Altri libri che potrebbero interessarti

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  Feuille d’Album - A Classic...

  Katherine Mansfield

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  What happens when love is felt deeply but never spoken aloud? In “Feuille d’Album” by Katherine Mansfield, a shy and socially awkward young man observes the woman who lives across from him, constructing an entire emotional world from brief glances and silent longing. His affection grows not through conversation or action, but through careful watching and inward reflection. Set in a quiet European city, the story unfolds as a delicate study of romantic idealism, isolation, and the fear of human connection. As the young man’s inner life becomes richer and more intense, the gap between imagination and reality slowly narrows - until a single, fragile moment forces him to confront the limits of his private dream. With her signature psychological precision, Mansfield captures the vulnerability of unexpressed love, revealing how desire can flourish in silence. Press play and step into one of her most subtly moving short stories, where longing lives in the space between seeing and being seen.

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  The Story of the Inexperienced...

  H. G. Wells

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  "He wasn't a terrifying ghost; he was a pathetic one. He had forgotten how to haunt."
  
  In the cozy, smoke-filled atmosphere of the Meridian Club, a man named Clayton recounts a remarkable encounter. He recently found himself face-to-face with a ghost—not a shrieking specter, but a shy, stuttering young man who had died of "inanition" and was now failing miserably at being scary. The ghost has forgotten the complex "passes" and gestures required to disappear back into the spirit world. As Clayton attempts to help the spirit regain his "spectral footing," the story takes a turn from the humorous to the chillingly profound, questioning the thin veil between the living and the dead.
  
  A Satire of the Gothic Tradition: Wells subverts every trope of the 19th-century ghost story. His phantom is a "low-grade" spirit who is self-conscious about his lack of haunting skills. By treating the afterlife as a bureaucratic or technical skill that one must master, Wells brings a grounded, modern sensibility to the supernatural, making the ghost's plight relatable and strangely human.
  
  The Fatal Curiosity: The narrative tension peaks when Clayton decided to demonstrate the ghost's secret gestures to his skeptical friends. Wells masterfully builds a sense of dread as the "inexperienced" ghost's struggle becomes a real-world danger. It is a cautionary tale about the arrogance of the living when dealing with the mysteries of the beyond.
  
  Discover the lighter—and darker—side of the supernatural. Purchase "The Story of the Inexperienced Ghost" today and master the pass.

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  Aloysha the Pot - From their...

  Leo Tolstoy

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  Leo Tolstoy was born in 1828 in the Russian province of Tula to a wealthy noble family. As a child, he had private tutors but he showed little interest in any formal education. When he went to the University of Kazan in 1843 to study oriental languages and law, he left without completing his courses.  Life now was relaxed and idle but with some writing also taking place.  Gambling debts forced an abrupt change of path and he joined the army to fight in the Crimean War.  He was commended for his bravery and promoted but was appalled at the brutality and loss of life.  He recorded these and other earlier experiences in his diaries which formed the basis of several of his works. 
  In 1852 ‘Childhood’ was published to immediate success and was followed by ‘Boyhood’ and ‘Youth’. 
  His experience in the army and the horrors he witnessed resulted in ‘The Cossacks’ in 1862 and the trilogy ‘Sevastopol Tales’. After the war he travelled around Europe, visiting London and Paris and meeting such luminaries as Victor Hugo and Charles Darwin.  
  It was now that Tolstoy began his masterpiece, ‘War and Peace’. Published in 1869 it was an epic work that changed literature. He quickly followed this with ‘Anna Karenina’.  
  These successes made Tolstoy rich and helped him accomplish many of his dreams but also brought problems as he grappled with his faith and the lot of the oppressed poor. These revolutionary views became so popular that the authorities now kept him under surveillance.  
  He led a life of asceticism and vegetarianism and put his socialist ideals into practice by establishing numerous schools for the poor and food programmes. He also believed in giving away his wealth, which caused much discord with his wife.  
  His writing continued to bring forth classics such as ‘The Death of Ivan Ilyich’ and many brilliant and incisive short stories such as ‘How Much Land Does A Man Need’.  
  In 1901 Tolstoy was excommunicated from the Church and controversially deselected for the Nobel Prize for Literature. 
  Whilst undertaking a pilgrimage by train in October 1910 with his daughter Aleksandra he caught pneumonia in the nearby town of Astapovo.  Leo Tolstoy died on November 9th, 1910, he was 82.

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  Kashtanka

  Anton Chekhov

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  "Kashtanka" — Anton Chekov's short story about a dog with two masters — is a fable about the conundrum of the creative life.
  The dog Kashtanka belongs to a drunken carpenter who takes her out one day, but on the way home loses her in the confusion of a military parade. The story is told by an omniscient narrator who privileges Kashtanka's point of view, so we follow the dog's subsequent adventures largely from her eyes.

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  The Little Governess

  Katherine Mansfield

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  "The Little Governess" is a 1915 short story by Katherine Mansfield. It was first published in Signature on 18 October 1915 under the pen name of Matilda Berry, and later reprinted in Bliss and Other Stories. The text is written in the modernist mode, without a set structure, and with many shifts in the narrative.
  After receiving advice from the lady at the Governess Bureau, a young and naive English governess (referred to throughout as "the little governess") is off on the train from France to Munich, from where she will go to a new house for work. The governess has never been abroad before, and is duly forewarned of the dangers by the lady at the Governess Bureau, who tells her to "mistrust people at first". She is harassed by a porter on the way to her train, and once aboard, by a group of rowdy French men.

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  The Ghost and the Bone Setter -...

  Sheridan Le Fanu

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  Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu was born on 28th August 1814 in Dublin into a literary family with Huguenot, Irish and English roots.   
  For a time he and his siblings were tutored but Le Fanu would often immerse himself in the books of his father’s library. 
  In 1833 Le Fanu began his Law studies at Trinity College, Dublin and graduated in 1839. Although called to the bar he instead began a career in journalism.   
  He was also writing. His first fiction story ‘The Ghost and the Bonesetter’ was published in 1838.  In 1843 came the novella ‘Spalatro: From the Notes of Fra Giacomo’, a hero with a particular necrophiliac passion for an undead blood-drinking beauty, a forerunner to his later female vampire ‘Carmilla’.  
  In 1844 Le Fanu married Susanna Bennett with whom he had 4 children. The following year his first novel ‘The C'ock and Anchor’ was published. Works now flowed from his pen and with a rapid increase in family finances they moved, in 1851, to Merrion Square, Dublin, where he remained until his death.  
  In 1858 Susanna died and Le Fanu became reclusive. It was during this period that he produced some of his best work.  Working only by candlelight he wrote through the night, burnishing his reputation as a major figure of 19th Century supernaturalism with many classics including; ‘Green Tea’, ‘Mr Justice Harbottle’, and ‘In a Glass Darkly’.  
  Joseph Thomas Sheridan Le Fanu died in Merrion Square in his native Dublin on February 7th, 1873, at the age of 58.

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