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Anton Pavlovich Chekhov was born on 29th January 1860 in Taganrog, on the south coast of Russia. His family life was difficult; his father was strict and overbearing, but his mother was a passionate story-teller, a subject Chekhov warmed to. As he later said; ‘our talents we got from our father, but our soul from our mother’. Chekhov wrote over 500 short stories which included many, many classics including ‘The Kiss’ and ‘The Lady with a Dog’. His collection ‘At Dusk’ won him the coveted Pushkin Prize when was only 26.

Guy de Maupassant is justly revered as one of the strongest proponents of the short story. The miniature gems he created are woven from the many worlds and strata of society that surrounded him. From feuds and revenge to tales of avarice and friendship de Maupassant is the master of all and second to none.

Anton Chekhov is amongst the most vaunted of authors. His tales can take a small fragment of a person’s life and turn it into a narrative of unrivalled and compelling power. This volume perfectly illustrates Chekhov and his miniature masterpieces.

In this collection of short stories some of our most popular and well-known authors are grouped together with an unfortunate tag: dead at 46. These authors are not run-of-the-mill or ten a penny; many are literary leviathans who left enduring works of literature and sadly may have left us many more had they lived. We will never know.

With the talents on display the most difficult task is choosing only ten. Their virtuosity, their craft and ambition scare belie the difficulties that society places upon most women. Their words cannot be denied, their literary heritage is safe forever.

Whilst the notion of the Mystic East and Oriental wisdom was greatly romanticised by the Victorians and others, the shadow of Colonialism has smudged the view. These great cultures are some of humanity’s earliest, their works, their art some of its most daring and most accomplished. In these 50 poems across 50 poets we hope, at least in part, to rebalance our view of this subject. We begin in the 6th century BC and travel with a poet’s words and eyes across India, China, Persia and many other places in between.

In this volume our classic authors conjure up all sorts of damnations and destructions in literary assaults testing our will to survive and our ingenuity to overcome situations where the outlook is bleak at best and the total extinction of us at worse.

Hector Hugh Munro, more familiarly known by his pen-name ‘Saki’, was born in what was then Akyab in British Burma on 18th December 1870. His father was an Inspector General for the Indian Imperial Police, and his mother the daughter of a Rear Admiral. After a stint working in Burma with the Indian Imperial Police, Saki decided to move to London to make a living as a writer. Initially he wrote as a journalist for a number of newspapers and magazines before attempting an historical study, ‘The Rise of the Russian Empire’, whose real value lay in directing him to writing short stories instead.

Leonid Nikolaievich Andreyev was born on 21st August in Oryol, Russia, to a middle-class family of Polish, Ukranian and Finnish ancestry. In 1898 his first short story ‘Bargamot and Garaska’, published in the ‘Kurier’ newspaper, caught the attention and friendship of Maxim Gorky. Andreyev now discarded any other career path apart from that of author. His classic story ‘Lazarus’ brilliantly tells the story of Christ’s disciple, forced to wander the earth for all time; it is both chilling and heart-breaking in its Russian setting.

Given the option of being assassinated by Russian FSB agents because his cartoons have offended the Russian President, or using his creative talents to start a revolution, artist, Lee Owens, decides to attack St. Petersburg, Moscow, and Sochi with a barrage of subversive art: graffiti, murals, pirated billboards, laser light shows, parade blimps, and sculptures.

Reckless. That’s what they call me. I rush into burning building to save lives, and I wish it was for a just cause. It’s not. It’s to prove that I’m worthy of love. A messed-up knee, and my dreams of being in the NFL are gone. I’m fearless when it comes to fighting back death. That’s not what messes me up. It’s living that gets me. The last thing I need in my life is a woman, no matter how bad I want one. And yet, this one has me pacing the floor. The single mom who owns my crew’s favorite restaurant is sweet, loving, and hot. It’s not that easy, though.

This adventure begins with a two family vacation. One family will be saying good-bye to their son as he has been accepted to West Point. The other family's son will be attending the University in Albany. One is White, the other is a Negro, and this is the middle of the 19th century. Best friends from birth and both trying to make a difference in an improbable time in our nation's history. The two friends try to maintain their relationship and do the best they can even through the Civil War.

These are short stories that proved very popular with English (ESL) learners. They have a personal touch and are timeless. They should be easy to listen to and should not take long.

The office of Poet Laureate goes back many centuries - informally to the time of Geoffrey Chaucer in 1389 and followed thereafter by a number of ‘volunteer laureates’. It was formally assigned to Ben Jonson in 1617 and, as a Royal office by letters patent in 1670, to John Dryden. It is a rich, rewarding history that bursts with the words, themes and visions of many great poets that has bound poetry and poets to a nation's soul.

Martial arts master Lin Su Yoshimura is a force to be reckoned with. Now in the US after being shunned as a mixed-race Chinese-Japanese girl, then kidnapped as a teen and sold into the sex-trafficking trade, Lin Su is rescued from an abusive New York pimp by one of the city’s top-level cocaine dealers. Navigating both back alleys and opulent venues with lethal grace, Lin Su finds her way forward through the underbelly of the city, as she wrestles with the horrors of her past.

Spurned by the discovery of his wife’s infidelities, Mark Dalton hangs up his hat as a private detective and heads out on the open road as an owner/operator. But his talents for solving crimes come to quick use as he encounters hitchhikers with shady pasts, goods smuggled across the border and a murder at a movie shoot where almost everyone is a suspect. All part of his adventures in Highway Robbery and Other Tales of the Open Road.

Discover the surprising literary and poetic history of the RMS Titanic! Imagine getting the inside, behind the scenes story of the Titanic tragedy written by those who did not survive - but whose poetry and short accounts of the moments leading up to the Titanic sinking did. The World Codex Planet Poetry publication encapsulates a snapshot of the era shortly after the turn of the 20th century and is a gem of historical maritime poetry.

In the sixth part, the business risk buster strikes at a medical clinic. A wealthy developer bought his wife a clinic, but she left him and the clinic soon afterwards. So he hired a managing director under whose management it went from bad to worse. Contents: How to analyse your company from the inside. How to get rid of an incompetent manager. How to hire a more capable manager. How to choose the right investor. Learn from mistakes made by other entrepreneurs.

The Master tells me that when Quentin Colins finds my heart, I can come back.... Over a century ago, the first Quentin Collins built a stairway to traverse time, opening the way to countless realms of past and future. Now a new stairway has appeared at Collinwood, and the present-day Quentin is drawn to explore its dark path, forging an unlikely alliance with Angelique. Can she use her powers to help him, even at the risk of her own eternal damnation?

There is no such thing as choice, not here.... Merely the inevitable... New York, 1899. A city full of hopes, dreams and love... Quentin Collins has left Collinsport, hoping to leave his family and their terrible secrets behind forever. But something new and evil is stalking him. As The Skin Walkers seek to take command of a new century, they need Quentin at their side. Just as the prophecy foretold....