Other books that might interest you

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  Six Reasons Balls Fall and Kill...

  Ryan Serhant

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  Dead deals are the worst. You've put in all that time and energy into trying to make something work, only to end up with it not working. Ryan Serhant shares how salespeople can turn a dead deal into a big win.

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  The Book of Psalms

  Anonymous Anonymous

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  “It is not out of compliment that lovers keep on telling one another how beautiful they are; the delight is incomplete till it is expressed…” 
  C.S Lewis 
  The Book of Psalms is at the heart of the Christian Bible.Throughout voice of the Psalmist cries out to God with a voice, at times of despair or supplication, at times in frustration and penitence and, of course ultimately, in Praise. 
  Half of the Psalms were likely written by the Shepherd-King, King David, a man described in the Bible as “a man after God’s own heart”. Indeed, the Psalms express a true heart cry to the Creator, with no pseudo religiosity, but with a refreshing honesty that has kept the Psalms at the core of worship for thousands of years.  
  Here they are read in the King James Authorised translation by Simon Hester, with original music, sparingly used, to enhance the readings.

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  British Short Story The - Volume...

  James S Pyke-Nott, GK...

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  These British Isles, moored across from mainland Europe, are more often seen as a world unto themselves.  Restless and creative, they often warred amongst themselves until they began a global push to forge a World Empire of territory, of trade and of language. 
   
  Here our ambitions are only of the literary kind.  These shores have mustered many masters of literature. So this anthology’s boundaries includes only those authors who were born in the British Isles - which as a geographical definition is the UK mainland and the island of Ireland - and wrote in a familiar form of English. 
   
  Whilst Daniel Defoe is the normal starting point we begin a little earlier with Aphra Behn, an equally colourful character as well as an astonishing playwright and poet.  And this is how we begin to differentiate our offering; both in scope, in breadth and in depth.  These islands have raised and nurtured female authors of the highest order and rank and more often than not they have been sidelined or ignored in favour of that other gender which usually gets the plaudits and the royalties. 
   
  Way back when it was almost immoral that a woman should write.  A few pages of verse might be tolerated but anything else brought ridicule and shame.  That seems unfathomable now but centuries ago women really were chattel, with marriage being, as the Victorian author Charlotte Smith boldly stated ‘legal prostitution’.  Some of course did find a way through - Jane Austen, the Brontes and Virginia Woolf but for many others only by changing their names to that of men was it possible to get their book to publication and into a readers hands.  Here we include George Eliot and other examples. 
   
  We add further depth with many stories by authors who were famed and fawned over in their day.  Some wrote only a hidden gem or two before succumbing to poverty and death. There was no second career as a game show guest, reality TV contestant or youtuber. They remain almost forgotten outposts of talent who never prospered despite devoted hours of pen and brain. 
   
  Keeping to a chronological order helps us to highlight how authors through the ages played around with characters and narrative to achieve distinctive results across many scenarios, many styles and many genres. The short story became a sort of literary laboratory, an early disruptor, of how to present and how to appeal to a growing audience as a reflection of social and societal changes.  Was this bound to happen or did a growing population that could read begin to influence rather than just accept? 
   
  Moving through the centuries we gather a groundswell of authors as we hit the Victorian Age - an age of physical mass communication albeit only on an actual printed page.  An audience was offered a multitude of forms: novels (both whole and in serialised form) essays, short stories, poems all in weekly, monthly and quarterly form.  Many of these periodicals were founded or edited by literary behemoths from Dickens and Thackeray through to Jerome K Jerome and, even some female editors including Ethel Colburn Mayne, Alice Meynell and Ella D’Arcy. 
   
  Now authors began to offer a wider, more diverse choice from social activism and justice – and injustice to cutting stories of manners and principles.  From many forms of comedy to mental meltdowns, from science fiction to unrequited heartache.  If you can imagine it an author probably wrote it.  
   
  At the end of the 19th Century bestseller lists and then prizes, such as the Nobel and Pulitzer, helped focus an audience’s attention to a books literary merit and sales worth. Previously coffeehouses, Imperial trade, unscrupulous overseas printers ignoring copyright restrictions, publishers with their book lists as an appendix and the gossip and interchange of polite society had been the main avenues to secure sales and profits.

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  The Boy Who Reached for the...

  Elio Morillo

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  “Inspiring and joyous.”—People 
  ""Heartwarming . . . infectious . . . Morillo's The Boy Who Reached for the Stars is every bit the inspiration he means it to be.""—Kirkus Reviews 
  The engineer known as the “space mechanic” speaks to both our future and past in this breathless memoir of his journey from Ecuador to NASA and beyond. 
  Elio Morillo’s life is abruptly spun out of orbit when economic collapse and personal circumstances compel his mother to flee Ecuador for the United States in search of a better future for her son. His itinerant childhood sets into motion a migration that will ultimately carry Elio to the farthest expanse of human endeavor: space. 
  Overcoming a history of systemic adversity and inequality in public education, Elio forged ahead on a journey as indebted to his galactic dreams as to a loving mother whose sacrifices safeguarded the ground beneath his feet. Today, Elio is helping drive human expansion into the solar system and promote the future of human innovation—from AI and robotics to space infrastructure and equitable access. 
  The Boy Who Reached the Stars is both a cosmic and intimate memoir spun from a constellation of memories, reflections, and intrepid curiosity, as thoroughly luminous as the stars above.

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  My Secret Life Vol 5 Chapter 17

  Dominic Crawford Collins

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  My Secret Life is the longest erotic autobiography ever written. Penned anonymously during the 1800s by a wealthy English gentleman called Walter, it offers an eye and thigh opening account of life behind closed doors in the Victorian era. Banned from publication for its extreme and explicit content for nearly a century, My Secret Life has now come to life in the 21st century as an immersive audio book, narrated and scored by film composer Dominic Crawford CollinsCHAPTER 17Jemima's first pleasure. • "Get me a young virgin." • Eva Kelly. • A cunt with five black hairs. • Jemima fucked. • Eva a witness. • She refuses me. • Departs a virgin. • Polly Carter again. • Re-view of my year's amours. • My taste for women piddling gratified.

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  Portrait of a Bomber Pilot

  Christopher Jary

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  During the Second World War RAF Bomber Command produced a handful of remarkable pilots who won fame and high honors: Gibson, Cheshire, Martin, Tait, and Searby. The majority of aircrew, however, were young sergeants, many of whom did not survive to complete a first tour of thirty operations. Between the two extremes, there were, on every squadron, one or two senior captains who had survived one tour and whose experience, skill, courage, and example made a vital contribution to their squadron's life, training and operational success. This book is about one such captain, Flight Lieutenant Jack Wetherly, DFC. It traces his development from novice second pilot of a Wellington in the pioneering days of 1940 to senior captain of a Halifax in Wing-Commander Leonard Cheshire's squadron in what MRAF Sir Arthur Harris called his 'Main Offensive'. It deals also with his pre-war life and service, flying tiny bi-planes with the RAFVR, and with his career as a flying instructor at the RAF College Cranwell and as an instructor of instructors at RAF Montrose.Above all, it is a personal book, inspired by the sacrifice made nearly half a century ago by a young man of twenty-eight. Acclaim for the work:''Reading Portrait of a Bomber Pilot, I felt that I was living with Jack Wetherly through the last few years of his young life. He is a good man to be with  honorable, selfless, and an exceptional pilot...Christopher Jary has written of Jack Wetherly carefully, unsentimentally, and very movingly. He has added a chapter to the brave, sad story of World War Two''.

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