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  King Pest

  Edgar Allan Poe

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  More classic horror narrations on Jonathan's YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/@JonathanDunneHorrorAudiobooks 
  Title: King Pest 
  Author: Edgar Allan Poe 
  Narrator: Jonathan Dunne 
  Original Publication: 1835 
  Public Domain: Yes 
  Series: Timeless Terrors 
  Number: 108 
  Description: 
  King Pest is a grotesque and darkly comic tale set in plague-ravaged London during the time of a devastating epidemic. Amid the fear and desolation, two drunken sailors, Leggs and Hugh Tarpaulin, wander away from their ship and into a forbidden quarter of the city abandoned to death and decay. Drawn by curiosity and bravado, they stumble into a nightmarish banquet held in a charnel-house, where a bizarre court presides over a feast among coffins and bones. 
  At the center of this macabre assembly sits the self-proclaimed King Pest, a grotesque monarch ruling over a mock kingdom of pestilence. Surrounded by equally ghastly courtiers — each bearing names and appearances befitting their morbid titles — King Pest delivers bombastic proclamations while reveling in the trappings of death. The sailors soon find themselves unwilling guests in this grotesque parody of royalty, where horror and absurdity mingle beneath the shadow of the plague. 
  In this strange and atmospheric story, Edgar Allan Poe blends satire, gothic horror, and dark humor to create a vivid tableau of decay and delirium. The claustrophobic setting, the grotesque imagery, and the exaggerated pageantry of the plague court showcase Poe’s flair for the macabre as well as his biting wit. 
  Narrated by Amazon-bestselling horror author Jonathan Dunne, this performance brings Poe’s eerie humor and grim spectacle vividly to life. King Pest remains a striking example of Poe’s early tales — a bizarre and unforgettable descent into a kingdom where death reigns supreme.

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  The Inquity of Oblivion - From...

  Kenneth Grahame

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  Kenneth Grahame was born on 8th March 1859 in Edinburgh. 
  At age 5 his mother succumbed to puerperal fever.  His father, who had a drinking problem, now sent his 4 children to live with their grandmother at her large house in Cookham, Berkshire. Here the children lived in large open grounds next to the river.  These early experiences would in later years, be retold in his writing through a myriad of characters. 
  Grahame loved being a pupil at St Edward's School, Oxford and wanted to enroll at the university there but his guardian demurred on account of the cost. 
  Instead, a banking career was chosen for him, starting in 1879 at the Bank of England, where he rose steadily to the rank of its Secretary until retiring, with a pension, in 1908 due to ill health. 
  Alongside his commercial career Grahame had written and published various stories and essays in several periodicals. Some were anthologized as ‘Pagan Papers’ in 1893, and two years later ‘The Golden Age’ and later still ‘Dream Days’ and its masterpiece ‘The Reluctant Dragon’ became part of many home libraries.  His ability to view life through the lens of a young and curious child was superb, enabling the reader to easily identify with the character.   
  Grahame married Elspeth Thomson in 1899 and they had one child; Alastair, born semi-blind and plagued by health problems.  In a heart-rending tragedy he would later take his own life whilst attending Oxford University in 1920.   
  In 1908 Grahame reworked many of the bedtime stories he had fashioned for his son into the enduring favourite; ‘The Wind in the Willows’, describing the heart-warming adventures of Mr Toad and his friends.   
  Kenneth Grahame died in Pangbourne, Berkshire, on 6th July 1932.

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  Olalla - From their pens to your...

  Robert Louis Stevenson

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  Occasionally an author appears who, in a short career, emblazons a legacy so bright and so distinct, as well as popular that it is difficult to believe it is the output of only one man. Robert Louis Balfour Stevenson was such a talent. 
  Stevenson was born on 13th November 1850 in Edinburgh.  Despite a late start to reading and writing he was a voracious story-teller, regularly performing yarns for all those around him.  His health though was poorly, he suffered lifelong bronchial problems and was incapacitated by this and other ailments throughout his life. 
  In Grez, France in September 1876 he met the American, Fanny Van de Grift Osbourne. She was married with children but distress and anger at her husband's infidelities led to several separations. By the time she met Stevenson she was already a promising short-story writer. 
  In 1880 she was at last free to re marry and life, despite his health issues, was good.  In the ensuing years travel and exploration would be their calling and the source of his literary inspiration. 
  Classics flowed; in 1881 ‘The Body Snatcher’.  In 1883 ‘Treasure Island’, followed 3 years later by ‘Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde’.  
  In 1890, they settled on an estate in Samoa for what would be a last great burst of writing that coincided with his political awakening as the islands moved toward inter-clan warfare as greedy outside powers stoked tensions.    
  Over the course of his prolific career Stevenson had not only given his audience many classic novels but beautiful poetry such as ‘A Child’s Garden of Verses’ and many short stories as with his dark classic of Christmas Day ‘Markheim’ (1884). 
  Robert Louis Stevenson died at his island home at Valima in Samoa on 3rd December 1894.  He was 44.

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  Short Stories About Survival - A...

  Honoré de Balzac, Leo Tolstoy,...

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  Our ‘fight of flight’ response is something hardwired into the primitive part of our brain.  Our need to survive, to outlive whatever danger poses, that immediate threat to our lives is little short of a marvel.  Everything else is abandoned in order to survive.  Whilst in modern times that ability has been somewhat modified and ‘reasoned’ away to an extent, in past years it’s what usually kept you alive. 
   
  In this volume people struggle valiantly to survive and to exist no matter the extent of the threat they face. In the words of our authors including William Hope Hodgson, Richard Connell, Jack London, Honore de Balzac and a wealth of others, they vividly demonstrate how or whether the participants survive … or fail.  
   
  01 - Short Stories About Survival - An Introduction 
   02 - The White Silence by Jack London 
   03 - A Passion in the Desert by Honoré de Balzac 
   04 - The Interlopers by Saki the pseudonym for H H Munro 
   05 - The Outcasts of Poker Flat by Bret Harte 
   06 - Taman by Mikhail Yurievich Lermontov 
   07 - The Great Slave by Zane Grey 
   08 - The Voice in the Night by William Hope Hodgson 
   09 - The Most Dangerous Game by Richard Connell 
   10 - The Open Boat by Stephen Crane 
   11 - To Build a Fire by Jack London 
   12 - The Snowstorm - Part 1 by Leo Tolstoy 
   13 - The Snowstorm - Part 2 by Leo Tolstoy

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  A Legend of Old Egypt - From...

  Boleslaw Prus

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  Aleksander Głowacki who wrote under the nom de plume Boleslaw Prus was born on 20th August 1847 at Hrubieszów in the Kingdom of Poland, at that time, controlled by the Russian Empire. 
  At three his mother died and then at nine his father.  Female relatives helped raise him but at 15 he joined the Polish uprising against the might of Imperial Russia.  Wounded on the battlefield, arrested and imprisoned, he was later released into the care of a relative and resumed secondary school and then Warsaw University but poverty forced him to leave after two years.  At some point he developed agoraphobia which often caused problems. 
  In 1869, he enrolled in the Forestry Department at Puławy but was soon sacked and so he began a system of self-education that led to work as a newspaper columnist on a wide-ranging series of topics that eventually became the ‘Weekly Chronicles’ and spanned 40 years. 
  With his finances now stabilized he married and then adopted his late brother-in-law’s son.  
  It seems he had doubts as to the scale of his talents and early on adopted the name ‘Boleslaw Prus’ for both his journalistic and literary offerings. 
  His work as a short-story writer met with much acclaim. He wrote several dozen of them, originally published in newspapers and ranging in length from micro-story to novella. His keen observation of everyday life and sense of humor are evident in them.  
  During his career he also wrote novels. After ‘Pharoah’, in 1895, he embarked on a four-month journey taking in Berlin, Dresden, Nuremberg, Rapperswil in Switzerland, where he stayed for two months, and his final destination, Paris.  Here his agoraphobia was so bad he couldn’t cross the Seine.  
  However, his writing continued and in 1911 his novel ‘Changes’, though uncompleted, began to be serialised.  It was never finished. 
  Boleslaw Prus died on 19th May 1912, at his Warsaw apartment.  He was 64.  A National Hero, thousands attended both his funeral service and interment.

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  Twenty-Six Men and a Girl - From...

  Maxim Gorky

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  Alexei Maximovich Peshkov was born on 28th March 1868, in Nizhny Novgorod, Russia. 
  Better known as Maxim Gorky he was orphaned at 11 and ran away from home at 12.  At 19 he had already attempted suicide and thereafter travelled, by foot, across the Russian Empire for 5 years. 
  His first book ‘Essays & Stories’ in 1898 was a sensation and so began a long career as an author of short stories, novels and plays.  Gorky saw writing as a moral and political act that would help to change the unjust world around him.  He was an ardent early advocate of the emerging Marxist movement and publicly opposed the Tsarist regime leading several times to his arrest.  
  In 1904 he began his own theatre but the censor banned every play and Gorky was forced to abandon the project. 
  But Gorky was a financially successful author, editor, and playwright and gave monies to political parties as well as for civil rights and social reform.  The brutal shooting of workers, which set in motion the Revolution of 1905, pushed Gorky more decisively toward radical solutions.  
  In 1906 he went to the United States to raise funds for the Bolsheviks. Those experiences including a scandal over travelling with his lover and not his wife deepened his contempt for the ‘bourgeois soul.’ 
  Gorky now moved to Capri in Italy, both for health reasons and to escape the increasingly repressive times in Russia.  
  An amnesty for the 300th anniversary of the Romanov dynasty saw him return to Russia in 1914. His politics remained close to the Bolshevik cause.  But soon, after the 1918 revolution, his essays referred to Lenin as a tyrant for his senseless arrests and repression.  He was soon appealing to the outside world for food aid after the catastrophic crop failure. 
  In October 1921 Gorky returned to Italy, now in Fascist hands, and settled in Sorrento until 1932.  His health worsened with the onset of tuberculosis. 
  He wrote several successful books there but now decided to find an understanding with the communist regime. Stalin invited him home and his return was hailed as a major propaganda victory.  He was decorated with the Order of Lenin, and a province, a park, and various streets re-named in his honour. 
  But he had his faults too.  In 1933, Gorky co-edited a book on the White Sea-Baltic Canal and denied even a single prisoner died during its construction, but thousands had. As well, knowing that some Nazis were homosexual, a phrase was attributed to him that said ‘exterminate all homosexuals and fascism will vanish’.  Although he was himself was quoting another he was decidedly homophobic. 
  With the increase of Stalinist repression in 1935 Gorky was placed under unannounced house arrest. 
  Maxim Gorky died on the 18th June 1936 from pneumonia.  He was 68. 
  Stalin and Molotov were among those who carried Gorky's urn of ashes at his funeral.

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