Publisher: Dragonfire Press
One misstep can change a life. When Mina stumbles upon an abandoned dragon cave, she finds more than she bargained for. This is a prequel short story that leads into the series Marked by the Dragon. It doesn't have spoilers, but rather expands what the main series mentions.
Clotilde Augusta Inez Mary Graves was born on the 3rd June 1863 at Buttevant Castle, Co. Cork, to parents with military backgrounds. At age nine, the family moved to Southsea in England for yet another military posting. Her father’s postings gave her valuable experiences that would be put to good use in later years in some of her literary works. She was educated at a Catholic convent in Lourdes before returning to London in 1884 to study art in Bloomsbury. She worked part-time at the British Museum and the Royal Female School of Art and generated further income by drawing little pen-and-ink grotesques for the comic papers. A few years later a chance meeting found her writing extra lyrics for a pantomime version of Puss in Boots. She followed up with several financially successful plays, both in London and New York, and gained a measure of notoriety in one with the comparison of marriage and prostitution. Despite her dramatic success she published her first novel in 1911 under the pseudonym of Richard Dehan which she continued to use for later works. As well as novels and plays she published collections of short stories which glow with talent and invention. She was an unusual figure in London society, wearing her hair short, taking on a masculine manner and cut of clothing, and smoking cigarettes in public when such traits were considered eccentric at best. Add to this her admired collection of Chinese and Japanese trophies, her enthusiasm for fly-fishing and her riding of a tricycle and you have a perfect image of this fascinating writer. Clotilde Graves died at the convent of Our Lady of Lourdes at Hatch End in Middlesex, on the 3rd December 1932. She was 69.Show book
Italy Dia Kahania (Stories of Italy) is a collection of vivid short stories by Maxim Gorky that captures the everyday life, struggles, and emotions of ordinary people in Italy. Through rich imagery and detailed observation, Gorky portrays social unrest, human resilience, and the vibrant spirit of communities facing hardship. The stories often focus on laborers, children, and common folk, highlighting their interactions, struggles, and small joys in the backdrop of a dynamic cityscape.Show book
Jamaica Kincaid's At the Bottom of the River . . . inspired, lyrical short stories Reading Jamaica Kincaid is to plunge, gently, into another way of seeing both the physical world and its elusive inhabitants. Her voice is, by turns, naively whimsical and biblical in its assurance, and it speaks of what is partially remembered partly divined. The memories often concern a childhood in the Caribbean—family, manners, and landscape—as distilled and transformed by Kincaid's special style and vision. Kincaid leads her readers to consider, as if for the first time, the powerful ties between mother and child; the beauty and destructiveness of nature; the gulf between the masculine and the feminine; the significance of familiar things—a house, a cup, a pen. Transfiguring our human form and our surroundings—shedding skin, darkening an afternoon, painting a perfect place—these stories tell us something we didn't know, in a way we hadn't expected.Show book
17 twisted short stories and poems from the author of the Victorian Gothic series of novels. From first dates to shipwrecked sailors, encompassing modern horror to gothic tropes, this anthology has something for everyone with one thing in common: they want something to think about when they go to bed.Show book
Ambrose Gwinnett Bierce was born on 24th June 1842 at Horse Cave Creek in Meigs County, Ohio. His parents were poor but they introduced him to literature at an early age, instilling in him a deep appreciation of books, the written word and the elegance of language. Growing up in Koscuisko County, Indiana poverty and religion were defining features of his childhood, and he would later describe his parents as “unwashed savages” and fanatically religious, showing him little affection but always quick to punish. He came to resent religion, and his introduction to literature appears to be their only positive effect. At age 15 Bierce left home to become a printer’s devil, mixing ink and fetching type at The Northern Indian, a small Ohio paper. Falsely accused of theft he returned to his farm and spent time sending out work in the hopes of being published. His Uncle Lucius advised he be sent to the Kentucky Military Institute. A year later he was commissioned as an Officer. As the Civil War started Bierce enlisted in the 9th Indiana Infantry Regiment. In April 1862 Bierce fought at the Battle of Shiloh, an experience which, though terrifying, became the source of several short stories. Two years later he sustained a serious head wound and was off duty for several months. He was discharged in early 1865. A later expedition to inspect military outposts across the Great Plains took him all the way to San Francisco. He remained there to become involved with publishing and editing and to marry, Mary Ellen on Christmas Day 1871. They had a child, Day, the following year. In 1872 the family moved to England for 3 years where he wrote for Fun magazine. His son, Leigh, was born, and first book, ‘The Fiend’s Delight’, was published. They returned to San Francisco and to work for a number of papers where he gained admiration for his crime reporting. In 1887 he began a column at the William Randolph Hearst’s San Francisco Examiner. Bierce’s marriage fell apart when he discovered compromising letters to his wife from a secret admirer. The following year, 1889 his son Day committed suicide, depressed by romantic rejection. In 1891 Bierce wrote and published the collection of 26 short stories which included ‘An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge’. Success and further works including poetry followed. Bierce with Hearst’s resources helped uncover a financial plot by a railroad to turn 130 million dollars of loans into a handout. Confronted by the railroad and asked to name his price Bierce answered “my price is $130 million dollars. If, when you are ready to pay, I happen to be out of town, you may hand it over to my friend, the Treasurer of the United States”. He now began his first foray as a fabulist, publishing ‘Fantastic Fables’ in 1899. But tragedy again struck two years later when his second son Leigh died of pneumonia relating to his alcoholism. He continued to write short stories and poetry and also published ‘The Devil’s Dictionary’. At the age of 71, in 1913 Bierce departed from Washington, D.C., for a tour of the battlefields where he had fought during the civil war. At the city of Chihuahua he wrote his last known communication, a letter to a friend. It’s closing words were “as to me, I leave here tomorrow for an unknown destination,” Ambrose Bierce then vanished without trace.Show book
From an "exquisite" (The New Yorker) writer, a searing volume of prizewinning stories starring women facing points of no return. A professor finds a photograph of her deceased mother in a compromising position on the wall of a museum. A twenty-something's lucrative remote work sparks paranoia and bigotry. A transplant to a new city must make a choice about who she trusts when her partner reveals a violent history. The summer after her divorce from an older man, an exiled painter's former friends grapple with rumors that she attempted to pass as a teenager. In this long-awaited debut collection, Kathleen Alcott turns her skills as a stylist on the unfreedoms of American life—as well as the guilt that stalks those who survive them. Emergency roams from European cities to scorched California towns, drug-smeared motel rooms to polished dinner parties, taking taut, surprising portraits of addiction, love, misogyny, and sexual power. Confronting the hidden perils of class ascension, the women in these stories try to pay down the psychic debts of their old lives as they search for a new happiness they can afford.Show book
