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  Temptation of Harringay The...

  H. G. Wells

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  Herbert George Wells (21 September 1866 - 13 August 1946) was an English writer. Prolific in many genres, he wrote dozens of novels, short stories, and works of social commentary, history, satire, biography and autobiography. His work also included two books on recreational war games. Wells is now best remembered for his science fiction novels and is often called the "father of science fiction", along with Jules Verne and the publisher Hugo Gernsback.
  THE TEMPTATION OF HARRINGAY: It is quite impossible to say whether this thing really happened. It depends entirely on the word of R.M. Harringay, who is an artist.

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  Brightness Falls - From their...

  Mary Butts

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  Mary Frances Butts was born on 13th December 1890 in Poole, Dorset. 
  Her early years were spent at Salterns, an 18th-century house overlooking Poole Harbour.  Sadly in 1905 her father died, and she was sent for boarding at St Leonard's school for girls in St Andrews. 
  Her mother remarried and, from 1909, Mary studied at Westfield College in London, and here, first became aware of her bisexual feelings.  She was sent down for organising a trip to Epsom races and only completed her degree in 1914 when she graduated from the London School of Economics.  By then Mary had become an admirer of the occultist Aleister Crowley and she was given a co-authorship credit on his ‘Magick (Book 4)’. 
  In 1916, she began the diary which would now detail her future life and be a constant reference point for her observations and her absorbing experiences. 
  During World War I, she was doing social work for the London County Council in Hackney Wick, and involved in a lesbian relationship.  Life changed after meeting the modernist poet, John Rodker and they married in 1918. 
  In 1921 she spent 3 months at Aleister Crowley's Abbey of Thelema in Sicily; she found the practices dreadful and also acquired a drug habit.  Mary now spent time writing in Dorset, including her celebrated book of short stories ‘Speed the Plough’ which saw fully develop her unique Modernist prose style. 
  Europe now beckoned and several years were spent in Paris befriending many artists and writing further extraordinary stories.   
  She was continually sought after by literary magazines and also published several short story collections as books. Although a Modernist writer she worked in other genres but is essentially only known for her short stories.  Mary was deeply committed to nature conservation and wrote several pamphlets attacking the growing pollution of the countryside. 
  In 1927, she divorced and the following year her novel ‘Armed with Madness’ was published.  A further marriage followed in 1930 and time was spent attempting to settle in London and Newcastle before setting up home on the western tip of Cornwall.  By 1934 the marriage had failed. 
  Mary Butts died on 5th March 1937, at the West Cornwall Hospital, Penzance, after an operation for a perforated gastric ulcer. She was 46.

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  The Mysterious Island

  Jules Verne

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  The novel explores the survival and ingenuity of the protagonists as they work together to build a new life on the island. The group consists of Cyrus Smith, an engineer; Gideon Spilett, a journalist; Pencroff, a sailor; Harbert, a young boy; and Neb, a former slave. As they face various challenges, including hostile wildlife and strange occurrences, they discover that the island holds secrets, including a hidden benefactor who aids them in their endeavors.

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  How a Muzhik Fed Two Officials

  Mikhail Saltykov-Shchedrin

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  How a Muzhik Fed Two Officials is not just a fable—it is a mirror, polished to a biting shine, reflecting the grotesque logic of power and servitude. In this brief yet mercilessly precise tale, Mikhail Saltykov-Shchedrin strips hierarchy down to its raw absurdity: those who consume and those who are consumed.
  Two officials, stranded in a land without luxury, discover an ingenious solution to their predicament—one that requires neither effort nor skill on their part. Their savior? A humble muzhik, a man shaped by centuries of unquestioning toil. But necessity breeds invention, and soon, the line between duty and exploitation blurs beyond recognition. 
  With razor-sharp irony, Saltykov-Shchedrin lays bare a world where privilege thrives on passivity, and survival itself becomes a grotesque performance. The muzhik, nameless and tireless, embodies an entire class condemned to labor without recognition, while the officials, ludicrous in their entitlement, reveal the disturbing resilience of power, even in the face of absurdity.
  Darkly comic yet chillingly relevant, How a Muzhik Fed Two Officials remains an unflinching satire on authority, dependence, and the silent mechanisms that sustain inequality. A story as brief as it is unsettling—one that lingers long after the last word.

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  Russian Short Story The - Volume...

  Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Nikolai...

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  The Russian novel has a reputation that is immense, both in narrative and in length.  Unquestionably though the ideas, themes and characters make many novels rightly revered as world class, as icons of literature. 
   
  Perhaps an easier way to enjoy a wider selection of the Russian heritage, with its varied and glorious literary talents, is with the short story.  These gems sparkle and beguile the mind with their characters and narrative, exploring facets of society and the human condition that more Western authors somehow find more difficult to navigate, or to explore, explain and relate to.   
   
  The Russian short story is, in many respects, in a genre of its own.  It is at its captivating best whether it’s an exploration of real-life experiences, through fantasy and fables and on to total absurdity. 
   
  In a land so vast it is unsurprising that it is a world almost unto itself. Cultures and landscapes of differing hues are packed together bound only by the wilful bonds and force of Empire. 
   
  The stories in this collection traverse the decades where one might be a serf under an absolute monarch, and the reality of that was pretty near to slavery, into an emancipation of sorts in the fields, or towns under the despotic will of landowners and the rich into the upheavals of Empire and then the overthrow of the ruling class and its replacement by the communists, who promised equality for all and delivered a society where the down-trodden remained the lowest yet vital cog of the state machine and its will.  
   
  Whilst Tolstoy, Gogol, Dostoevsky, Pushkin and Chekhov are a given in any Russian collection we also explore and include Andreyev, Korolenko, Turgenev, Blavatsky and many others to create a world rich and dense across a sprawling landscape of diverse people, riddled with the class and unfairness in perhaps some of the most turbulent times that Russia has ever experienced. 
   
  01 - The Russian Short Story - Volume 3 - An Introduction 
  02 - An Honest Thief by Fyodor Dostoyevsky 
  03 - The Crocodile. An Extraordinary Incident - Part 1 by Fyodor Dostoyevsky 
  04 - The Crocodile. An Extraordinary Incident - Part 2 by Fyodor Dostoyevsky 
  05 - Bobok by Fyodor Dostoyevsky 
  06 - How a Muzhik Fed Two Officials by Nikolai Schedrin 
  07 - Diary of a Lunatic by Leo Tolstoy 
  08 - Aloysha the Pot by Leo Tolstoy 
  09 - How Much Land Does A Man Need by Leo Tolstoy 
  10 - The Snowstorm - Part 1 by Leo Tolstoy 
  11 - The Snowstorm - Part 2 by Leo Tolstoy 
  12 - God Sees The Truth But Waits by Leo Tolstoy

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  The Return of Sherlock Holmes

  Arthur Conan Doyle

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  In 1905 Conan Doyle reluctantly decided to bring his most famous creation Sherlock Holmes back to life. It is no easy thing to convincingly resurrect a man whom you have so decisively thrown over a Swiss waterfall. There is however no sense of reluctance in the collection of short stories that make up The Return of Sherlock Holmes. The great detective reenters the stage with convincing aplomb and his usual theatricality, albeit at the expense of the bemused and shocked Watson. 
  The “Return” contains some of the most popular adventures of the Holmes canon, including the melodramatic “Solitary Cyclist”, the ingenious “Six Napoleons” (with Lestrade’s surprisingly warm endorsement of Holmes at the end). We have the clever “Second Stain” and the inventive “Dancing Men” The stories also have some memorable villains, (who could so easily pale in the dark memory of Professor Moriarty), not least the despicable Charles Augustus Milverton. 
  Head Stories Audio presents “The Return of Sherlock Holmes” narrated by Simon Hester. With original music. Performed by Simon Hester and Carmine Lauri.

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