Other books that might interest you

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  The Lightning-Rod Man

  Herman Melville

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  After spending the summer of 1853 in the Berkshire Mountains, where he supposedly had a real life encounter with a lightning-rod salesman, Melville published “The Lightning-Rod Man." At the end of this short story, the lightning-rod salesman is exposed for the fraud that he is. However, that will not keep his successors from fanning out to the Middle West, where lightning storms abound and farmers were gullible. On another level, the story can be interpreted as a confrontation between Good and Evil. Through description and diction, the narrator is understood as a follower of God, someone who believes in The Almighty watching over him. On the other hand, the lightning-rod man is seen as a negative character, someone who only has faith in the product he's peddling.

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  Markheim

  Robert Louis Stevenson

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  Occasionally an author appears who, in a short career, emblazons a legacy so bright and so distinct, as well as popular that it is difficult to believe it is the output of only one man. Robert Louis Balfour Stevenson was such a talent. 
   
  Stevenson was born on 13th November 1850 in Edinburgh.  Despite a late start to reading and writing he was a voracious story-teller, regularly performing yarns for all those around him.  His health though was poorly, he suffered lifelong bronchial problems and was incapacitated by this and other ailments throughout his life. 
   
  In Grez, France in September 1876 he met the American, Fanny Van de Grift Osbourne. She was married with children but distress and anger at her husband's infidelities led to several separations. By the time she met Stevenson she was already a promising short-story writer. 
   
  In 1880 she was at last free to re marry and life, despite his health issues, was good.  In the ensuing years travel and exploration would be their calling and the source of his literary inspiration. 
   
  Classics flowed; in 1881 ‘The Body Snatcher’.  In 1883 ‘Treasure Island’, followed 3 years later by ‘Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde’. 
    
  In 1890, they settled on an estate in Samoa for what would be a last great burst of writing that coincided with his political awakening as the islands moved toward inter-clan warfare as greedy outside powers stoked tensions.    
   
  Over the course of his prolific career Stevenson had not only given his audience many classic novels but beautiful poetry such as ‘A Child’s Garden of Verses’ and many short stories as with his dark classic of Christmas Day ‘Markheim’ (1884). 
   
  Robert Louis Stevenson died at his island home at Valima in Samoa on 3rd December 1894.  He was 44.

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  Bad Kansas - Stories

  Becky Mandelbaum

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  The eleven stories in this Flannery O’Connor Award-winning collection explore Midwestern life “with heart and precision, and a fresh sense of humor” (Pam Houston, author of Contents May Have Shifted).   These beautifully crafted stories reveal the complicated underbelly of the country’s most flown-over state and the quirky characters that call it home. In this darkly humorous collection, Kansas becomes a state of mind as Mandelbaum’s characters struggle to define their relationship to home and what it means to stay or leave, to hold on or let go.   When a desperately lonely woman finds herself on a bad date with a rugged man, she must decide whether to sacrifice the life of a bear in order to keep the man’s affection. After having a nightmare about a mallard, a young man wakes to discover he’s choking the woman he loves. When his mother starts dating a slimy pizza parlor owner, a young boy must carefully consider his loyalties. The appealing and peculiar characters in Bad Kansas are determined to get what they want, be it love or sex or power, in a world determined to overlook them.

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  Dorothy and the Wizard in OZ

  L. Frank Baum

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  When Dorothy recovered her senses they were still falling, but not so fast. The top of the buggy caught the air like a parachute or an umbrella filled with wind, and held them back so that they floated downward with a gentle motion that was not so very disagreeable to bear. The worst thing was their terror of reaching the bottom of this great crack in the earth, and the natural fear that sudden death was about to overtake them at any moment

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  Fates of the Animals

  Padrika Tarrant

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  Long-listed for the 2016 Edge Hill Short Story Prize
  Songs of the drowned and a dog with wings…
  "The world was a grey place once, concrete grey and striped with grey; clay against stone. The pigeons stretched out their scrawny lives and lived as creatures must. Yet they were not hateful birds. They wore their poverty like overcoats; they sat upon the highest places and drizzled the whole world with their compassion. Their souls were dignified as tarnished spoons; pigeons bore witness to the sadness and the tearing of the wind."
  By turns tender and unsettling, this book lurks at the tattered edges of the world, where Satan's daughter wants to die of love and a woman is paralysed with fear in the 24-hours Tesco. There are jokes here too, and you cannot trust the ground beneath your feet. The angels keep stealing God's fags and the dog is hauled up before a kangaroo court.
  Fates of The Animals is a book for those who remember fairytales and the TV Test-card; those who like to feel a little uneasy; those who sometimes lie awake in the night.

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  Baker Street Irregulars -...

  Jonathan Maberry, Michael A....

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  Sherlock Holmes is reimagined in this anthology of 13 new stories by contemporary authors including Gail Z. Martin and Jonathan Maberry.   Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s immortal character Sherlock Holmes has been captivating mystery lovers since his first appearance on Baker Street in 1887. Now contemporary authors take the brilliant detective far beyond his usual stomping grounds in thirteen wildly imaginative stories.   In Ryk Spoor’s thrilling "The Adventures of a Reluctant Detective,” Sherlock is a re-creation in a holodeck. In Hildy Silverman’s mesmerizing "A Scandal in the Bloodline,” Sherlock is a vampire. Heidi McLaughlin sends Sherlock back to college, while Beth Patterson, in the charming "Code Cracker,” turns him into a parrot.   The settings range from near-future Russia to a reality show, a dystopian world, and an orchestra. Without losing the very qualities that make Sherlock so beloved, these authors spin their own singular riff on one of fiction’s truly singular characters.

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