Other books that might interest you

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  The Cage

  J.D. Beresford

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  John Davys Beresford (1873-1947) was an English writer, now remembered for his early science fiction and short stories in the horror and ghost story genres.  
  "The Cage" explores what would be the reaction of an ancient caveman ancestor of ours to a surprise glimpse of our modern world.

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  The Picture of Dorian Gray

  Oscar Wilde

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  The Picture of Dorian Gray is a philosophical novel by Irish writer Oscar Wilde. A shorter novella-length version was published in the July 1890 American periodical Lippincott's Monthly Magazine issue. The novel-length version was published in April 1891.The story revolves around a portrait of Dorian Gray painted by Basil Hallward, a friend of Dorian's and an artist infatuated with Dorian's beauty. Through Basil, Dorian meets Lord Henry Wotton and is soon enthralled by the aristocrat's hedonistic worldview: beauty and sensual fulfillment are the only things worth pursuing. Newly understanding that his beauty will fade, Dorian desires to sell his soul to ensure that the picture, rather than he, will age and fade.The wish is granted, and Dorian pursues a libertine life of varied amoral experiences while staying young and beautiful; all the while, his portrait ages and visually records every one of Dorian's sins.

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  Big Two-Hearted River - The...

  Ernest Hemingway

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  Ernest Hemingway’s landmark short story of a veteran’s solo fishing trip in Michigan’s rugged Upper Peninsula, featuring a revelatory foreword by John N. Maclean. 
  “A century since its publication in the collection In Our Time, “Big Two-Hearted River” has helped shape language and literature in America and across the globe, and its magnetic pull continues to draw readers, writers, and critics. The story is the best early example of Ernest Hemingway’s now-familiar writing style: short sentences, punchy nouns and verbs, few adjectives and adverbs, and a seductive cadence. Easy to imitate, difficult to match. The subject matter of the story has inspired generations of writers to believe that fly fishing can be literature. More than any of his stories, it depends on his ‘iceberg theory’ of literature, the notion that leaving essential parts of a story unsaid, the underwater portion of the iceberg, adds to its power. Taken in context with his other work, it marks Hemingway’s passage from boyish writer to accomplished author: nothing big came before it, novels and stories poured out after it.” —from the foreword by John N. Maclean

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  Saki: 'Music on the Hill' 'The...

  Saki Saki

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  Saki was the pen-name of Hector Hugh Munro. One of the wittiest of all short-story writers, he was born in 1870 in Burma where his father, a Scots army officer, was stationed. He was one when the family returned to England to live in North Devon. When his mother died his father, returning to serve in India, put Hector and his brothers and sisters into the care of his own mother and two sisters. The children’s childhood with their aunts was miserable. The aunts hated each other, quarrelled fiercely, and bullied the children mentally. They saw little of other children, and Hector’s main enjoyment was drawing. After some tuition with a governess he went to school in Exmouth, and later to Bedford Grammar School. In 1886 his father retired . A kindly man, he took the children to Normandy, to Dresden, to Prague , and to Davos, where they rode, climbed and played tennis, and Hector took lessons in pastel from a painter of birds of prey. As a young man, Hector went as a Police Official to Burma, but returned after two years, made ill by the climate. Recovering, he became a political correspondent for the ‘Morning Post’, living in the Balkans, in Warsaw, in Petersburg, and in Paris. He also began publishing the entertaining short stories that made him famous. In 1908 he settled in London, writing stories, playing bridge, and enjoying theatre and ballet. When the Great War broke out he enlisted in the ranks. On 14th November 1916, crouching with others in a shallow muddy shell-crater before an attack on Beaumont Hamel, he was heard to shout ‘Put that bloody cigarette out’ A moment later he was shot through the head.  This volume includes four of his best loved stories; The Man On The Hill, The Cobweb, The Interlopers and The Hounds Of Fate and are read by Patrick Barlow. Patrick has appeared on stage nationwide in such productions as Loot and A Funny Thing Happened On The Way To The Forum, and his many television appearances include The Growing Pains Of Adrian Mole and Victoria Wood – As Seen On TV, but he is probably best known for creating the character of Desmond Oliver Dingle, Artistic Director and Chief Executive of The National Theatre Of Brent, that amazing two-man company which has presented on stage and television such productions as Charge Of The Light Brigade, Zulu, The Messiah and The Greatest Story Ever Told

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  In the Land of Armadillos

  Helen Maryles Shankman

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  1942. With the Nazi Party at the height of its power, the occupying army empties Poland's towns and cities of their Jewish populations. As neighbor turns on neighbor and survival often demands unthinkable choices, Poland has become a moral quagmire—a place of shifting truths and blinding ambiguities. 
   
   
   
  Blending folklore and fact, Helen Maryles Shankman shows us the people of Wlodawa, a remote Polish town. We meet a cold-blooded SS officer dedicated to rescuing the Jewish creator of his son's favorite picture book; a Messiah who appears in a little boy's bedroom to announce that he is quitting; a young Jewish girl who is hidden by the town's most outspoken anti-Semite—and his talking dog. And walking among these tales are two unforgettable figures: the enigmatic and silver-tongued Willy Reinhart, commandant of the forced labor camp who has grand schemes to protect "his" Jews, and Soroka, the Jewish saddlemaker and his family, struggling to survive. 
   
   
   
  Channeling the mythic magic of classic storytellers and the psychological acuity of modern-day masters, In the Land of Armadillos is a testament to the persistence of humanity in the most inhuman conditions.

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  Wren's Story - Epilogue For The...

  Beca Lewis

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  When friendship is stronger than fear…  
  When Wren’s friend Meg sacrifices her life to save the people of Thamon, Wren realizes that what she has hidden on her home planet may return Meg to life. 
  Returning home to get help, Wren discovers her planet is dying, and she alone knows the answer to how to save it. 
  But will anyone listen to her? Her parents banished her for disobeying the prophecy that she must marry Oloron. 
  Does Wren prove the prophecies are false in time? Or will the evil king, Oloron, find what she had hidden before she can retrieve it and use it to destroy the planet with his lust for power. 
  Read this short story on its own, or to learn the answer to the question posed at the end of Discovered, the third book in the Chronicles of Thamon.

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