-treatment and cruelty by the Portsmouth couple they boarded with Kipling said contributed to the onset of his literary life.  
  At 16 he returned to India to work on a local paper where he was soon contributing and writing.  It also exposed him to the issues of identity and national allegiance which pervade much of his work.  
  In 1886, his ‘Departmental Ditties’, collection of verse appeared in print followed by 39 short stories for his newspaper over only 8 months.  These were then published as ‘Plain Tales from the Hills’, shortly after his 22nd birthday.  
  He continued his prolific pace of writing before being dismissed in a dispute and, taking his pay-off and the profits from the sale of some publishing rights, decided to return to London, travelling via Rangoon, Hong Kong, Japan and the United States, all the while writing articles, and arriving at Liverpool in October 1889. 
  Over the next two years he saw further works published as books and in magazines, as well as a nervous breakdown for which he was prescribed a sea voyage, to South Africa, Australia, New Zealand and India.  
  Happier times came with marriage to Caroline Starr Balestier in January 1892.  The honeymoon began in Vermont and ended in Yokahama where they heard their bank had failed.  They returned to Vermont and settled.  Caroline was now pregnant and he was planning the ‘Jungle Books’.  
  A failed arbitration between the US and England resulted in an argument between Caroline’s brother and Kipling, and then his arrest.  At the hearing he was mortified by the exposure of his private life and after settling the matter they returned to England and life in Torquay.  ‘Kim’ was published in 1902, and ‘Just So Stories for Little Children’, a year later.  
  In 1907 he was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature with the citation “in consideration of the power of observation, originality of imagination, virility of ideas and remarkable talent for narration which characterise the creations of this world-famous author”.   
  When the Great War erupted, he scorned those who refused conscription.  His son enlisted and was killed at the Battle of Loos in September 1915, at 18, an exploding shell had ripped his face apart.  This death inspired Kipling’s writing thereafter, but the tragedy broke his life and by 1930 his prolific pen had almost ceased. 
  Rudyard Kipling died on 18th January 1936 from a perforated duodenal ulcer.  He was 70.  His ashes are buried at Poets’ Corner in Westminster Abbey.

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  The Christening - From their...

  Guy de Maupassant

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  Henri René Albert Guy de Maupassant was born on August 5th, 1850 near Dieppe in France.  
  Maupassant’s early life was badly torn when at age 11 (his younger brother Hervé was then five) his mother, Laure, a headstrong and independent-minded woman, risked social disgrace in order to obtain a legal separation from her husband. 
  After the separation, Laure kept custody of her two boys. With the father now forcibly absent, Laure became the most influential and important figure in the young boy's life.   
  Maupassant’s education was such that he rebelled against religion and other societal norms but a developing friendship with Gustave Flaubert began to turn his mind towards creativity and writing. 
  After graduation he volunteered for the Franco-Prussian war. With its end he moved to Paris to work as a clerk in the Navy Department.  Gustave Flaubert now took him under his wing.  Acting as a literary guardian to him, he guided the eager Maupassant to debuts in journalism and literature.  For Maupassant these were exciting times and the awakening of his creative talents and ambitions. 
  In 1880 he published what is considered his first great work, ‘Boule de Suif’, (translated as as ‘Dumpling’, ‘Butterball’, ‘Ball of Fat’, or ‘Ball of Lard’) which met with a success that was both instant and overwhelming.  Flaubert at once acknowledged that it was ‘a masterpiece that will endure.’ Maupassant had used his talents and experiences in the war to create something unique.  
  This decade from 1880 to 1891 was to be the most pivotal of his career.  With an audience now made available by the success of ‘Boule de Suif’ Maupassant organised himself to work methodically and relentlessly to produce between two and four volumes of work a year.  The melding of his talents and business sense and the continual hunger of sources for his works made him wealthy. 
  In his later years he developed a desire for solitude, an obsession for self-preservation, and a fear of death as well as a paranoia of persecution caused by the syphilis he had contracted in his youth.  
  On January 2nd, 1892, Maupassant tried to commit suicide by cutting his throat.  Unsuccessful he was committed to the private asylum of Esprit Blanche at Passy, in Paris.  It was here on July 6th, 1893 that Henri René Albert Guy de Maupassant died at the age of only 42.

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  The Murder in Saltashe Woods -...

  Baroness Orczy

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  Emma Magdolna Rozália Mária Jozefa Borbála Orczy de Orci, or more familiarly, Baroness Emmuska Orczy, was born on the 23rd September 1865, in Tarnaörs, Heves County, Hungary. 
  The family lived in their ancestral home; a great, rambling farmhouse on the river Tarna.  Orczy’s memories of the time were of sophisticated parties, sparkling conversation, joyful dancing and gypsy music.  But fear of a peasant uprising meant moving to Budapest and then many years of semi-nomadic travels across Europe. 
  Arriving in London in 1880 Orczy, aged 15, studied painting and, a few years later, had some pictures exhibited at the Royal Academy. 
  London, she now felt, was home, her spiritual birthplace.  
  Art school also provided a husband; the young illustrator, Montague Barstow, the son of an English clergyman.  
  Determined to prove herself as a writer she plunged headlong into a writing career shortly after her son’s birth.  In a mere five weeks she wrote the adventure classic ‘The Scarlet Pimpernel’.  Originally rejected, she re-worked it as a successful play.  It was then published as a best-selling book in 1905 and later a very successful movie.   
  Politically Orczy was a conservative with an unwavering belief in the superiority of the aristocracy and of the British Empire.  During World War I, she formed the Women of England's Active Service League, tasked with recruiting female volunteers "to persuade every man I know to offer his service to his country".   
  In the coming years the family lived on an estate in Kent, in a tasteful London home and an extravagant villa in Monte Carlo.  All the while Orczy’s pen wrote novels, short stories, plays, translations and, eventually, her autobiography.  
  Baroness Orczy died on the 12th November 1947 at Henley-on-Thames in South Oxfordshire.  She was 82.

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  The Mystery of the Blue Train

  Agatha Christie

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  Step aboard the luxurious Blue Train for one of Agatha Christie's most intriguing mysteries in The Mystery of the Blue Train.When a wealthy young heiress is found murdered during a glamorous journey to the French Riviera, a priceless ruby vanishes without a trace. As secrets, jealousy, and betrayal come to light, the brilliant detective Hercule Poirot is called upon to solve the case.Filled with suspense, unforgettable characters, and surprising twists, The Mystery of the Blue Train is a classic detective story that will keep readers captivated until the very end.Perfect for fans of mystery, crime fiction, and timeless whodunits.

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  Alexander's Den

  Dawn Blair

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  Thomis doesn’t want to be here.Alexander’s Den: a place very few people know about and even fewer actually venture into willingly. Everyone here has a story; some want to tell it, and some don’t.Alexander won’t give Thomis a warm homecoming, even though he has something Alexander might want. Will a special egg be enough to get his foot back in the door? Will Alexander want too much from him in this storyteller’s final days?Enter the lair of Alexander’s Den in this fantasy short story.

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