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  A Waiter Made of Glass - Stories...

  Verlyn Flieger

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  Award-winning author Verlyn Flieger takes readers through a series of insightful short stories exploring tragic aspects of human nature. A few of the tales are dark, others a bit lighter, but all celebrate the creativity of storytelling. The second part of the book is a collection of new poetry unearthing the wonders of language, the mundane, and grief and mourning as part of life—the dark spot within the light. Death is the inevitable, inescapable result of mortality, and grief is the price the living pay for that condition. Readers are invited to join in the journey, take some comfort in the knowledge of shared darkness, and know that even within the dark moments, there is always at least a speck of splintered light.

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  The Rocking-Horse Winner

  D H Lawrence

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  'The Rocking Horse Winner' is one of Lawrence's more popular short stories with its mixture of the supernatural and it moral lesson of the corrupting nature of the love of money. But it has nothing new to say on the subject and without the central core of Lawrence's passion for what he is writing, seems somewhat trite.

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  Fiddler on the Reels - Life as...

  Thomas Hardy

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  Thomas Hardy was born in the hamlet of Upper Bockhampton about three miles east of Dorchester in Dorset, England, on 2nd June 1840.  
   
  Despite a fairly wide education and being an avid reader his parents thought it unlikely he would lead a successful scholarly or clerical career and he was apprenticed in 1856, at age 16, to a local architect whose speciality was in church restoration.  Hardy’s only opportunity to read was in the morning before work between the hours of five and eight.  
   
  On the back of a failed love affair he moved to London and spent five years working as an assistant to the architect Arthur Blomfield, also a restorer and designer of churches. Hardy though had by now become disillusioned with institutionalised forms of Christianity and abandoned any lingering hopes of ordination in the Anglican Church.  However, his writing of poetry was now flourishing, although it was still rejected for publication.  
   
  His novel ‘Desperate Remedies’, was published anonymously in 1871 and he now resolved to write full time though he was not yet in a position to achieve financial security or literary success. His second novel, ‘Under the Greenwood Tree’, appeared in 1872 and in 1873 ‘A Pair of Blue Eyes’, the most autobiographical of his works arrived. With ‘Far From the Madding Crowd’ in 1874, came critical acclaim, public attention and financial success. This was repeated in 1878 with ‘The Return of the Native’, and the ensuing years saw him rise to ever greater popularity.  
   
  His classic ‘The Mayor of Casterbridge’ arrived in 1886 and 5 years later ‘Tess of the d’Urbervilles’. The latter only saw publication after extensive alterations to its plot and the deletion of long passages to lessen the shock to the prudish Victorian audience who were dismayed by the seduction and ruin of a young girl by a rakish aristocrat.  
   
  ‘Jude the Obscure’, his last novel, suffered the same fate when it was published in 1895.  The uproar so disturbed him that he returned to poetry. In 1898 he had an earlier poetry collection, ‘Wessex Poems’ published. 
   
  Hardy spent the years between 1903 and 1908 writing ‘The Dynasts’, an epic poem on the Napoleonic Wars. 
   
  In his twilight years came honours and awards from the great and the good in recognition of his stature as one of the most outstanding of British authors across novels, short stories and poetry. George V conferred on him the Order of Merit in 1910. 
   
  From 1920 to 1927 he worked, in secret, on his autobiography, which was later published after his death as the work of his second wife, Florence Hardy.  
   
  Thomas Hardy OM died on the 11th January 1928. 
   
  His heart was buried alongside his first wife in Stinsford churchyard, Dorchester.

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  Can Such Things Be?

  Ambrose Bierce

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  24 short stories in fairly typical Bierce fashion - ghostly, spooky, to be read (or listened to) in the dark, perhaps with a light crackling fire burning dimly in the background. Stories of ghosts, apparitions, and strange, inexplicable occurrences are prevalent in these tales, some of which occur on or near Civil War fields of battle, some in country cottages, and some within urban areas. Can Such Things Be? implies and relates that anything is possible, at any time. (Summary by Roger Melin)

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  Seashore Macabre

  Hugh Walpole

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  Sir Hugh Seymour Walpole (1884-1941) was a New Zealand-born English novelist famous for his skill at scene setting and vivid plots. He was a best-selling author in the 1920s and 1930s and remains popular to this day."Seashore Macabre" tells the story of a curious boy who inexplicably follows a sinister-looking man at a seaside resort. The old man goes to a remote cottage on the edge of the sand dunes. The boy follows and enters the cottage, where he sees something so terrifying that the memory stays with him for the rest of his life.

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  A Ghost's Revenge

  Lettice Galbraith

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  Lettice Galbraith is as mysterious as the stories she wrote. She appeared on the literary scene in 1893 with a rash of short stories and one novel, published another story four years later, and then disappeared without a trace. Yet despite the brevity of her presence on the literary stage, her supernatural stories have remained popular to this day.'The Ghost's Revenge' is a classic gothic horror story about a vengeful ghost which visits a terrible curse upon anyone who attempts to live in the ancient Ravenshill Hall.

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