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  A Very Scandinavian Christmas -...

  Hans Christian Andersen, August...

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  A smorgasbord of Christmas stories by writers from Hans Christian Andersen to August Strindberg to Karl Ove Knausgaard.   This collection brings together the best Scandinavian holiday stories, including classics by Hans Christian Andersen of Denmark; Nobel Prize winner Selma Lagerlöf, August Strindberg and Hjalmar Söderberg of Sweden; as well as the popular contemporary Norwegian author Karl Ove Knausgaard. These Nordic tales—coming from the very region where so much of traditional Christmas imagery originates—convey a festive and contemplative spirit laden with lingonberries, elks, gnomes, Sami trolls, candles, church spires, gingerbread, and aquavit in abundance. These unexpected literary gifts are sure to provide plenty of pleasure and hygge, that specifically Scandinavian blend of coziness and contentment.

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  M R James - A Short Story...

  M R James

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  Montague Rhodes James is cited as perhaps the greatest English writer of ghost stories, an opinion few would disagree with. 
   
  James was born on 1st August 1862 at Goodnestone Parsonage in Kent, where his father was Curate but at age 3 the family went to live at Livermere, near Bury St Edmunds in East Anglia.  
   
  From early childhood he had a passion for mediaeval books and antiques. He was educated initially as a boarder at Temple Grove School in East Sheen, west London, before gaining a scholarship to Eton and thence Cambridge where he gained a double first, becoming a distinguished linguist and mediaevalist.  
   
  Before the Great War vacations were usually spent touring Europe absorbing cultures and references for his later writing. 
   
  A man of enormous knowledge it was said he timed his breakfast egg whilst he completed the Times crossword.  
   
  Many of his elegant yet terrifying tales were created by discarding the prevailing gothic cliches and placing his characters and narrative in a realistic setting.  Thereby the stories gained atmosphere and menace on a grand scale and he was famed as the originator of the antiquarian ghost story. 
   
  Although story-telling and writing these 30 or so tales was a hobby, when published their effect transformed the genre and still chill the bones in our more modern times. 
   
  James was also a medievalist scholar and translator whose work remains highly respected. He was also Provost of Eton College between 1918 and 1936. 
   
  M R James died on 12th June 1936 at Eton in Buckinghamshire.  He was 73.   
   
  His classic story ‘Whistle and I’ll Come to You My Lad’ exquisitely reveals how a young professor on holiday chances on a buried whistle and folklore becomes terrifying fact. 
  1 - M R James - An Introduction 
  2 - Oh Whistle and I'll Come to You My Lad by M R James 
  3 - Canon Alberic's Scrap-Book by M R James 
  4 - Count Magnus by M R James 
  5 - The Ash Tree by M R James 
  6 - Lost Hearts by M R James

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  The Worlds We Think We Know -...

  Dalia Rosenfeld

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  Stories that follow the lives of Jewish characters from the Midwest to the Middle East and beyond: “A profound debut from a writer of great talent.” —Adam Johnson, New York Times–bestselling author of The Orphan Master’s Son 
   
  The characters of The Worlds We Think We Know are swept up by forces beyond their control: war, adulthood, family—and their own emotions, as powerful as the sandstorm that gusts through these stories. In Ohio, a college student cruelly enlists the help of the boy who loves her to attract the attention of her own crush. In Israel, a young American woman visits an uncommunicative Holocaust survivor and falls in love with a soldier. And from an unnamed Eastern European country, a woman haunts the husband who left her behind for a new life in New York City. 
   
  The Worlds We Think We Know is a dazzling fiction debut—fiercely funny and entirely original. 
   
  “Outstanding . . . Set in locales including present-day Jerusalem, the permafrost region of Russia and the streets of Manhattan, Rosenfeld’s best stories focus not only on loss, but on its aftermath: living in the presence of absence.” —Haaretz 
   
  “Funny and poignant . . . The lush melancholy of this collection is bolstered by the characters’ deep intelligence and wit . . . Jewish history is shredded through with displacement, and many of Rosenfeld’s characters are caught in the position of a having a long cultural history and no sense of home.” —Electric Literature

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  The Cask of Amontillado

  Edgar Allan Poe

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  A sinister tale of grotesque vengeance. At carnival, the tipsy wine buff Fortunato is lured into a deadly snare by the man he considers to be his friend. The listener is at the same time horrified and yet fascinated. The audio equivalent of watching a train wreck.

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  The Great Carbuncle

  Nathaniel Hawthorne

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   This tale follows eight individuals all searching for the Great Carbuncle, a legendary red gemstone. These wildly disparate individuals camp together one night in the White Mountains, united by their shared desire for the stone. Each wants it for a different reason, though: fulfilment, knowledge, wealth, skepticism, inspiration, posterity, utility. The next morning, they all part ways to continue their quest, but who will be the first to the stone? 

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  A Dream of Life

  D H Lawrence

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  'A Dream of Life', is unfinished but there is enough extant to let us know where Lawrence was going in this story. He begins by looking back and bemoaning what has become of his generation, under the thumb of women and lacking the spark of his father's mining friends. Then in a scene reminiscent of 'Pilgrim's Progress' he travels forward in time and sees his village in the distant future. The people are living in an idealised commune but do they have the spark of life?

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