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  Round the World in Eighty Days...

  Jules Verne

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  Around the World in Eighty Days (French: Le tour du monde en quatre-vingts jours) is an adventure novel by the French writer Jules Verne, first published in French in 1872. In the story, Phileas Fogg of London and his newly employed French valet Passepartout attempt to circumnavigate the world in 80 days on a £20,000 wager (£2,242,900 in 2019) set by his friends at the Reform Club. It is one of Verne's most acclaimed works.The story starts in London on Wednesday, 2 October 1872. Phileas Fogg is a rich British gentleman living in solitude. Despite his wealth, Fogg lives a modest life with habits carried out with mathematical precision. Very little can be said about his social life other than that he is a member of the Reform Club, where he spends much of every day. Having dismissed his former valet, James Forster, for bringing him shaving water at 84 °F (29 °C) instead of 86 °F (30 °C), Fogg hires Frenchman Jean Passepartout as a replacement.

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  Nikolai Gogol - A Short Story...

  Nikolai Gogol

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  Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol was born on 1st April 1809 to a father, descended from Ukrainian Cossacks and a mother with a military background in the Ukrainian town of Sorochyntsi, then part of the Russian Empire and rich in Cossack traditions and folklore.   
   
  His father wrote poetry and plays which the young Gogol helped stage at his uncle’s home theatre.  This helped ignite in him a love of literature and blossomed when he attended, what is now, the Nizhyn Gogol State University at the age of 12.  Here he participated in school theatre productions and refined his mastery of his native Ukrainian and also the Russian of his Imperial masters. 
   
  In 1828 he went to St Petersburg and unsuccessfully tried to begin a career as an actor after finding that with no money and no connections the civil service was barred to him. 
   
  Embezzling money from his mother he embarked on a trip to Germany. When the money ran out, he returned to St Petersburg but the experiences were used in a series of stories he contributed to periodicals.  These tales were steeped in his childhood memories of the Ukrainian landscape and peasantry enlivened with the supernatural of its folklore woven with realistic events of the day.  He wrote in Russian in a whimsical, colloquial style with a smattering of Ukrainian words and phrases that provided an authenticity.  Eight stories were published as ‘Evenings on a Farm near Dikanka’.  Seemingly all at once fame and fortune arrived. Gogol was hailed by his contemporaries, including Pushkin, as a pre-eminent writer of Russian literature.   
   
  His success continued with his brilliant plays ‘The Inspector General’ and the comedy ‘The Marriage for the Theatre’, both being highly acclaimed.   
   
  In 1834 he became Professor of Medieval History at the University of St. Petersburg but with little academic or teacher training, failed to adequately fulfil many of his duties and soon resigned this post.  With no obligations and using his earnings from his writing, which now included the impressionistic and immortal ‘Dead Souls’, Gogol travelled around Europe, spending the most time in Rome where he studied art, read Italian literature and developed a passion for opera.  
   
  In the 1840s Gogol became preoccupied with a need to purify his soul and embarked on a pilgrimage to Jerusalem. In tandem he fell under the influence of a strict and austere spiritual ascetic who persuaded him to observe strict fasts that, allied with his depression and deteriorating health, contributed to his death on 21st April 1852 at the age of only 43. 
   
  1 - Nikolai Gogol - A Short Story Collection - An Introduction 
  2 - The Nose by Nikolai Gogol 
  3 - The Cloak by Nikolai Gogol also known as 'The Overcoat' 
  4 - Old Fashioned Landowners by Nikolai Gogol 
  5 - St Johns Eve by Nikolai Gogol 
  6 - Diary of a Madman by Nikolai Gogol

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  The Pit and The Pendulum

  SAMPI Books, Edgar Allan Poe

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  In Edgar Allan Poe's "The Pit and the Pendulum", a prisoner of the Spanish Inquisition faces psychological and physical torture in a dark cell. He struggles to survive deadly traps, including a sharp pendulum and a deep well, using his ingenuity to escape.

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  Oliver Twist

  Charles Dickens

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  The story of the orphan Oliver, who runs away from the workhouse only to be taken in by a den of thieves, shocked readers when it was first published. Dickens's tale of childhood innocence beset by evil depicts the dark criminal underworld of a London peopled by vivid and memorable characters—the arch-villain Fagin, the artful Dodger, the menacing Bill Sikes and the prostitute Nancy.

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  Arabian Nights

  Andrew Lang

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  They are ancient stories, but they still enchant our imaginations today. Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves, Sinbad the Sailor, Aladdin... These and the other Middle Eastern stories collected in Arabian Nights are delightful, fascinating, and fun for fans and first-time readers alike.An Author's Republic audio production.

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  Metaphysical Poems (Unabridged)

  John Donne, Henry King, Andrew...

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  Sex, science and spirituality! These were the triad of influences on the poetry of the seventeenth century. Following the golden age of Elizabeth I this century was to be one of great tensions; between Parliament and the Monarchy, Canterbury and Rome, science and religion; a civil war, the beheading of a King, The Republic, The Restoration, and finally, the Glorious Revolution which deposed a King and firmly reasserted the Protestant ascendancy.The role of a poet could be a dangerous one; Milton of course was imprisoned and threatened with execution whilst others dare not publish in their lifetimes.This selection of poetry chosen by Steve Patriarca draws on a group of poets commonly called the Metaphysicals or Metaphysical Poets.Included in the selection is one reading which is not strictly a poem at all but a sermon by John Donne, where Donne uses the characteristics of poetry to make his point about sin and mortality. His images are so striking that they have passed into the common language most of us know the phrase for whom the bell tolls or no man is an island even if we do not know the source.These poems have immense life and drama; they can be at once humorous and deeply emotional. They can also be great fun. But be warned. They can make you think!

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