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  A Successful Rehearsal - From...

  Anthony Hope

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  Sir Anthony Hope Hawkins was born on 9th February 1863 in Clapton, London.  
  He was educated at St John's School, Leatherhead, Marlborough College and Balliol College, Oxford.  Hope trained as a lawyer and barrister and was called to the Bar by the Middle Temple in 1887. Despite what was thought to be a promising legal career he had literary ambitions and wrote in his spare time. 
  His early works appeared in various periodicals of the day but for his first book ‘A Man of Mark’ (1890), with no publisher interested, he published with his own resources.  
  More novels and short stories followed, including the mildly successful ‘Mr Witt's Widow’ in 1892. Hope even found time to run as the Liberal candidate for Wycombe in the election that same year but was unsuccessful. 
  His first major literary success came with ‘The Dolly Dialogues’, a collection of previously published magazine pieces followed very quickly by his instant classic, ‘The Prisoner of Zenda’. He now gave up the vestiges of his legal career to pursue writing full-time. 
  Despite never again reaching the same pinnacle of success he was popular and wrote prolifically across novels, plays and of course, short stories though his writing output rapidly diminished after the war. 
  In 1918 he was knighted for his contribution to propaganda efforts during World War I.  
  His short stories are delicate, mannered and often surprising with their wit, humour and interplay of characters who say one thing and usually mean another.  He was very definitely a writer of escapist rather than serious fare but they are no less enjoyable for that. 
  Anthony Hope died of throat cancer on 8th July 1933 at his country home, Heath Farm at Walton-on-the-Hill in Surrey. He was 70.

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  A Sting In The Ale

  Colin Devine

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  Love, Cruelty, Power: the three cornered stool on which the world squats. A Sting in the Ale is not a novel, it is not even an anti-novel but rather an extended meditation in short story and poetic form over the events reimagined of an otherwise uneventful life; the life of every human animal in which plot and plans fall prey to one darn thing after another. Most things were never meant to be - as the poet of lower middle class misery once observed. The modern cult of power has replaced the ancient notion of the Good as the credible measure of a fulfilled and meaningful life. To what pass is the cult of the self and the cult of power and its holyfool handmaidens leading us? Power, Cruelty and Love; the power of love, the love of power and the universal apologia of partners, jilting lovers, politicians and pimps of various persuasions insisting that one has to be cruel in order to be kind. Very often the kindness in the human animal is cruelty in waiting. A Sting in the Ale is a work of art or pornography - only the individual reader can decide.

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  Story of the Physician and the...

  Robert Louis Stevenson

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  This audiobook is narrated by an AI Voice.  
  In the Latin Quarter of Paris, an American tourist is drawn into a perilous plot when a mysterious encounter leads to a dead body in his hotel room. With the help of Dr. Noel and Prince Florizel, they uncover a sinister conspiracy orchestrated by the President of the Suicide Club. As they navigate a web of treachery and deception, their lives hang in the balance as they race to expose the truth and evade danger. From Paris to London, this gripping tale unravels a thrilling journey filled with suspense, secrets, and the fight for justice.

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  Dolphin Junction - Stories

  Mick Herron

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  CWA GOLD AND STEEL DAGGER–WINNER MICK HERRON’S SHORT FICTION, COLLECTED FOR THE FIRST TIME. 
   
  Mick Herron, author of the Slough House novels, is on his way to becoming one of the most critically acclaimed and culturally important crime fiction writers of the twenty-first century. He has been awarded both the Gold and Steel Daggers by the Crime Writers’ Association and has been called “the John Le Carré of the future” (BBC). But Mick Herron does more than “just” write flawlessly suspenseful spy thrillers. He is a craftist of the highest order, irrepressibly versatile in form (novels, novellas, short fiction) and mood (witty, taut, spooky, laugh-out-loud funny), whose “efficient, darkly witty, tipped-with-imagery sentences … feel purpose-built to perforate [our] private daze of illiteracy” (The Atlantic). 
   
  Now, for the first time, Herron’s short fiction has been collected into one volume.  
   
  In Dolphin Junction, devoted fans and future converts alike will find much to amuse, delight, and terrify them. Five standalone nerve-rackingly thrilling crime fiction stories are complemented by four mystery stories featuring the Oxford wife-and-husband detective team of shrewd Zoë Boehm and hapless Joe Silvermann. The collection also includes a peek into the past of Jackson Lamb, irascible top agent at Slough House.

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  The House with the Mezzanine And...

  Anton Chekhov

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  Anton Chekhov was a Russian playwright and short-story writer who is considered to be one of the greatest writers of all time. His career as a playwright produced four classics, and his best short stories are held in high esteem by writers and critics. Along with Henrik Ibsen and August Strindberg, Chekhov is often referred to as one of the three seminal figures in the birth of early modernism in the theatre. Chekhov was a physician by profession. "Medicine is my lawful wife", he once said, "and literature is my mistress." 
   
  Chekhov renounced the theatre after the reception of The Seagull in 1896, but the play was revived to acclaim in 1898 by Konstantin Stanislavski's Moscow Art Theatre, which subsequently also produced Chekhov's Uncle Vanya and premiered his last two plays, Three Sisters and The Cherry Orchard. These four works present a challenge to the acting ensemble as well as to audiences because in place of conventional action Chekhov offers a "theatre of mood" and a "submerged life in the text". The plays that Chekhov wrote were not complex, but easy to follow, and created a somewhat haunting atmosphere for the audience. 
   
  Chekhov at first wrote stories to earn money, but as his artistic ambition grew, he made formal innovations that influenced the evolution of the modern short story. He made no apologies for the difficulties this posed to readers, insisting that the role of an artist was to ask questions, not to answer them. 
   
  Here is perhaps his finest collection. A true audiobook treasure!

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  Here's Your Hat What's Your...

  Elizabeth McCracken

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  Here's Your Hat What's Your Hurry has descriptive copy which is not yet available from the Publisher.

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