Other books that might interest you

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  Uncle's Dream

  Fyodor Dostoyevsky

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  "Uncle's Dream" explores themes of ambition, deception, and the consequences of manipulating others for personal gain. Dostoyevsky skilfully weaves a tale that showcases the complexities of human nature and the unpredictability of life's outcomes. Through Mariya and Zinaida's experiences, the novella delves into the desires, dreams, and sacrifices people make in their pursuit of a better future. Read in English, unabridged.

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  Twelve Dancing Princesses The -...

  Brothers Grimm

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  The Twelve Dancing Princesses is a fairytale by the Brothers Grimm about some beautiful daughters that somehow manage to sneak out of their bedrooms every night to go dancing. Their father is desperate to find out what they are up to and enlists the help of potential suitors to find out.

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  The Purloined Letter

  Edgar Allan Poe

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  Edgar Poe was born in Boston Massachusetts on 19th January 1809. His father abandoned his family the following year and within a year his mother had died leaving him an orphan.   
   
  He was taken in by the Allan family but never formally adopted although he now referred to himself as Edgar Allan Poe.  His father alternatively spoiled or chastised him and tension was frequent over gambling debts and monies for his education.  His university years to study ancient and modern languages was cut short by lack of money and he enlisted as a private in the army claiming he was 22, it is more probable he was 18. After 2 years he obtained a discharge in order to take up an appointment at the military academy, West Point, where he failed to become an officer. 
   
  Poe had released his 1st poetry volume in 1827 and after his 3rd turned to prose and placing short stories in several magazines and journals.  At age 26 he obtained a licence to marry his cousin.  She was a mere 13 but they stayed together until her death from tuberculosis 11 years after. 
   
  In January 1845 ‘The Raven’ was published and became an instant classic.  Thereafter followed the prose works for which he is now so rightly famed as a master of the mysterious and the macabre. 
   
  Edgar Allan Poe died at the tragically early age of 40 on 7th October 1849 in Baltimore, Maryland. Newspapers at the time reported Poe's death as ‘congestion of the brain’ or ‘cerebral inflammation’, common euphemisms for death from disreputable causes such as alcoholism but the actual cause of death remains a mystery. 
   
  Poe is also one of a number of authors credited with inventing the detective genre with his Parisian sleuth C. Auguste Dupin.  He featured in three stories including the legendary ‘Murders in the Rue Morgue’ and by sheer deduction, logic and a touch of Gallic arrogance revealed what was hidden to the rest of us.

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  The Cask Of Amontillado

  Edgar Allan Poe

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  The story is set in an unnamed Italian city (perhaps Venice) at carnival time in an unspecified year, and is about a man taking fatal revenge on a friend who, he believes, has insulted him. Like several of Poe's stories, and in keeping with the 19th-century fascination with the subject, the narrative revolves around a person being buried alive—in this case, by immurement. As in "The Black Cat" and "The Tell-Tale Heart", Poe conveys the story from the murderer's perspective.

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  Hansel & Gretel and Other Stories

  The Brothers Grimm

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  This charming collection of Grimms' Fairy Tales includes "Hansel & Gretel", "The Mouse, the Bird & the Sausage", "The Golden Bird", "Old Sultan" and "The Straw, the Coal & the Bean". Grimms' Fairy Tales was first published in Germany in 1812 as "Kinder und Hausmärchen". This series of recordings is based on the original 1823 English translation by Edgar Taylor, with subsequent editing by Marian Edwardes.

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  Top 10 Short Stories The - The...

  Rudyard Kipling, Thomas Hardy,...

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  Short stories have always been a sort of instant access into an author’s brain, their soul and heart.  A few pages can lift our lives into locations, people and experiences with a sweep of landscape, narration, feelings and emotions that is difficult to achieve elsewhere. 
   
  In this series we try to offer up tried and trusted ‘Top Tens’ across many different themes and authors. But any anthology will immediately throw up the questions – Why that story? Why that author?  
   
  The theme itself will form the boundaries for our stories which range from well-known classics, newly told, to stories that modern times have overlooked but perfectly exemplify the theme.  Throughout the volume our authors whether of instant recognition or new to you are all leviathans of literature. 
   
  Some you may disagree with but they will get you thinking; about our choices and about those you would have made.  If this volume takes you on a path to discover more of these miniature masterpieces then we have all gained something. 
   
  A decade of exuberance as the world became a plaything of the Western Imperial powers to exploit for their own ends.  Whole cultures were sequestrated and suspended and another overplanted in its place. 
   
  But short story authors created some of literature’s brightest jewels as they explored genres and styles in ambitious claims to be the chronicler of the age. 
   
  01 - The Top 10 - The 1880's - An Introduction 
  02 - A Horseman In The Sky by Ambrose Bierce 
  03 - The Bet by Anton Chekhov 
  04 - The Necklace by Guy de Maupassant 
  05 - The Withered Arm by Thomas Hardy 
  06 - A White Heron by Sarah Orne Jewett 
  07 - The Man Who Would Be King 
  08 - Markheim by Robert Louis Stevenson 
  09 - The Lady, or the Tiger by Frank Stockton 
  10 - How Much Land Does A Man Need by Leo Tolstoy 
  11 - The Nightingale and the Rose by Oscar Wilde

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