Other books that might interest you

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  The Swan in the Evening -...

  Rosamond Lehmann

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  Rosamond Lehmann’s only autobiographical work recreates the events that shaped her life—from childhood to motherhood to the death of her daughter Rosamond Lehmann was born during a violent February thunderstorm and lived a sheltered, privileged life with her parents, brother, and sisters. Writing from the distance of decades, she reveals why no adult would ever apologize to a child, shares thoughts on her “first conscious memory,” and discusses the taboo subjects of “birth, death, physical and sexual functions.” Later, she recounts the tragedy that rocked her world as a mother. A blackbird with a broken neck appears as a harbinger of doom: A few hours after finding the bird, Lehmann receives a phone call from her son telling her that her twenty-four-year-old daughter, Sally, is dead. Wracked with grief and desperate for answers, Lehmann, a non-believer, finds solace in spiritualism.   Beginning with an examination of Lehmann’s singular childhood featuring cherished friends and pets, and concluding with an extraordinary letter to her granddaughter Anna, TheSwan in the Evening is about the search for peace and acceptance—and finding hope in the face of unbearable loss.

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  Improbable Patriot - The Secret...

  Harlow Giles Unger

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  Pierre-Augustin Caron de Beaumarchais was an eighteenth-century French inventor, famed playwright, and upstart near-aristocrat in the court of King Louis XVI. In 1776, he conceived an audacious plan to send aid to the American rebels. What's more, he convinced the king to bankroll the project, and singlehandedly carried it out. By war's end, he had supplied Washington's army with most of its weapons and powder, though he was never paid or acknowledged by the United States. 
  To some, he was a dashing hero—a towering intellect who saved the American Revolution. To others, he was pure rogue—a double-dealing adventurer who stopped at nothing to advance his fame and fortune. In fact, he was both, and more: an advisor to kings, an arms dealer, and author of some of the most enduring works of the stage, including The Marriage of Figaro and The Barber of Seville.

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  The Wonderful Garden

  Edith Nesbit

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  Do you believe in magic? Caroline, Charles and Charlotte do, and nothing that happens during their summer holiday at their great uncle's house does anything to diminish that belief. There the Three C.'s find a wonderful garden and some very old books, resulting in escapades which do not necessarily please the grown-ups. E. Nesbit, as usual, transports us back to the hazy summer days of a well-to-do Edwardian childhood, liberally spiced with magic, humor and lessons learned. As Gore Vidal once wrote: ""...though a reading of E. Nesbit is hardly going to change the pattern of a nation, there is some evidence that the child who reads her will never be quite the same again, and that is probably a good thing."" Published more than 100 years ago, this is one of Nesbit's least-known children's books, out of print for many years but now it is finally back.

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  Women's Short Stories Volume 4

  Kate Chopin, Dorothy Parker,...

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  Women's Short Stories - Vol 4.  The art of writing a short story can be barely noticed by a reader such is the quality with which they are usually written.  It is a difficult trade, an unforgiving discipline but for those who master it the rewards are many.  In this series of works by our greatest female writers we bring you a selection of those we consider the best.  In Volume 4 we bring you the classics of A Pair Of Silk Stockings – Kate Chopin, Here We Are – Dorothy Parker, Right At Last - Elizabeth Gaskell. These stories are read for you by the renowned actresses Eve Karpf and Liza Ross

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  The Narnian - The Life and...

  Alan Jacobs

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  The White Witch, Aslan, fauns and talking beasts, centaurs and epic battles between good and evil -- all these have become a part of our collective imagination through the classic volumes of The Chronicles of Narnia. Over the past half century, children everywhere have escaped into this world and delighted in its wonders and enchantments. Yet what we do know of the man who created Narnia? This biography sheds new light on the making of the original Narnian, C. S. Lewis himself.Lewis was one of the intellectual giants of the twentieth century and arguably the most influential religious writer of his day. An Oxford don and scholar of medieval literature, he loved to debate philosophy at his local pub, and his wartime broadcasts on the basics of Christian belief made him a celebrity in his native Britain. Yet one of the most intriguing aspects of Clive Staples Lewis remains a mystery. How did this middle-aged Irish bachelor turn to the writing of stories for children -- stories that would become among the most popular and beloved ever written?Alan Jacobs masterfully tells the story of the original Narnian. From Lewis's childhood days in Ireland playing with his brother, Warnie, to his horrific experiences in the trenches during World War I, to his friendship with J. R. R. Tolkien (and other members of the "Inklings"), and his remarkable late-life marriage to Joy Davidman, Jacobs traces the events and people that shaped Lewis's philosophy, theology, and fiction. The result is much more than a conventional biography of Lewis: Jacobs tells the story of a profound and extraordinary imagination. For those who grew up with Narnia, or for those just discovering it, The Narnian tells a remarkable tale of a man who knew great loss and great delight, but who knew above all that the world holds far more richness and meaning than the average eye can see.

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  Edward Page Mitchell - A Short...

  Edward Page Mitchell

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  Edward Page Mitchell – An Introduction 
   
  Edward Page Mitchell was born in Bath, Maine on 24th March 1852 into a wealthy family.  When he was eight the family moved to a house on New York’s Fifth Avenue. 
   
  In 1863 he witnessed the Draft Riots and in the aftermath Mitchell's father moved the family to Tar River, North Carolina. It was there, at the age of fourteen, that his letters were first published in the local newspaper The Bath Times. 
   
  In 1872, at age twenty, whilst on a train journey to Bath, Maine, a hot cinder from the engine's smokestack flew in through the window blinding his left eye.  After several weeks, while doctors attempted to restore his sight his uninjured right eye underwent sympathetic blindness.  He was now completely blind. His burnt left eye eventually regained its sight, but his uninjured right eye remained blind and was later removed surgically and replaced with a prosthetic glass eye. While recovering from this surgery, Mitchell wrote his famed story ‘The Tachypomp’. 
   
  He became a journalist for the Daily Advertiser in Boston, where his mentor was Edward Everett Hale, now also recognized as an early pioneer of science fiction. 
   
  Mitchell’s influence on science fiction writing is incredible, pre-dating many major themes. He wrote about a man made invisible (‘The Crystal Man’, 1881), a time-travel machine (‘The Clock that Went Backward’), about faster-than-light travel (‘The Tachypomp’, 1874), a thinking computer and a cyborg (‘The Ablest Man in the World’, 1879), matter transmission or teleportation (‘The Man without a Body’, 1877), superior mutants (‘Old Squids and Little Speller’) and mind transfer (‘Exchanging Their Souls’, 1877). Add to this other stories which predicted travel by pneumatic tube, electrical heating, newspapers printed at home, food-pellet concentrates, international broadcasts, and suspended animation through cryogenics amount to talents that are not as publicly lauded as they should be. 
   
  He had a lifelong interest in the supernatural and paranormal—several early newspaper pieces are factual investigations of alleged hauntings and usually he determined they had rational explanations. 
   
  In 1874, Mitchell married Annie Sewall Welch and they had four children.  
   
  In 1903, Mitchell became editor-in-chief of the New York Sun, then the Nation’s leading newspaper. 
   
  In 1912, following Annie’s death, he married Ada M. Burroughs and produced a fifth son. Mitchell remained a popular and respected figure in American journalism and writing up to his death. 
   
  Edward Page Mitchell died of a cerebral hemorrhage in New London, Connecticut on 22nd January 1927.  He was 76. 
   
  1 - Edward Page Mitchell - A Short Story Collection - An Introduction 
  2 - The Clock That Went Backward by Edward Page Mitchell 
  3 - The Tachypomp by Edward Page Mitchell 
  4 - The Man Without a Body by Edward Page Mitchell 
  5 - The Devilish Rat by Edward Page Mitchell 
  6 - The Crystal Man by Edward Page Mitchell

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