Other books that might interest you

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  A Little Journey

  Ray Bradbury

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  In "A Little Journey," published in August 1951, we meet an elderly woman in search of enlightenment who buys a ticket on a rocket. Like other more famous Bradbury's stories, "A Little Journey" demonstrates the author's characteristic blending of the sentimental and the transcendent, the homely and the mystical. 
   
  Ray Douglas Bradbury, American novelist, short story writer, essayist, playwright, screenwriter and poet, was born August 22, 1920 in Waukegan, Illinois. He graduated from a Los Angeles high school in 1938. Although his formal education ended there, he became a "student of life," selling newspapers on L.A. street corners from 1938 to 1942, spending his nights in the public library and his days at the typewriter. His reputation as a writer of courage and vision was established with the publication of The Martian Chronicles in 1950, which describes the first attempts of Earth people to conquer and colonize Mars, and the unintended consequences.

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  Storm Warning - Echoes of Conflict

  Vanessa Gebbie

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  Storm Warning is the latest collection from award-winning writer Vanessa Gebbie, described as 'prodigiously gifted' by novelist Maggie Gee. It explores the echoes of human conflict in a series of powerful stories inspired by life with the author's own father, who fought and was decorated in WWII, but suffered the after-effects for the rest of his life.
  Conflict is often explored from the child's perspective and ranges from conventional warfare to historical religious persecution. War veterans are haunted by events that echo louder and louder, and eventually break them. A prisoner sees the violent execution of a friend and mentor, a boy hides from a necklacing, a young student escapes the fighting in Iraq in the hope of continuing his education in the West and a woman tells what she knows of her parents' torture.
  The people in these stories are not those who go down in history, but ordinary troops, the powerless, caught up involuntarily. All are tested, sometimes to breaking point, in this extraordinary collection as Gebbie explores the surreality of conflict and the after-effects of atrocity.

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  The Barracks Thief

  Tobias Wolff

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  The Barracks Thief is the story of three young paratroopers waiting to be shipped out to Vietnam. Brought together one sweltering afternoon to stand guard over an ammunition dump threatened by a forest fire, they discover in each other an unexpected capacity for recklessness and violence. Far from being alarmed by this discovery, they are exhilarated by it; they emerge from their common danger full of confidence in their own manhood and in the bond of friendship they have formed.This confidence is shaken when a series of thefts occur. The author embraces the perspectives of both the betrayer and the betrayed, forcing us to participate in lives that we might otherwise condemn, and to recognize the kinship of those lives to our own.

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  Right At Last

  Elizabeth Gaskell

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  Elizabeth Gaskell is equally well known as Mrs Gaskell. When her mother died, she was three months old and she was sent to live in Knutsford, Cheshire with her Aunt Hannah, this setting would become the basis for her novel Cranford.  At 22 she married and settled in Manchester to raise her family. Friends with Charlotte Bronte she went on to write her biography and was also highly regarded by a certain Charles Dickens who published her ghost stories in his magazine.  Much of her work views the emerging industrial society of Victorian England through her own moral and religious values and has an uncanny ability to look at and report on the many strata of society.

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  The Short Stories of W W Jacobs...

  W Jacobs

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  William Wymark Jacobs was born on 8th September 1863 in Wapping, East London.  
   
  He was educated at a private school and then Birkbeck Literary and Scientific Institution, now part of the University of London. 
   
  In 1879, Jacobs began work as a clerk in the civil service, in the Post Office Savings Bank.  In 1885 his first short story was published but it was not until almost the turn of the century that he would abandon his post office career to that as a full-time writer. By then he was a very popular author, his collections selling extremely well and with an excellent income. 
   
  His best-known work is the macabre ‘The Monkey's Paw’ and he is also highly regarded for his ghost stories although much of his remaining short story output is streaked with humour.  His characters are immediately identifiable and we all know that life will take chunks out of them in no time at all.  
   
  Jacobs married the noted suffragette Agnes Eleanor Williams in 1900 at West Ham, Essex. They went on to have two daughters and three sons as they settled down to life.  
   
  By the outbreak of the First World War his literary output had declined and he now mainly spent his time rewriting his earlier stories for the stage.  In all he wrote 18 plays. 
   
  W W Jacobs died on 1st September 1943 at Hornsey Lane, Islington in London. He was 79. 
  01 - W W Jacobs - A Short Story Collection - An Introduction 
  02 - The Monkey's Paw by W W Jacobs 
  03 - Jerry Bundler by W W Jacobs 
  04 - Three Sisters by W W Jacobs 
  05 - Captain Rogers by W W Jacobs 
  06 - The Money Box by W W Jacobs

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  Susie's Letter from Santa

  Mark Twain

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  When Mark Twain's daughter Susie wrote a letter to Santa Claus, her father wrote back, signing Santa's name. Charming and heartwarming, this version of the short letter was recorded as part of Dreamscape's Classic Christmas Stories: A Collection of Timeless Holiday Tales.

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