Publisher: Interactive Media
Old Granny Fox is a story about an aging fox who has to rely on her cunning and intelligence to survive in the forest. Even though she is old, she is still able to outsmart other animals in the forest. This story teaches children that even older animals can be very resourceful and dangerous.
Winner of AudioFile Earphones Award • Read by Audie Award-winning narrator Barrie Kreinik "Worthy of comparison to Jean Rhys's Wide Sargasso Sea . . . A splendid achievement from a writer at the height of her powers."—Historical Novels Review (Editors' Choice) "This book has it all. Unnatural Creatures is an atmospheric, reimagined classic about the lines we cross for loyalty and love." —Foreword Reviews For the first time, the story of the three women closest to Victor Frankenstein is revealed in a sweeping reimagining of Frankenstein by the author of The Lost History of Dreams. THE MOTHER. Caroline Frankenstein will do anything to protect her family against the revolutions engulfing 18th-century Europe. In doing so, she creates her own monster in the form of her scientist son, Victor. THE BRIDE. Rescued by Caroline as a four-year-old beggar, Elizabeth Lavenza knows the only way she can repay the Frankensteins is by accepting Victor's hand in marriage. But when Elizabeth's heart yearns for another, the lives of those she most loves collide with the unnatural creature born of Victor's profane experiments. THE SERVANT. After an abusive childhood, Justine Moritz is taken in by Caroline to serve the Frankensteins. Justine's devotion to Caroline and Elizabeth knows no bounds . . . until a tragedy changes her irrevocably. Her fate sets her against Victor's monster, who is desperate to wreak revenge against the Frankensteins. Stunningly written and exquisitely atmospheric, Unnatural Creatures shocks new life into Mary Shelley's beloved gothic classic by revealing the feminine side of the tale.Show book
Adeline Virginia Woolf was born on the 25th January 1882 in South Kensington in London. Although lauded as a founder of modernist writing with such classics as ‘Orlando’, ‘Mrs Dalloway’ and ‘To the Lighthouse’ and, of course, many classic short stories, her background is filled with elements of tragedy that she somehow overcame to become such a revered writer. Her mother died when she was 13, her half-sister Stella two years later and with it her first of several nervous breakdowns. Appallingly it was later found that three of her half-brothers had sexually abused her so darkness must have seemed ever present. She began writing professionally at age 20 but her father’s death two years later brought a complete mental collapse and she was briefly institutionalised. Somehow she found within herself a literary career and with it great innovations in writing; she was a pioneer of “stream of consciousness”. Her tight circle of friends were the founders of the Bloomsbury Group, a movement whose legacy still influences across the arts and society in many way to this day. Whilst the dark periods continued to interrupt her emotional state her rate of work never ceased. Until, on 28th March 1941, Woolf put on her overcoat, filled up its pockets with stones, and walked into the River Ouse, in Lewes, East Sussex and drowned herself. Her body was not recovered until the 18th April. She was 59. She left behind a note which read in part “Dearest, I feel certain that I am going mad again. I feel we can't go through another of those terrible times. And I shan't recover this time. I begin to hear voices, and I can't concentrate. So I am doing what seems the best thing to do”.Show book
In "Typee: A Romance of the South Seas," Herman Melville recounts the riveting adventures of Tommo, a sailor who escapes his whaling ship and finds refuge in the seemingly idyllic valley of Typee on a Polynesian island. As Tommo becomes immersed in the lush, exotic lifestyle of the natives, he grapples with the duality of their serene beauty and underlying savagery. Melville's richly descriptive narrative explores themes of cultural conflict, freedom, and the allure of the unknown.Show book
To One in Paradise: Edgar Allan Poe was an American writer, poet, editor, and literary critic who is best known for his poetry and short stories. Thou wast all that to me, love, For which my soul did pine— A green isle in the sea, love, A fountain and a shrine, All wreathed with fairy fruits and flowers, And all the flowers were mine.Show book
Pygmalion is a play by George Bernard Shaw, named after the Greek mythological figure. It premiered at the Hofburg Theatre in Vienna on 16 October 1913 and was first presented in German on stage to the public in 1913. Its English-language premiere took place at Her Majesty's Theatre in the West End in April 1914 and starred Herbert Beerbohm Tree as phonetics professor Henry Higgins and Mrs Patrick Campbell as Cockney flower girl Eliza Doolittle. In ancient Greek mythology, Pygmalion fell in love with one of his sculptures, which then came to life. The general idea of that myth was a popular subject for Victorian era British playwrights, including one of Shaw's influences, W. S. Gilbert, who wrote a successful play based on the story called Pygmalion and Galatea that was first presented in 1871. Shaw would also have been familiar with the musical Adonis and the burlesque version, Galatea, or Pygmalion Reversed. Shaw's play has been adapted numerous times, most notably as the 1938 film Pygmalion, the 1956 musical My Fair Lady and its 1964 film version. Shaw mentioned that the character of Professor Henry Higgins was inspired by several British professors of phonetics: Alexander Melville Bell, Alexander J. Ellis, Tito Pagliardini, but above all, the cantankerous Henry Sweet.Show book
Howard Phillips Lovecraft is among the greatest American masters of fantasy and the supernatural. Born in 1890, a native of Providence, Rhode Island, his health was uncertain from childhood and he led a sheltered early life. His semi-invalidism enabled him to read omnivorously, and as a shy imaginative child he began to invent what would in his adult life become a whole macabre fantastic world of his own, peopled by creatures out of his own weird imagination. As an adult he was retiring, almost a recluse. Tall, thin and pale, but with bright alert eyes, he was much given to wandering his native city in the dark hours of the night, and he became a devoted student of its antiquities. Although he began to write early he had nothing published until he was in his twenties. He set many of his stories around the imaginary town of Arkham, and invented an entire mythology of his own, its core being the demoniac cult of Cthulhu, based on the lore or legend that the world was at one time inhabited by another race who, in practising black magic, lost their foothold or were expelled, yet live on outside, ever ready to take possession of this earth again. Since his early death in 1937 his stories have continued to attract attention and praise from an ever-growing audience.Show book
