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  In No Strange Land - From their...

  Katharine Butler

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  The bookshelves of American literature are incredible collections that have gathered together centuries of very talented authors.  From this continent their fame spread and whilst among their number many are now forgotten or neglected their talents endure.  Among them is Katharine Butler.

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  The Lost Decade - From their...

  F. Scott Fitzgerald

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  Francis Scott Key Fitzgerald was born on 24th September 1896 in Saint Paul, Minnesota into an upper-middle class family. Whilst his mother was pregnant with him, his two young sisters tragically died.  Fitzgerald once said this was when his destiny as a writer was ordained. 
  His intelligence and talent was recognised from an early age, with his first story, about a detective being published in the school magazine when he was just 13.   
  In 1913 he enrolled at Princeton but his devotion to his own literary pursuits resulted in him leaving and, rather bizarrely, joining the Army.  In 1918, stationed at Fort Sheridan near Montgomery, Alabama he met and became infatuated and then inseparable from Zelda Sayre.  Initially though she refused to marry him but with the success of ‘This Side of Paradise’, the fame and the flow of money enabled them both to begin a gilded life.  For them this was The Jazz Age.  For Fitzgerald he was already an alcoholic. 
  He continued to write with great mastery and the titles of his novels and many of his 164 short stories are household names.  The Great Gatsby, often cited as The Great American Novel was published to mixed reviews.  As America moved from the Great Depression to the slaughter of the Second World War his works and himself were seen as far too entwined with the decadent twenties. The world had moved on and he hadn’t.   
  Further tragedy was never far from his life. Zelda after years of erratic and now intolerable behaviour was committed to an institution in 1936.  His own sales began to decline and he became a hack for hire in Hollywood, dependent on increasing amounts of booze and the weekly pay check.  His drunken state had often resulted in arrest or hospitalisation, further imperiling his talents.   Despite his contribution to many MGM films he received only one credit. 
  The end came all too soon for one of America’s greatest ever writers.  On 21st December 1940, at only 44 years of age in Hollywood, F Scott Fitzgerald succumbed to a heart attack.

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  Forgotten Authors The - Volume 1...

  J Y Ackerman, Juhani Aho, Grant...

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  Throughout the long centuries of human history is the want, and the need, to share information, to exchange ideas and for that knowledge and experience, for curiosity and learning, to be the basis of a civil society. 
  In literature the ambition is much narrower.  In order to be known, to be popular, you had to be published.  And for that people had to know you existed and your ideas worth reading.  Obviously for most of humanity’s time people couldn’t read and texts couldn’t be published in any great number. 
  In the 15th Century Gutenberg’s printing press began the revolution to address the second and by the 19th century had gathered pace with startling speed and mass distribution.  Education for the many was brought in to help people understand more of their world and, with new skills, how to have a better place within it.  Now, if the powers that owned the presses and means of distribution agreed an audience would now be able to avail themselves of your ideas, your printed words.  
  Sadly, in the thirst for the new, the recent and the past fell from sight, relegated to dark corners and dusty shelves.   
  But the printed word is rarely without someone, somewhere busying themselves through piles of papers and books rediscovering what a good story is, whatever its age. 
  Sadly, in the thirst for the new, the recent and the past fell from sight, relegated to dark corners and dusty shelves.    
  But the printed word is rarely without someone, somewhere busying themselves through piles of papers and books rediscovering what a good story is, whatever its age. 
  In this volume we offer up a small selection of those talents whose time has now come again.

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  His Unknown Wife

  Louis Tracy

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  In a sweltering South American prison, Philip Alexander Maseden faces his final hours. Resigned to his fate but unbroken in spirit, his countdown to the firing squad is interrupted by a bizarre proposition from a local financier. A mysterious, heavily veiled American woman needs to marry immediately for reasons unknown, and a condemned man makes the perfect, temporary husband. 
  Amused by the absurdity and driven by a streak of cynical defiance, Maseden agrees. The hasty, surreal ceremony is performed, the vows are read, and his nameless bride vanishes back into the night. 
  But destiny refuses to let Maseden die. Against all odds, a twist of fate spares his life, and he escapes the prison walls. Thrust into a whirlwind Edwardian adventure, Maseden finds himself navigating treacherous waters, enduring a harrowing shipwreck, and hunting for a legendary treasure trove. Yet, amidst the physical perils, one psychological mystery consumes him: Who is his unknown wife, and what happens when their paths inevitably cross again?

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  Edna Ferber: Long Distance -...

  Edna Ferber

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  Telephone lineman in the early 1900s were known for their very vocal appreciation of any and all female beauty as it walked below on the street. From their lofty perch they felt safe to whistle and shout their thanks to the lovely ladies who passed anywhere within their visual range. The women thus admired often expressed distain and dislike of this outward expression by the men but they usually walked away with their complexions a bit rosier than before. This, as we now know of course, was very inappropriate and something to be sternly discouraged but at the time all parties involved somehow to managed survive and even thrive. This story is about such an encounter. But the lady involved did not just blush and walk away, she stopped and invited the man on the pole to come down and get his face slapped for his impudence. She was of Irish descent and did not put up with uppity and distasteful men. 
  Well, the man did come down and did indeed get a resounding slap from her. What happened after this I will let the listener discover in this delightful tale of men and women and their mysterious doings.

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  The Lizard - From their pens to...

  C J utcliffe Hyne

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  The bookshelves of British literature are incredible collections that have gathered together centuries of very talented authors.  From these Isles their fame spread and whilst among their number many are now forgotten or neglected their talents endure.  Among them is C J Cutcliffe Hyne.

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