Other books that might interest you

• 

  Book 'Em - Four Bibliomysteries...

  Megan Abbott, Thomas H. Cook,...

  • 0
  • 0
  • 0

  The Little Men by Megan Abbott: Rumors and strange experiences lead a washed-up actress in 1950s Hollywood to question the suspicious circumstances surrounding the alleged suicide of a former occupant of her low-rent bungalow. What's in a Name? by Thomas H. Cook: Rare books dealer and amateur historian Franklin Altman has always wondered how the world might have turned out if the First World War had ended differently. On the fiftieth anniversary of the Armistice Treaty, an ancient German mysteriously appears and presents him with a personal manuscript, the contents of which, he claims, have the power to change history. The Book of the Lion by Thomas Perry: An anonymous phone call sends Professor Dominic Hallkyn on a mad dash through the streets of Boston in pursuit of a priceless Chaucerian manuscript. But the caller's demands will lead to a devilish plot twist. From the Queen by Carolyn Hart: When a priceless, first edition of Agatha Christie's Poirot Investigates, autographed and inscribed to the Queen of England, disappears from her South Carolina thrift shop, Ellen Gallagher calls on her friend Annie Darling, owner of the mystery bookstore Death on Demand, to track it down.

  Show book

• 

  Nikolai Gogol - A Short Story...

  Nikolai Gogol

  • 0
  • 0
  • 0

  Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol was born on 1st April 1809 to a father, descended from Ukrainian Cossacks and a mother with a military background in the Ukrainian town of Sorochyntsi, then part of the Russian Empire and rich in Cossack traditions and folklore.   
   
  His father wrote poetry and plays which the young Gogol helped stage at his uncle’s home theatre.  This helped ignite in him a love of literature and blossomed when he attended, what is now, the Nizhyn Gogol State University at the age of 12.  Here he participated in school theatre productions and refined his mastery of his native Ukrainian and also the Russian of his Imperial masters. 
   
  In 1828 he went to St Petersburg and unsuccessfully tried to begin a career as an actor after finding that with no money and no connections the civil service was barred to him. 
   
  Embezzling money from his mother he embarked on a trip to Germany. When the money ran out, he returned to St Petersburg but the experiences were used in a series of stories he contributed to periodicals.  These tales were steeped in his childhood memories of the Ukrainian landscape and peasantry enlivened with the supernatural of its folklore woven with realistic events of the day.  He wrote in Russian in a whimsical, colloquial style with a smattering of Ukrainian words and phrases that provided an authenticity.  Eight stories were published as ‘Evenings on a Farm near Dikanka’.  Seemingly all at once fame and fortune arrived. Gogol was hailed by his contemporaries, including Pushkin, as a pre-eminent writer of Russian literature.   
   
  His success continued with his brilliant plays ‘The Inspector General’ and the comedy ‘The Marriage for the Theatre’, both being highly acclaimed.   
   
  In 1834 he became Professor of Medieval History at the University of St. Petersburg but with little academic or teacher training, failed to adequately fulfil many of his duties and soon resigned this post.  With no obligations and using his earnings from his writing, which now included the impressionistic and immortal ‘Dead Souls’, Gogol travelled around Europe, spending the most time in Rome where he studied art, read Italian literature and developed a passion for opera.  
   
  In the 1840s Gogol became preoccupied with a need to purify his soul and embarked on a pilgrimage to Jerusalem. In tandem he fell under the influence of a strict and austere spiritual ascetic who persuaded him to observe strict fasts that, allied with his depression and deteriorating health, contributed to his death on 21st April 1852 at the age of only 43. 
   
  1 - Nikolai Gogol - A Short Story Collection - An Introduction 
  2 - The Nose by Nikolai Gogol 
  3 - The Cloak by Nikolai Gogol also known as 'The Overcoat' 
  4 - Old Fashioned Landowners by Nikolai Gogol 
  5 - St Johns Eve by Nikolai Gogol 
  6 - Diary of a Madman by Nikolai Gogol

  Show book

• 

  Classic Tales of Horror

  Ambrose Bierce, E Nesbitt,...

  • 0
  • 0
  • 0

  Classic Tales Of Horror offers up fifteen slices of powerful story-telling from the world’s great authors. From Henry James and Ambrose Bierce to Bram Stoker and Charles Dickens. Read by John Waite (BBC Radio 4), Sarah Douglas (Superman I & II), Michael Fenton-Stevens (Spitting Image, KYTV, Hitch-hiker’s Guide) and Ben Onwukwe (London’s Burning, Othello). 
  The Man & The Snake by Ambrose Bierce – Read by Sarah Douglas 
  Man-Size In Marble by E Nesbitt – Read by John Waite 
  The Moonlit Road by Ambrose Bierce – Read by Michael Fenton-Stevens 
  The Mysterious Mansion by Honore De Balzac – Read by Ben Onwukwe 
  The Judge’s House by Bram Stoker – Read by Sarah Douglas 
  Lost Face by Jack London – Read by John Waite 
  A Confession Found In A Prison by Charles Dickens – Read by Michael Fenton-Stevens 
  The Ghostly Rental by Henry James – Read by Michael Fenton-Stevens 
  The Phantom Coach by Amelia B Edwards – Read by John Waite 
  The Picture In The House by HP Lovecraft – Read by Ben Onwukwe 
  True Relation Of The Apparition Of One Mrs Veal by Daniel Defoe – Read by Sarah Douglas 
  Transformation by Mary Shelley – Read by Michael Fenton-Stevens 
  The Monkey’s Paw by WW Jacobs – Read by John Waite 
  William Wilson by Edgar Allan Poe – Read by Ben Onwukwe 
  Canon Alberic’s Scrapbook by M.R. James – Read by John Waite

  Show book

• 

  Poirot Investigates

  Agatha Christie

  • 0
  • 0
  • 0

  The very first collection of superb short stories featuring Hercule Poirot and Captain Hastings…First there was the mystery of the film star and the diamond… then came the 'suicide' that was murder… the mystery of the absurdly cheap flat… a suspicious death in a locked gun-room… a million dollar bond robbery… the curse of a pharaoh's tomb… a jewel robbery by the sea… the abduction of a Prime Minister… the disappearance of a banker… a phone call from a dying man… and, finally, the mystery of the missing will.What links these fascinating cases? Only the brilliant deductive powers of Hercule Poirot!1. The Adventure of The Western Star2. The Tragedy at Marsdon Manor3. The Adventure of The Cheap Flat4. The Mystery of Hunter's Lodge5. The Million Dollar Bond Robbery6. The Adventure of The Egyptian Tomb7. The Adventure of the Clapham Cook8. The Kidnapped Prime Minister9. The Disappearance of Mr. Davenheim10. The Adventure of The Italian Nobleman11. The Case of The Missing Will

  Show book

• 

  Tales - Short Stories

  Amiri Baraka

  • 0
  • 0
  • 0

  “A clutch of early stories from the poet, playwright, and provocateur, infused with jazz and informed by racial alienation” (Kirkus Reviews).   “Baraka was, without question, the central figure of the Black Arts Movement, and was the most important theorist of that movement’s expression of the ‘Black Aesthetic,’ which took hold of the African American cultural imagination in earnest in the late sixties. While known primarily for his plays, poems, and criticism of black music, Baraka was also a master of the short story form, as this collection attests. Tales first appeared in 1967 and is an impressionistic and sometimes surrealistic collection of short fiction, showcasing Amiri Baraka’s great impact on African American literature of the 1950s and 1960s. Tales is a critical volume in Amiri Baraka’s oeuvre, and an important testament to his remarkable literary legacy.” —Henry Louis Gates Jr.   The sixteen artful and nuanced stories in this reissue of Amiri Baraka’s seminal 1967 collection fall into two parts: the first nine concern themselves with the sensibility of a hip, perceptive young black man in white America. The last seven stories endeavor to place that same man within the context of his awareness of and participation in a rapidly emerging and powerfully felt negritude. They deal, it might be said, with the black man in black America. Yet these tales are not social tracts, but absolutely masterful fiction—provocative, witty, and, at times, bitter and aggressive.

  Show book

• 

  Twice Told Tales - Stories

  Daniel Stern

  • 0
  • 0
  • 0

  Daniel Stern’s sparkling reinventions of six great literary worksTwice Told Tales is a new take on some of literature’s greatest stories. In a bravura performance, acclaimed novelist Daniel Stern channels the particular styles and spirits of six classic pieces—even the writings of Sigmund Freud—into unexpected new settings. E. M. Forster, Henry James, and Ernest Hemingway are updated in brilliantly drawn portraits, at once affectionate and satirical. Stern’s approach is deft and witty, yet always attentive to the timeless characters and ideas with which he works.

  Show book