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  After Twenty years - From their...

  O Henry

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  William Sydney Porter was born on 11th September 1862 in Greensboro, North Carolina. At age 3 his mother died from tuberculosis. From an early age it was clear Porter had a large appetite for reading as he absorbed the world around him. 
  He first attended at a school run by his aunt before enrolling at the Lindsey Street High School and then worked at his uncle’s drugstore and gained a pharmacists’ license in 1881.  
  A persistent cough took him to Texas in the hope that a change of climate would help his symptoms. He took on various types of work, initially from ranch hand and cook and then as varied as pharmacist, draftsman, bank teller and journalist. He also began to write, though for now, purely as a hobby. 
  He was a member of several singing and dramatic groups when he met 17 year old Athol Estes, daughter of a wealthy Austin family. Despite her mother’s objection owing to Athol’s tuberculosis, they began courting and in July 1887, they eloped and soon married. 
  Athol, impressed by his writing, encouraged him to get them published. A job as a draftsman at the Texas General Land Office paid a healthy $100 dollars per month and life was good. 
  But then life turned cruel. His son died a few hours after birth although a daughter, Margaret, came the following year.  His job had to be vacated but another was found at the First National Bank of Austin. The bank operated informally and Porter was careless in keeping the books. He lost that job but began writing for the humourous weekly The Rolling Stone and the Houston Post. Some time later the federal Bank auditors went through his former accounts and he was arrested on charges of embezzlement. 
  Porter fled the day before his trial to Honduras. Holed up for several months he began to write.  Athol had become too ill to travel to meet him and learning that her health was deteriorating he surrendered to the court in February 1897.  Bail was obtained so that he could stay with Athol during her final days.  
  Porter was sentenced to five years at the Ohio Penitentiary in Columbus. His pharmacy qualifications got him the job of night druggist.  His sentence also gave him time to write and publish fourteen short stories. In December 1899 in McClure’s Magazine he published a short story as O Henry.  
  He was released two years early in July 1901, and reunited with Margaret, now 11, in Pittsburgh.  He now began his most prolific period of writing; a short story per week for the New York World, while also publishing works in other magazines.  Eventually over 600 of his short stories were published. 
  Porter was a heavy drinker and in 1908 his health, which had deteriorated for several years, took a dramatic turn for the worse, as did his writing. 
  O Henry died of cirrhosis of the liver complicated by diabetes and an enlarged heart on 5th June 1910.<

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  The Woman Who Scammed the World

  Nikolay Stoyanov

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  Ruja Ignatova called herself the Cryptoqueen. She told people around the world that she had invented a cryptocurrency to rival Bitcoin, and persuaded them to invest billions. Then, two years ago, she disappeared and the world has been trying to find out where she is hiding…
  
  Ignatova filled arenas around the world with thousands of adoring fans. She was flamboyant, enigmatic and dazzling. She told the cheering crowds that OneCoin was on course to become the world's biggest cryptocurrency 'for everyone to make payments everywhere'. She said that OneCoin, was a 'Bitcoin killer' and would make early investors rich. And the people believed her. Many in the crowd had already poured in their life savings. Many more followed.
  
  Billions from across the world was spent on OneCoin tokens, then, in late 2017, Ruja disappeared and the scheme was exposed to be a scam. There was no cryptocurrency. It was an old-fashioned Ponzi scheme.
  FBI records show that just after her no-show at a OneCoin event, Ignatova boarded a flight from Sofia to Athens. And then went completely off radar. That was the last time anyone saw or heard from Dr Ruja...

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  The Umpire Strikes Back

  David Fisher, Ron Luciano

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  Ron Luciano takes you out on the ballfield and into the clubhouse in the biggest and funniest baseball bestseller ever! 
  Here is Ron Luciano, the funniest ump ever to call balls and strikes. A huge and awesome legend who leaps and spins and shoots players with an index finger while screaming OUTOUTOUT!!! Now baseball’s flamboyant fan-on-the-field comes out from behind the mask to call the game as he really sees it. 
  There’s the day the automatic umpire debuted at home plate—and struck out. The time Rod Carew stole home twice in one inning, and Earl Weaver stole second base—and took it back to the dugout. The pitch Tommy John dropped on the mound, which Luciano called a strike. And there’s the fantastic phantom double play, the impossible frozen ice-ball theory, and, another first, Luciano picking Harmon Killebrew off second base. 
  From brawls to catcalls, from dugout jokes to on-the-field pratfalls to one-of-a-kind conversations with baseball’s greats, Ron Luciano, the only umpire who confessed to missing calls, takes a few grand slam swings of his own. It is baseball at its best.

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  A Dead Secret - From their pens...

  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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  Letters to My Son in Prison -...

  Ken Guidroz

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  Ken raised his three sons in a squeaky-clean suburb of Los Angeles. He envisioned fatherhood as coaching their sports teams, taking them to church (where he was the pastor), and visiting colleges one day. Instead, he got an education on the street names of opioids, fluency in rehab vernacular, and an insider’s view of the California prison system, when his middle son, Lucas, accidentally killed a man with his car while high on heroin. 
  Ken was tormented by doubt. What did I do wrong as a dad? Will my son ever be okay? Will my marriage survive this trauma? 
  Estranged from his son, Ken strived to rebuild their relationship. Face-to-face visits made them feel like they were in a fishbowl and phone calls were interrupted with inmates screaming. Letter writing turned out to be the best way to connect. Writing the letters proved cathartic for Ken. And they were clarifying for Lucas, as he made sense of losing his way, ultimately writing a heart-wrenching apology to the widow of his victim. 
  The written word became the perfect medium for a father to reconnect with his son—and himself. 
  Ken is most revealing, however, about the impact all this had on his faith. To go from the podium to the back pew and then out the back door disoriented him. How could he redefine his faith outside the four walls of religion? 
  With a distinct voice and disarming honesty, Letters to My Son in Prison offers a candid snapshot of fatherhood, a refreshing take on marriage, and a creative vision of faith.

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  Intelligent Woman: The life and...

  Charissa Saverio/DJ Rap

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  Intelligent Woman: The Life & Times of DJ Rap 
  Ever wondered what the golden years of rave were really like from someone who was right there from the start? 
  Intelligent Woman is the autobiography of DJ Rap, a pioneering female artists of the electronic dance music scene. From her unconventional childhood to discovering the underground rave scene,  acid house, Hardore, Old skool & jungle and drum & bass, Rap takes you behind the scenes of an extraordinary journey through some of the most exciting years in British dance music history. 
  Originally released as a physical book in 2019 and now sold out, Intelligent Woman has been updated and personally narrated by DJ Rap for this audiobook edition, bringing the story to life in her own voice. 
  This is more than a story about music. It’s about breaking barriers, building a career in a male-dominated industry, producing records, running labels, touring the world, and experiencing the rise of a culture that would change electronic music forever. 
  The raves. The records. The people. The chaos. The golden era. This is how it really happened, through the eyes of DJ Rap.

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