Altri libri che potrebbero interessarti

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  Bensons The - A Short Story...

  E F Benson

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  Sibling rivalry can be a means of support but can also erupt into competitive traits of winners and losers.   
   
  In this literary instance dear listener, YOU are undoubtedly the recipient of this rivalry.  Having said that these are not the usual stories to be told in polite company, no, extinguish that idea immediately.  These three brothers (their sister seems far too nice to be in a volume such as this), seem to dwell with dark thoughts, in shadowed recesses and with literary creations that linger in the mind for more than a while.  Curious then that these authors are not only brothers but sons of the Bishop of Canterbury, whose 4 surviving children, never married. 
   
  Edward Frederic, better known as E F Benson, a Cambridge alumni, was one of the most popular and coveted of the turn of the century authors, with a glorious way of creating soul-searing mayhem in the span of a few pages of a short story, as well as being a novelist, biographer, memoirist and archaeologist.   
   
  His brother, Arthur Christopher, also a Cambridge graduate, and better known perhaps as A C Benson in the essay, poetry and academic circles was as accomplished and fiendish.  
   
  The third Cambridge attending brother, Robert Hugh, and yes, better known as R H Benson, was a novelist across several genres and a short story writer who was also a Catholic priest.  Perhaps that gave him an edge.  Although not as well-known as his brothers it may be that the shadows he inhabited were a grand place to meet reprobates that are better known as the subject of scurrilous conversation rather than in the flesh. 
   
  Taken together this band of brothers have the literary chops to rise above most others in the ghost and horror veins of fictional literature.  Well, we assume its fictional, don’t we? 
   
  01 - The Bensons - A Short Story Collection - An Introduction 
  02 - Mrs Amworth by E F Benson 
  03 - The Blood Eagle by R H Benson 
  04 - The Room in the Tower by E F Benson 
  05 - The Closed Window by A C Benson 
  06 - Caterpillars by E F Benson

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  The Substitute

  W. Jacobs

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  W. W. Jacobs was an English writer, famous for his humorous short stories, particularly those relating the preposterous adventures and misadventures of sailors on leave. The collection Short Cruises contains some of W. W. Jacobs' most popular characters, including the night watchman at the docks in Wapping who relates the stories of his friends Ginger Dick, Sam Small and Peter Russet. 'The Substitute' is a humorous story narrated by the night watchman who has made two dangerous enemies - the office boy and the philandering skipper of a coal barge. The office boy is determined to catch the watchman doing something he shouldn't in order to get him in trouble. The skipper is keen to dally with his mistress without being observed. And the watchman would just like to nip off for a beer during his watch without anyone noticing. After a series of awkward encounters between the three protagonists, the situation is further complicated when the skipper's wife decides to pay him a surprise visit.

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  Lafcadio Hearn - A Short Story...

  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. 
   
  1 - Lafcadio Hearn - A Short Story Collection - An Introduction 
  2 - A Dead Secret by Lafcadio Hearn 
  3 - Before the Supreme Court by Lafcadio Hearn 
  4 - Diplomacy by Lafcadio Hearn 
  5 - L'Amour Apres La Mort by Lafcadio Hearn 
  6 - Of A Promise Broken by Lafcadio Hearn 
  7 - Stranger Than Fiction by Lafcadio Hearn 
  8 - The Corpse Rider by Lafcadio Hearn 
  9 - The Ghostly Kiss by Lafcadio Hearn 
  10 - The Undying One by Lafcadio Hearn 
  11 - The Vision of the Dead Creole by Lafcadio Hearn

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  Dearborn

  Ghassan Zeineddine

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  Spanning several decades, Ghassan Zeineddine’s debut collection examines the diverse range and complexities of the Arab-American community in Dearborn, Michigan. In ten tragicomic stories, Zeineddine explores themes of identity, generational conflicts, war trauma, migration, sexuality, queerness, home and belonging, and more. In Dearborn, a father teaches his son how to cheat the IRS and hide their cash earnings inside of frozen chickens. Tensions heighten within a close-knit group of couples when a mysterious man begins to frequent the local gym pool, dressed in Speedos printed with nostalgic images of Lebanon. And a failed stage actor attempts to drive a young Lebanese man with ambitions of becoming a Hollywood action hero to LA, but Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents have other plans. By turns wildly funny, incisive, and deeply moving, Dearborn introduces listeners to an arresting new voice in contemporary fiction and invites us all to consider what it means to be part of a place and community and how it is that we help one another survive.

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  The Assassination of Julius Caesar

  Jacob Abbott

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  Julius Caesar is widely considered to be one of the greatest military geniuses of all time, a brilliant politician, and one of the ancient world's strongest leaders. Caesar was proclaimed dictator for life, and heavily centralised the already faltering government of the weak Republic. However, Caesar's friend Marcus Brutus conspired with others to assassinate Caesar in hopes of saving the Republic. The dramatic assassination on the Ides of March, ushered in Octavian (later known as Caesar Augustus) as the first emperor and undisputed leader of the Roman world.

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  The Encased Man

  Anton Chekhov

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  Anton Chekhov (1860-1904) wrote of the Russian period of depression and pessimism and is the acknowledged leader of the realistic school of the Russian short story. He has been compared to Guy de Maupassant for the masterful way in which he creates an atmosphere and narrates his stories to a climax. No other writer has the same ability to reveal the characters' souls in just two or three pages. Central themes in his works re mediocrity, the tragedy of pettiness, commonplaceness, the meaninglessness and emptiness of everyday life. In "The Encased Man" he describes the life of a schoolmaster whose existence is limited by petty rules, morals, inhibitions and unconscious fears. Despite these traits, the man finds himself on the verge of an unforeseen marriage to a boisterous, energetic, positive woman - in short, his complete opposite. But his character traits rear their heads and destiny rushes in upon him.

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