Other books that might interest you

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  Barry Pain - Six of the Best -...

  Barry Pain

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  Six has always been a number we group things around – Six of the best, six of one half a dozen of another, six feet under, six pack, six degrees of separation and a sixth sense are but a few of the ways we use this number. 
   
  Such is its popularity that we thought it is also a very good way of challenging and investigating an author’s work to give width, brevity, humour and depth across six of their very best. 
   
  In this series we gather together authors whose short stories both rivet the attention and inspire the imagination to visit their gems in a series of six, to roam across an author’s legacy in a few short hours and gain a greater understanding of their writing and, of course, to be lavishly entertained by their ideas, their narrative and their way with words. 
   
  These stories can be surprising and sometimes at a tangent to what we expected, but each is fully formed and a marvellous adventure into the world and words of a literary master. 
   
  1 - Six of the Best - Barry Pain - An Introduction 
  2 - Barry Pain - An Introduction  
  3 - The Extermination by Barry Pain 
  4 - The Diary of a God by Barry Pain 
  5 - The Act of Heroism by Barry Pain 
  6 - The Bet by Barry Pain 
  7 - Murder, from The Memoirs of Constantine Dix by Barry Pain 
  8 - Post Mortem by Barry Pain

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  Three Lives

  Gertrude Stein

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  'You see that Anna led an arduous and troubled life… Her face was worn, her cheeks were thin, her mouth drawn and firm, and her light blue eyes were very bright. Sometimes they were full of lightning and sometimes full of humour, but they were always sharp and clear.'
  Under the grey, industrial skies of Bridgepoint (modelled on Baltimore), three women – Anna, Melanctha and Lena – live, work and love. Painting a powerful portrait of women trapped in drudgery, Stein's Three Lives is a ground-breaking portrayal of abuse and non-heteronormative sexuality, and is a searing indictment of the struggles of the working class in turn-of-the-century America.
  An astonishing work that toys with style and conventions, Three Lives stands as a monument in Modernism and experimental literature, and comes from the pen of a writer whose intelligence and understanding bleeds from every page.

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  White Nights

  Fyodor Dostoevsky

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  White Nights by Fyodor Dostoevsky 
  In the ethereal twilight of St. Petersburg's white nights, a young loner's solitary existence is transformed by a chance encounter with the enchanting Nastenka. Over several luminous evenings, two kindred souls embark on a journey of emotional discovery, sharing dreams, disappointments, and the fragile hope of love. Dostoevsky's poignant novella delves into the depths of human loneliness, unrequited love, and the universal yearning for connection. "White Nights" is an unforgettable exploration of the soul’s battle between idealism and reality, penned by one of literature’s greatest observers of the human condition. 
  Dive into this masterful depiction of passion and despair, and experience the heartrending beauty of an all-too-fleeting love.

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  Little Women

  Louisa May Alcott

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  Little Women is a coming-of-age novel written by American novelist Louisa May Alcott, originally published in two volumes in 1868 and 1869. The story follows the lives of the four March sisters—Meg, Jo, Beth, and Amy—and details their passage from childhood to womanhood. Loosely based on the lives of the author and her three sisters, it is classified as an autobiographical or semi-autobiographical novel.

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  The Horse Dealer's Daughter -...

  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. 
   
  In ‘The Horse Dealers daughter’ a young woman begins a relationship with a young doctor and a friend of her brothers.  What should be straight forward is intimately investigated by Lawrence’s foraging pen.

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  John Davys Beresford - A Short...

  John Davys Beresford

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  John Davys Beresford was born on 17th March 1873.  His life was blighted by infantile paralysis which left him partially disabled. 
   
  After an education at Oundle school he trained to be an architect.  However, he quickly decided that his life was to be centred on a literary career.  His first offerings were in drama and as a journalist. 
   
  As well as being a book reviewer for the Manchester Guardian he contributed to New Statesman, The Spectator, Westminster Gazette, and the Theosophist magazine The Aryan Path.   
   
  His spiritual journey in early adulthood had claimed him as an agnostic, in defiance of his clergyman father.  This view he later abandoned in preference to describing himself as a Theosophist and a pacifist. 
   
  As well as many novels, many themed with spiritual and philosophical elements.  Beresford was also a gifted short story writer particularly across the science-fiction, horror and ghost genres. 
   
  All of these elements helped him to obtain a prominent place in Edwardian Literary London. 
   
  John Davys Beresford died on the 2nd February 1947. He was 73. 
   
  1 - John Davys Beresford - A Short Story Collection - An Introduction 
  2 - The Introvert by John Davys Beresford 
  3 - The Miracle by John Davys Beresford 
  4 - Enlargement by John Davys Beresford 
  5 - As the Crow Flies by John Davys Beresford 
  6 - The Barrage by John Davys Beresford 
  7 - Signs & Wonders by John Davys Beresford 
  8 - The Looking Glass by John Davys Beresford 
  9 - The Cage by John Davys Beresford

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