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  Captain Rogers - From their pens...

  W Jacobs

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  William Wymark Jacobs was born on 8th September 1863 in Wapping, East London.  
  He was educated at a private school and then Birkbeck Literary and Scientific Institution, now part of the University of London. 
  In 1879, Jacobs began work as a clerk in the civil service, in the Post Office Savings Bank.  In 1885 his first short story was published but it was not until almost the turn of the century that he would abandon his post office career to that as a full-time writer. By then he was a very popular author, his collections selling extremely well and with an excellent income. 
  His best-known work is the macabre ‘The Monkey's Paw’ and he is also highly regarded for his ghost stories although much of his remaining short story output is streaked with humour.  His characters are immediately identifiable and we all know that life will take chunks out of them in no time at all.  
  Jacobs married the noted suffragette Agnes Eleanor Williams in 1900 at West Ham, Essex. They went on to have two daughters and three sons as they settled down to life.  
  By the outbreak of the First World War his literary output had declined and he now mainly spent his time rewriting his earlier stories for the stage.  In all he wrote 18 plays. 
  W W Jacobs died on 1st September 1943 at Hornsey Lane, Islington in London. He was 79.

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  Red Shoes The - Story Time...

  Hans Christian Andersen

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  The Red Shoes" (Danish: De røde sko) is a fairy tale by Danish poet and author Hans Christian Andersen first published by C.A. Reitzel in Copenhagen 7 April 1845 in New Fairy Tales. First Volume. Third Collection. 1845. (Nye Eventyr. Første Bind. Tredie Samling. 1845.). Other tales in the volume include "The Elf Mound" (Elverhøi), "The Jumpers" (Springfyrene), "The Shepherdess and the Chimney Sweep" (Hyrdinden og Skorstensfejeren), and "Holger Danske" (Holger Danske). The tale was republished 18 December 1849 as a part of Fairy Tales. 1850. (Eventyr. 1850.) and again on 30 March 1863 as a part of Fairy Tales and Stories. Second Volume. 1863. (Eventyr og Historier. Andet Bind. 1863.). The story is about a girl forced to dance continually in her red shoes. "The Red Shoes" has seen adaptations in various media including film... A peasant girl named Karen is adopted by a rich old lady after her mother's death and grows up vain and spoiled. Before her adoption, Karen had a rough pair of red shoes; now she has her adoptive mother buy her a pair of red shoes fit for a princess. Karen is so enamored of her new shoes that she wears them to church, but the old lady scolds her: it's highly improper and she must only wear black shoes in church from now on. But next Sunday, Karen cannot resist the urge to put the red shoes on again. As she is about to enter the church, she meets a mysterious old soldier with a red beard. "Oh, what beautiful shoes for dancing," the soldier says. "Never come off when you dance," he tells the shoes, and he taps the sole of each with his hand...

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  Edward Page Mitchell - A Short...

  Edward Page Mitchell

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  Edward Page Mitchell – An Introduction 
   
  Edward Page Mitchell was born in Bath, Maine on 24th March 1852 into a wealthy family.  When he was eight the family moved to a house on New York’s Fifth Avenue. 
   
  In 1863 he witnessed the Draft Riots and in the aftermath Mitchell's father moved the family to Tar River, North Carolina. It was there, at the age of fourteen, that his letters were first published in the local newspaper The Bath Times. 
   
  In 1872, at age twenty, whilst on a train journey to Bath, Maine, a hot cinder from the engine's smokestack flew in through the window blinding his left eye.  After several weeks, while doctors attempted to restore his sight his uninjured right eye underwent sympathetic blindness.  He was now completely blind. His burnt left eye eventually regained its sight, but his uninjured right eye remained blind and was later removed surgically and replaced with a prosthetic glass eye. While recovering from this surgery, Mitchell wrote his famed story ‘The Tachypomp’. 
   
  He became a journalist for the Daily Advertiser in Boston, where his mentor was Edward Everett Hale, now also recognized as an early pioneer of science fiction. 
   
  Mitchell’s influence on science fiction writing is incredible, pre-dating many major themes. He wrote about a man made invisible (‘The Crystal Man’, 1881), a time-travel machine (‘The Clock that Went Backward’), about faster-than-light travel (‘The Tachypomp’, 1874), a thinking computer and a cyborg (‘The Ablest Man in the World’, 1879), matter transmission or teleportation (‘The Man without a Body’, 1877), superior mutants (‘Old Squids and Little Speller’) and mind transfer (‘Exchanging Their Souls’, 1877). Add to this other stories which predicted travel by pneumatic tube, electrical heating, newspapers printed at home, food-pellet concentrates, international broadcasts, and suspended animation through cryogenics amount to talents that are not as publicly lauded as they should be. 
   
  He had a lifelong interest in the supernatural and paranormal—several early newspaper pieces are factual investigations of alleged hauntings and usually he determined they had rational explanations. 
   
  In 1874, Mitchell married Annie Sewall Welch and they had four children.  
   
  In 1903, Mitchell became editor-in-chief of the New York Sun, then the Nation’s leading newspaper. 
   
  In 1912, following Annie’s death, he married Ada M. Burroughs and produced a fifth son. Mitchell remained a popular and respected figure in American journalism and writing up to his death. 
   
  Edward Page Mitchell died of a cerebral hemorrhage in New London, Connecticut on 22nd January 1927.  He was 76. 
   
  1 - Edward Page Mitchell - A Short Story Collection - An Introduction 
  2 - The Clock That Went Backward by Edward Page Mitchell 
  3 - The Tachypomp by Edward Page Mitchell 
  4 - The Man Without a Body by Edward Page Mitchell 
  5 - The Devilish Rat by Edward Page Mitchell 
  6 - The Crystal Man by Edward Page Mitchell

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  Cone The (Unabridged)

  H. G. Wells

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  The Cone is a short story by H. G. Wells, first published in 1895 in Unicorn. It was intended to be "the opening chapter of a sensational novel set in the Five Towns", later abandoned. The story is set at an ironworks in Stoke-on-Trent, in Staffordshire. An artist is there to depict the industrial landscape; the manager of the ironworks discovers his affair with his wife, and takes him on a tour of the factory, where there are dangerous features.

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  Helen of Troy: The Dark Shadow...

  Deivede Eder Ferreira

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  Helena de Tróia: A Sombra Negra do Desejo 
  The most beautiful woman in history. The most dangerous desire ever known. 
  Helen of Troy—queen, lover, myth. A woman whose name ignited a thousand ships and plunged empires into war. But was she truly the cause of Troy’s fall, or just a pawn in a battle far greater than herself? Was she a seductress, a victim, or something far more complex? 
  This audiobook takes you beyond the legend, unraveling the untold story of Helen through the lens of passion, power, and psychology. Blending myth with deep psychoanalytic insights from Freud and Lacan, it exposes the truth behind the woman history could never define. 
  She was more than beauty. She was a force of nature. And she was never truly free. 
  A gripping, immersive experience that will change the way you see one of history’s most infamous women. 
  Are you ready to uncover the dark shadow of desire? Press play and step into Helen’s world.

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  The Odd Women

  George Gissing

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  Before he was 21 George Gissing conceived the ambition of writing a long series of novels, somewhat in the manner of Balzac, whom he admired. The first of these, Workers in the Dawn, appeared in 1880, to be followed by 21 others. Between 1886 and 1895 he published one or more novels every year. He also wrote Charles Dickens: A Critical Study (1898), a perceptive piece of literary criticism. 
   
  Gissing's work has a good deal of documentary interest for its detailed and accurate accounts of lower-middle-class London life. On the social position and psychology of women, he is particularly acute: The Odd Women is a powerful study of female frustration. He did not lack human sympathies, but his obvious contempt for so many of his characters reflects an artistic limitation. Gissing was deeply critical, in an almost wholly negative way, of contemporary society. Of his novels, New Grub Street, considered by some critics to be his only great book, is unique in its merciless analysis of the compromises required by the literary life. 
   
  Gissing's 1893 novel takes on the 19th century "Woman Question" by looking at themes of feminism, marriage, and love. The novel raises these issues through the lives of several contrasting women: Mary Barfoot, a feminist philanthropist who helps train women for careers; her close friend Rhoda Nunn, who believes marriage is a disastrous choice for women; and Monica Madden, who starts out as one of their protegees but chooses to marry a seemingly kind older man. As Monica experiences the challenges of married life, Rhoda finds herself drawn to Mary's cousin, the charming but apparently profligate Everard

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