Altri libri che potrebbero interessarti

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  The Minerva Club

  Victor Canning

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  The Minerva Club might look like any other London gentlemen’s club but behind its respectable and discreet façade, some of the most ambitious schemes for heists, money-making and evasion of the law are being worked out. It’s an exclusive club for criminals. Entry qualification: members must have served a prison sentence of two years minimum. Though the club’s criminal ventures don’t always go as planned… 
   
  From trying to break into an old prison cell and stealing a stash of jewels hidden during a previous incarceration, love getting in the way during a hideout from the police, a cleverly planned break-in being interrupted by an unexpected guest, to figuring out where to steal a last-minute wedding cake – the club’s amiable criminals somehow always achieve their goal in the most surprising ways. 
   
  This collection of five short stories follows the Minerva Club’s (mis)adventures and evokes the very best of humorous classic crime fiction.

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  The Bishop of Hell - An abusive...

  Marjorie Bowen

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  Margaret Gabrielle Vere Campbell was born on 1st November 1885 on Hayling Island in Hampshire.  
   
  Her childhood was fraught with problems, her alcoholic father left early in her life and was later found dead on a London Street. Life thereafter was poverty with an uncaring mother. 
   
  However, her talents took her to the Slade School of Fine Art and later to study in Paris.  
   
  Her first fiction, written at a mere 16, was a violent medieval historical novel, ‘The Viper of Milan’. Initially rejected by several publishers it went on to become a best-seller  
   
  After this her prolific writings were the main financial support for the family.  Her literary output numbered over 150 volumes, mainly under the pseudonym of Marjorie Bowen but she also used the names Joseph Shearing, George R Preedy, John Winch, Robert Paye and Margaret Campbell.  Within this output she assigned the pseudonyms to the various genres she worked across, from Historical fiction to supernatural short stories.  
   
  Perhaps her best known work is the 1909 book ‘Black Magic’, a Gothic horror novel about a medieval witch. 
   
  Several of her works were also adapted into films.   
   
  She was married twice.  The first to Zefferino Emilio Constanza (they had two children), who died of tuberculosis, and then to Arthur L Long (and another two children) 
   
  Marjorie Bowen died on 23rd December 1952 at St Charles Hospital in North Kensington, London after suffering serious concussion from a fall in her bedroom.  She was 67.

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  The Holy Night

  Selma Lagerlöf

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  As part of her collection "Christ Legends" Selma Lagerlöf wrote the story "The Holy Night," a Christmas-themed tale first published in sometime in the early 1900s but before her death in 1940. It tells the story of the author at five years old who experienced a great sadness when her grandmother passed which made her recall a story the old woman used to tell about the Holy Night.
  The story the grandmother tells is about a poor man who wanders around the village asking people for a single live coal to light his own fire, but keeps getting met with rejection until he runs into a shepherd who finds compassion in his heart to help, especially after seeing the state of the man's home and wife and child.

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  Nathaniel Hawthorne - Six of the...

  Nathaniel Hawthorne

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  Six has always been a number we group things around – Six of the best, six of one half a dozen of another, six feet under, six pack, six degrees of separation and a sixth sense are but a few of the ways we use this number. 
   
  Such is its popularity that we thought it is also a very good way of challenging and investigating an author’s work to give width, brevity, humour and depth across six of their very best. 
   
  In this series we gather together authors whose short stories both rivet the attention and inspire the imagination to visit their gems in a series of six, to roam across an author’s legacy in a few short hours and gain a greater understanding of their writing and, of course, to be lavishly entertained by their ideas, their narrative and their way with words. 
   
  These stories can be surprising and sometimes at a tangent to what we expected, but each is fully formed and a marvellous adventure into the world and words of a literary master. 
   
  1 - Six of the Best - Nathaniel Hawthorne -  An Introduction 
  2 - Nathaniel Hawthorne - An Introduction 
  3 - Young Goodman Brown by Nathaniel Hawthorne 
  4 - The Devil In Manuscript By Nathaniel Hawthorne 
  5 - The Artist of the Beautiful by Nathaniel Hawthorne 
  6 - The Wedding Knell By Nathaniel Hawthorne 
  7 - Rappaccini's Daughter - Part 1 by Nathaniel Hawthorne 
  8 - Rappaccini's Daughter - Part 2 by Nathaniel Hawthorne 
  9 - Roger Malvin's Burial by Nathaniel Hawthorne

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  Middlemarch Volume 4

  George Eliot

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  Middlemarch, Volume 4 brings George Eliot's epic to its culmination. Dorothea, having faced disillusionment, finds a path towards personal growth and a more authentic life. Lydgate's story reaches a poignant conclusion, exploring the consequences of his choices. The complex web of Middlemarch's society is untangled as the fates of its diverse characters converge. This final volume explores themes of redemption, acceptance, and the enduring power of human connection amidst life's inevitable disappointments.

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  The Looking Glass - From their...

  Anton Chekhov

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  Anton Pavlovich Chekhov was born on 29th January 1860 in Taganrog, on the south coast of Russia.  
  His family life was difficult; his father was strict and over-bearing but his mother was a passionate story-teller, a subject Chekhov warmed to. As he later said; ‘our talents we got from our father, but our soul from our mother’.  
  At school Chekhov was distinctly average. At 16 his father mis-managed his finances and was declared bankrupt. His family fled to Moscow. Chekhov remained and eked out a living by various means, including writing and selling short sketches to newspapers, to finish his schooling. That completed and with a scholarship to Moscow University obtained he rejoined his family. 
  He was able to help support them by selling satirical sketches and vignettes of Russian lifestyles and gradually obtained further commissions. In 1884, he qualified as a physician and, although it earned him little, he often treated the poor for free, he was fond of saying ‘Medicine is my lawful wife, and literature is my mistress.’ 
  His own health was now an issue as he began to cough up blood, a symptom of tuberculosis.  Despite this his writing success enabled him to move the family into more comfortable accommodation.  
  Chekhov wrote over 500 short stories which included many, many classics including ‘The Kiss’ and ‘The Lady with a Dog’.  His collection ‘At Dusk’ won him the coveted Pushkin Prize when was only 26.  
  He was also a major playwright beginning with the huge success of ‘Ivanov’ in 1887.   
  In 1892 Chekhov bought a country estate north of Moscow. Here his medical skills and money helped the peasants tackle outbreaks of cholera and bouts of famine. He also built three schools, a fire station and a clinic.  It left him with less time for writing but the interactions with real people gained him detailed knowledge about the peasantry and their living conditions for his stories.  
  His most famous work, ‘The Seagull’ was received disastrously at its premiere in St Petersburg. It was later restaged in Moscow to highlight its psychological aspects and was a huge success. It led to ‘Uncle Vanya’, ‘The Three Sisters’ and ‘The Cherry Orchard’.  
  Chekhov suffered a major lung hemorrhage in 1897 while visiting Moscow. A formal diagnosis confirmed tuberculosis and the doctors ordered changes to his lifestyle.  
  Despite a dread of weddings the elusive literary bachelor quietly married the actress Olga Knipper, whom he had met at rehearsals for ‘The Seagull’, on 25th May 1901. 
  By May 1904 with his tuberculosis worsening and death imminent he set off for the German town of Badenweiler writing cheerful, witty letters to his family and assuring them his health was improving.  
  On 15th July 1904 Anton Chekhov died at Badenweiler.  He was 44.

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