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  Poirot Investigates

  Agatha Christie

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  Follow the greatest detectives of all time in this short story collection featuring 11 adventures around the world, this collection shows Christie’s famous character Hercule Poirot at his best, as he travels and unravels mysteries of all sorts. 
   
  This mystery collection will leave readers delighted by the charm and wit of Hercule Poirot as he solves case after case at a clipping pace. 
   
  This edition of Poirot Investigates follows the original UK edition of the collection, and includes the following captivating stories: 
   
  “The Adventures of the Western Star” 
  “The Tragedy at Marsdon Manor” 
  “The Adventure of the Cheap Flat” 
  “The Mystery of Hunter’s Lodge” 
  “The Million Dollar Bond Robbery” 
  “The Adventure of the Egyptian Tomb” 
  “The Jewel Robbery at the Grand Metropolitan” 
  “The Kidnapped Prime Minister” 
  “The Disappearance of Mr. Davenheim” 
  “The Adventure of the Italian Noble-Man” 
  “The Case of the Missing Will”

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  The Dead

  James Joyce

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  Often hailed as the finest short story ever written in the English language, James Joyce's "The Dead" tells the story of a young woman who hears a familiar song unexpectedly at a Christmas party. The melody brings memories of a long-dead lover flooding back to her. Joyce's description of the multi-layered situation, characters, and atmosphere are unsurpassed. The reader is drawn into the stifling world of Dublin society with its aspirations, pretensions, repressed morals, and furtively enjoyed freedoms. Beautiful and evocative.

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  Odour of Chrysanthemums

  D H Lawrence

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  David Herbert Lawrence was born on the 11th September 1885 in Eastwood, Nottinghamshire, a coal mining town where the reality of a harsh life was only useful as experiences for future literary works. 
   
  He was educated at Beauvale Board School and became the first local boy to receive a scholarship to attend Nottingham High School. After 3 years he became a junior clerk in Haywood’s surgical appliances factory. He was also attempting a literary career which, in the short term, led to a teacher training position in Eastwood and later a teaching qualification from University College, Nottingham.  
   
  Lawrence’s first efforts were poems, short stories and a draft of ‘The White Peacock’. Moving to London and a teaching position in Croydon his writing attracted the attention of Ford Madox Ford, editor of The English Review, and he commissioned him to write ‘Odour of Chrysanthemums’.  
   
  Wanting to write full-time he now began work on what would become ‘Sons and Lovers.   
   
  In 1912 he met the older and married mother-of-three Frieda Weekley. They eloped to Germany and here Lawrence could see for himself the growing tensions with France.  So keen was his interest that he was arrested and accused of being a British spy.  
   
  In early 1914 Frieda obtained her divorce and they returned to Britain to be married just days before the outbreak of war. Owing to her German parentage, and his own public dislike of militarism and violence, the couple were treated with contempt and suspicion throughout the war years.  
   
  Despite this he continued to write but his reputation in England was so tarnished and, mirrored by his own disdain for the country, he and Frieda left England in November 1919, first for Europe and then America via Ceylon and Australia. 
   
  They bought a ranch in Taos, New Mexico and visited Mexico several times. The third visit in March 1925 caused a near fatal attack of malaria. To convalesce they moved to Florence. Here he continued work on ‘Lady Chatterley’s Lover’ which for many years would cause controversy. A renewed interest in oil painting resulted in an exhibition in 1929 which was raided by the police and several works were confiscated.  
   
  D H Lawrence died of complications arising from a bout of tuberculosis on the 2nd of March 1930 in Vence, France.  He was 44.

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  The Discovery Of The Future

  H. G. Wells

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  The Discovery of the Future is a 1902 philosophical lecture by H. G. Wells that argues for the knowability of the future. It was originally delivered to the Royal Institution on January 24, 1902. Wells begins by distinguishing between "two divergent types of mind," one that judges and attaches importance principally to what has happened in the past and one that judges and attaches importance principally to what will happen in the future. To the former he attributes the adjectives "legal or submissive," "passive," and "oriental," and to the latter the adjectives "legislative, creative, organizing, or masterful," and "active," calling it "a more modern and much less abundant type of mind."... Confessing himself to be among "those who believe entirely in the forces behind the individual" rather than in individuals themselves as determining causes, Wells argues that there is "no reason why we should not aspire to, and discover and use, safe and servicable, generalizations upon countless issues in the human destiny." Wells devotes the last part of his text to speculations about "the question what is to come after man," considering it "the most persistently fascinating and the most insoluble question in the whole world." He concludes with a statement of personal faith "in the coherency and purpose in the world and in the greatness of human destiny.

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  Rambunctious - Nine Tales of...

  Rick Wilber

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  From the award-winning author of Alien Morning, nine science fiction/fantasy stories of everyday people grappling extraordinary circumstances. Witness seemingly ordinary people as they confront their fears and embrace their challenges on a near-future Earth or an alternate-history past or even on a far distant alien world . . .  - A single dad of a daughter with Down-syndrome considers what his life and career might have been as a parent and a pro football player in some alternate reality.  - A young girl on an isolated Florida island discovers that her quirky grandparents are even stranger than she thought.  - A high-school basketball player confronts the ghosts of her past.  - A young woman struggles to make peace with the horrors of her forgotten childhood.  - An elderly woman slides into dementia even as she finds some essential truths that were lost in the hazy mists of her memory.  - A baseball player becomes a spy during an alternate-history version of World War II, where he plays a pivotal role in stopping the Nazi war machine.  A powerful and poignant collection of memorable stories from an award-winning storyteller, Rambunctious: Nine Tales of Determination is charming, action-packed, frightening, and thoughtful by turn. Praise for Rambunctious“A major collection from what it's high past time to admit is one of our major writers. Wilber writes with literate flair, compassion, and a deep understanding of human psychology. Highly recommended!” —Robert J. Sawyer, Hugo Award–winning author of The Oppenheimer Alternative“Wilber draws you in through his compassion for his characters and his keen eye for the familiar, and then he slips you sideways into places startlingly new, beautiful, and true. You finish these stories entertained, to be sure, but moved as well, and with your perspective forever widened.” —Gregory Norman Bossert, World Fantasy Award–winning author “Wilber’s voice [has] a kind of authority and compassion that have helped him carve out a niche identifiably his own.” —Locus

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  Fruiting Bodies - Stories

  Kathryn Harlan

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  Finalist for the PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction - 2023 
   
  This genre-bending debut collection of stories constructs eight eerie worlds full of desire, wisdom, and magic blooming amidst decay. 
   
   
  In stories that beckon and haunt, Fruiting Bodies ranges confidently from the fantastical to the gothic to the uncanny as it follows characters—mostly queer, mostly women—on the precipice of change. Echoes of timeless myth and folklore reverberate through urgent narratives of discovery, appetite, and coming-of-age in a time of crisis. 
   
   
  In “The Changeling,” two young cousins wait in dread for a new family member to arrive, convinced that he may be a dangerous supernatural creature. In “Endangered Animals,” Jane prepares to say goodbye to her almost-love while they road-trip across a country irrevocably altered by climate change. In “Take Only What Belongs to You,” a queer woman struggles with the personal history of an author she idolized, while in “Fiddler, Fool, Pair,” an anthropologist is drawn into a magical—and dangerous—gamble. In the title story, partners Agnes and Geb feast peacefully on the mushrooms that sprout from Agnes’s body—until an unwanted male guest disturbs their cloistered home. 
   
   
  Audacious, striking, and wholly original, Fruiting Bodies offers stories about knowledge in a world on the verge of collapse, knowledge that alternately empowers or devastates. Pulling beautifully, brazenly, from a variety of literary traditions, Kathryn Harlan firmly establishes herself as a thrilling new voice in fiction.

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