Other books that might interest you

• 

  On the Gull's Road

  Willa Cather

  • 0
  • 0
  • 0

  Willa Sibert Cather was born on 7th December, 1873 on her grandmother's farm in the Back Creek Valley near Winchester, Virginia. After several years and moves the family eventually settled in Red Cloud, Nebraska and for the first time Cather could now attend school. 
   
  In Red Cloud Cather had her earliest writings published in the local Red Cloud Chief newspaper. Her time in the mid-West created a vivid tranche of experiences for the young woman. It was still, for the most part, the frontier; a landscape of dramatic environment and weather, the vastness of the Nebraska prairie, as well as the many diverse cultures of the local families.  
   
  Attending the University of Nebraska she published a well received essay on Thomas Carlyle in the Nebraska State Journal and thereafter became a regular contributor to its offerings. After being hired to write for the Home Monthly, in 1896, Cather moved to Pittsburgh. Within a year she became a telegraph editor and drama critic for the Pittsburgh Leader as well as contributing poetry and short fiction to The Library, another local publication.  
   
  Her first collection of short stories, "The Troll Garden", was published in 1905 and contains several of her most famous including "A Wagner Matinee," "The Sculptor's Funeral," and "Paul's Case." 
   
  As a writer Cather was now taking immense strides forward.  By 1912 she had finished her first novel "Alexander's Bridge" which was serialized in McClure's to favourable reviews.   
   
  Cather now began her Prairie Trilogy: "O Pioneers!" (1913), "The Song of the Lark" (1915), and "My Ántonia" (1918).  All three were popular and critical successes nationwide. 
   
  Throughout the 1910s and 1920s, Cather continued to establish herself as a major American writer and received the Pulitzer Prize in 1922 for her novel "One of Ours".  
   
  A determinedly private person, Cather destroyed many old drafts, personal papers, and letters. Her will would also restrict the ability of scholars to quote from personal papers that remained.  
   
  In 1932, Cather published her final collection of short stories, "Obscure Destinies" which contained the highly regarded "Neighbour Rosicky." She now began work on "Lucy Gayheart", a novel that was rather darker than those before it. 
   
  With her career settled as one of America's greatest writers honours began to flow. In 1943 she was elected a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. The following year, 1944, Cather received the gold medal for fiction from the National Institute of Arts and Letters.  
   
  However time was about to settle scores with her. On April 24th, 1947, Willa Siebert Cather died of a cerebral haemorrhage at her home at 570 Park Avenue in Manhattan. She was 73.

  Show book

• 

  Flowering of the Strange Orchid...

  H. G. Wells

  • 0
  • 0
  • 0

  A short story from the British Library Tales of the Weird collection Evil Roots. The Victorian era saw orchids become one of the most expensive and collectable plants, and this short story follows orchid collector Wedderburn, who gets more than he bargained for with his latest floral specimen.

  Show book

• 

  4 Stories by Louisa May Alcott...

  Louisa May Alcott

  • 0
  • 0
  • 0

  Here are four delightful short stories written by the famous author specifically for girls. As she says in the tiny preface "These stories were written for my own amusement during a period of enforced seclusion. The flowers which were my solace and pleasure suggested titles for the tales and gave an interest to the work. If my girls find a little beauty or sunshine in these common blossoms, their old friend will not have made her Garland in vain. L.M. ALCOTT." The stories are An Ivy Spray & Ladies Slippers; Pansies; Water-Lilies and Mountain-Laurel & Maiden-Hair. They are all between 40 minutes and 55 minutes finished audio so they are not short but all four are typical stories from the talented pen of Miss Alcott.

  Show book

• 

  The Stones of the Village

  Alice Dunbar Nelson

  • 0
  • 0
  • 0

  Alice Ruth Moore was born on 19th July 1875 in New Orleans where she was part of the multi-racial Creole community.  She was the first generation seemingly born free after the Civil War and unusually for the times, obtained a university education which led to her becoming a teacher at a public school in New Orleans.   
   
  In 1895, when she was 20, she published her first collection of short stories and poems, ‘Violets and Other Tales’, and moved to New York City where she co-founded and taught at the White Rose Mission, a Home for Girls.   
   
  Alice was always politically active and sought to advance the position of black women.  She began work as a journalist at the Woman’s Era newspaper where her work was seen by the established poet and journalist Paul Laurence Dunbar.  After corresponding for two years she joined him in Washington DC and they married in 1898.   
   
  It was a difficult relationship, due mainly to Dunbar’s fragile health, alcoholism and depression.  After a severe beating she left him and moved to Delaware to teach for a decade though took time out to enroll at Cornell University. 
   
  A short-lived marriage to Henry A. Callis, a physician and professor at Howard University ended in divorce and she became co-editor and writer for an influential publication of the African Methodist Episcopal Church.  A third marriage to civil rights activist Robert J. Nelson came about, as did affairs with several women, notably the activist Fay Jackie Robinson.   
   
  In Wilmington Delaware she and her husband devoted their time and writings to working for equality for African Americans and women’s suffrage.   
   
  Alice Dunbar Nelson was a natural and gifted writer across many genres, from novels, essays, plays to diaries, criticism, poetry and of course short stories, of which ‘Stones in the Village’ is a fine example.  The protagonist, like herself, is light skinned from New Orleans, which allows for a social mobility and a unique position in American society that Dunbar Nelson captures with an imagination and insight to explores another divisive perspective on race.  It is unsurprising that Alice was a prominent part of the early Harlem Renaissance and influenced many others including Langston Hughes and Countee Cullen. 
   
  Alice and her husband moved to Philadelphia in 1932 and it was here that she died on 18th September 1935, at the age of 60, from a heart ailment.

  Show book

• 

  My Enemy and Myself

  Vincent O'Sullivan

  • 0
  • 0
  • 0

  Vincent O'Sullivan (1868-1940), born in New York to an Irish-American family, moved as a child to London. As a young man, he soon became well recognised as the master of decadent and macabre fiction. "My Enemy and Myself" is a superbly sinister and gory tale of insanity, a love triangle, revenge, murder and supernatural retribution.

  Show book

• 

  Eight Pillars of Prosperity

  James Allen

  • 0
  • 1
  • 0

  In As a Man Thinketh, James Allen showed how our thoughts and dreams determine the sort of person we become. In Eight Pillars of Prosperity, he reveals—in great depth and detail—the exact qualities we must meditate upon in order to achieve lasting success. 
  Prosperity rests on eight pillars: Energy, Economy, Integrity, System, Sympathy, Sincerity, Impartiality, and Self-reliance. "A business built up on the faultless practice of all these principles," Allen writes, "would be so firm and enduring as to be invincible. Nothing could injure it; nothing could undermine its prosperity, nothing could interrupt its success."

  Show book