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  The Blue Pearl

  John G. Brandon

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  John Gordon Brandon (1879-1941) was an Australian-born writer who started life as a professional heavyweight boxer.He moved to England after the First World War and wrote more than 120 novels, and numerous short stories."The Blue Pearl" is an adventure story set in the Dutch East Indies.  "Bad Luck" Jim Barton is slaving in a chain-gang and facing five more years penal servitude under the Dutch. Suddenly, on a short break, his neighbour on the chain gang  - an evil looking Frenchman - slips something hard and round into his shoe and gives him a Chinese coin with a strange character on it. He whispers quickly that Barton is about to be released and that he must take the mystery object and the coin to Quong Meng, the richest Chinese tycoon in the district. The object turns out to be a breathtaking flawless blue pearl. There follows a breathless and racy series of daring adventures, brutal murders, narrow escapes and pirate attacks as Barton attempts to deliver the pearl to its destination.

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  Elinor Mordaunt - A Short Story...

  Elinor Mordaunt

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  Evelyn May Clowes was born on 7th May 1872 in Cotgrave, Nottinghamshire.  
   
  Growing up in genteel circumstances, her early childhood was spent at Charlton Down House near Cheltenham, Gloucestershire, and her teenage years near Heythrop in the Cotswolds.  
   
  She was educated at home by governesses, excelling at German, Latin, Greek, shorthand, landscape painting, and fabric and wallpaper design. 
   
  In 1897 she went to Mauritius as companion to her cousin Caroline and in 1898 married Maurice Wilhemn Wiehe, the owner of a sugar plantation. She gave birth to two stillborn children. After a few years of marriage, she found life difficult and returned to England. Shortly afterwards she went by herself to Australia, arriving in June 1902 and gave birth to a son a few months later.   
   
  She lived in Melbourne for about eight years.  To earn a living she took on a wide and varied range of jobs; she edited a woman's fashion paper, wrote short stories and articles, made blouses, designed embroideries, tilled gardens, acted as a housekeeper, and did other artistic work. Her health was not strong, but she undertook any kind of work which would provide a living for herself and her infant son. This gained her an experience of life which was readily put to use in her literary works. 
   
  Her first book, ‘The Garden of Contentment’, was published in 1902 under her pen-name Elinor Mordaunt. It was the first of many works that covered fiction, short stories, travel and autobiography. 
   
  She changed her name by deed poll to Evelyn May Mordaunt on 1st July 1915 and gained a further reputation as a writer of short stories for magazines which display both her humour and sense of tragedy. Travel was always high on her priority and the experiences used not only for pleasure but in her writings and, as travel books, ideas in themselves.  
   
  On 27th January 1933 at Tenerife, in the Canary Islands, she married a retired barrister from Gloucestershire. In her own words, the marriage ‘ended in tragedy.’ 
   
  Elinor Mordaunt died on 25th June 1942 at the Radcliffe Infirmary, Oxford. She was 70. 
   
  1 - Elinor Mordaunt - A Short Story Collection - An Introduction 
  2 - The Landlady by Elinor Mordaunt 
  3 - The Villa by Elinor Mordaunt 
  4 - The Inspired 'Busman by Elinor Mordaunt 
  5 - Luz by Elinor Mordaunt 
  6 - Hodge by Elinor Mordaunt

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  The Artist and the Beautiful -...

  Nathaniel Hawthorne

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  Nathaniel Hawthorne was born on 4th July 1804 in Salem, Massachusetts, a town synonymous with the earlier Salem Witch Trials. It was instrumental in Hawthorne’s later use of American Gothic and dark romanticism in his writing. 
   
  He was a mere four years old when his father died and his mother took him and his two sisters to live with her family and then on to their own home in Raymond, Maine. The young Hawthorne had a passion for fiction and poetry and voraciously read the works of Ann Radcliffe, Henry Fielding and Lord Byron.  
   
  He was sent to college at his maternal uncle’s insistence. During these years he met and befriended Henry Wadsworth Longfellow and future U S president Franklin Pierce. These friendships were lifelong and to have a crucial impact on his writings and career.  
   
  At college Hawthorne had made attempts at writing short stories and essays but without opportunities to publish. It was only in 1828 that he finally published his novel ‘Franshawe’ to little success and so he began work as editor for the American Magazine of Useful and Entertaining Knowledge.  
   
  Hawthorne’s short stories were first published in magazines but in 1837 were collected and published as ‘Twice-Told Tales’. A steady literary career still did not come his way and so he worked in a good position at Salem’s port and married the love of his life Sophia Peabody. They moved to live in ‘The Old Manse’ at Concord, Massachusetts.   
   
  Finally. in 1850 came spectacular literary and commercial success with ‘The Scarlet Letter’ followed by ‘The House of the Seven Gables’ the following year.  
   
  In 1852, Hawthorne published a biography of presidential candidate Franklin Pierce. After Pierce’s victory he was appointed consul in Liverpool, a position that offered prestige, money and fame. At the end of this appointment he returned several times to Europe before settling in Massachusetts and resuming writing and publication. 
   
  During the early 1860’s his health declined and on 19th May 1864 during a trip to Plymouth, New Hampshire. He was 59 and was buried in Sleepy Hollow Cemetery in Concord, Massachusetts.  
   
  In his short story ‘The Artist of the Beautiful’ Hawthorne creates a work, now considered early science fiction, that weaves an unrequited life-long love with the creation of a beautiful miniature object that is both breath-taking and heart-breaking.

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  10 Essential Pieces of Literature

  Kahlil Gibran, Robert Louis...

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  This Audiobook contains the following work: 
  The prophet [Khalil Gibran] 
  Treasure Island [Robert Louis Stevenson] 
  White fang [Jack London] 
  The Time machine [H. G. Wells] 
  The Battle of Life [Charles Dickens] 
  The Adventure of Sherlock Holmes [Arthur Conan Doyle] 
  The Three Musketeers [Alexandre Dumas] 
  The adventures of Pinocchio [Carlo Collodi]Robinson Crusoe [Daniel Defoe] 
  The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn [Mark Twain]

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  Shylock Must Die

  Clive Sinclair

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  Since his first public appearance in the late 1590s, Shylock has been synonymous with antisemitism. Many of his bon mots remain common currency among Jew-haters; among them "3000 ducats" and the immortal "pound of flesh". But Shakespeare, being Shakespeare, was incapable of inventing anyone so uninteresting; instead he affords Shylock such ambiguity that some of his other lines have become keynotes for believers in shared humanity and tolerance. Following Shakespeare's example these stories – all inspired by The Merchant of Venice – range from the comic to the melancholic. Many pivot on significant productions of the play: Stockholm in 1944, London in 2012, and Venice in 2016. Some are concerned with domestic matters, others with the political, including one – more outrageous than the others – that links Shylock via Israel with the American presidency; most combine both. Running through these linked stories – of which there are seven, like the ages of man – is the cycle of family life, with all its comedy and tragedy.

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  This Way to Departures

  Linda Mannheim

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  What happens when we leave the places we're from? What do we lose, and who do we become, and what parts of our pasts are unshakeable?
  Linda Mannheim's second short story collection focuses on people who have relocated – both voluntarily and involuntarily.
  Opening with Miami-set political thriller, 'Noir', this exquisitely rendered set of stories will leave you reeling.
  This Way to Departures is a deeply affecting portrait of American society and the constant search for a place to call 'home'.

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