Showing results by narrator "David Shaw" in All Categories

Before Sir Florian Eustace dies, he gives his beloved wife Lizzie a beautiful and expensive diamond necklace valued over £10,000. Dispute soon rages between the Eustace family and the manipulative and conniving Lizzie: it's claimed that the diamonds are a precious family heirloom, but Lizzie argues they were a gift. Is she lying? As the family's lawyer determines to reunite them with the jewels, Lizzie resorts to increasingly desperate measures, until one day the jewels are stolen. Who is responsible? The Eustace Diamonds is a wonderfully absorbing blend of cynicism and humor.

Someone has to die.... Henning Juul sits in a boat on a dark lake. A man with a gun sits opposite him. At the man's feet is a body that will be soon be dumped into the water. Henning knows that the same fate awaits him. And he knows that it's his own fault. Who started the fire that killed Henning's young son? How is his sister, Trine, involved? Most importantly, who can be trusted?

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 human race prides itself on being the most organised of animals. We manage the fate of all other species. All other animals bow to our control or suffer. In diminishing numbers we allow some to live in the wild, but in increasing numbers we domesticate them, and whether they become part of the family, a best friend or wonderfully decorative accessory, we take their compliance for granted.  

On a summer’s day we have perhaps all wished to take flight and view life and the world from the vantage point of a clear blue sky. Our feathered friends do it as a matter of course, and in this volume some of our finest wordsmiths speak with imagination, longing and desire on their behalf.

The office of Poet Laureate is a high honour amongst poets. The ancient Greeks had the first idea, and their heroes and poets wore wreaths of laurel in honour of the god Apollo. Many countries now have a laureate, as do many societies and organisations. But perhaps ranked first among them all is that of our own Poet Laureate. Unfortunately no single authentic definitive record exists of the office of Poet Laureate of England. In some form it can be traced back to 1189 and Richard Canonicus, who was employed by Richard I with the title 'versificator Regis'.

Bereft of his beloved wife, Glencora, and his role as prime minister, Plantagenet Palliser enters the realm of family politics as he struggles to guide and connect with his three wayward children. Lord Silverbridge, the Duke's first born and natural inheritor, expelled from Oxford, a gambler at the racetrack and an elected Conservative, further troubles his father when he becomes engaged to Isabel Boncassen. Lady Mary, his daughter, falls in love with a penniless young gentleman named Frank Tregear, while his second son, Gerald, displays similar behavior to his brother.

It is AD 367, and Roman Britain has fallen to the vast barbarian horde which has invaded from the north. Towns burn, the land is ravaged and the few survivors flee. The army of Rome - once the most effective fighting force in the world - has been broken, its spirit lost and its remaining troops shattered. Yet for all the darkness, there is hope. And it rests with one man. His name is Lucanus, whom they call the Wolf. He is a warrior, and he wears the ancient crown of the great war leader Pendragon, and he wields a sword bestowed upon him by the druids.

Loss in any form seems to burden us with more weight than anything that can possibly be gained or learnt from. The loss of a person, a loved one, is often overwhelming. Lives so interwoven that the severing or loss of one life leaves the other weakened, unable to function for some time. Recovery comes in a myriad of forms but is usually debilitating, slow and, in the end, we are not as whole as we once were.It is a subject that authors return to again and again.

When we read or listen, words can have a transforming effect. Our mood can alter in the space of a few sentences from joy to sadness. And not just our mood. These words can affect us physically, they can engage our emotions and even in their sadness bring a lump to our throat and tears to our eyes. Sometimes the relief can be palpable. Our authors, from Anton Chekhov, Stephen Crane, Willa Cather, Katherine Mansfield and a wealth of others, are well aware of what their talents will evoke. Genius has many names.

Mental illness though can still carry a stigma. A case of ‘you’re not trying hard enough’, ‘or knuckling down and getting on with it’. But in more recent decades mental issues have come to be recognised as an illness, a disease rather than an affliction. We all remember horror stories of lobotomy’s and electric shock being used to ‘cure’ what society viewed as anti-social behaviour but illness, mental or physical is very real. Depression, schizophrenia, breakdown, psychosis are alarming events to have or to witness.

Arthur Conan Doyle was born in Edinburgh, Scotland, on 22nd May 1859. His literary career burst into life in November 1886 with ‘A Study In Scarlet’, the first of the fabulously successful Sherlock Holmes stories. In 1891 tired of writing Holmes stories, he began a series of historical novels and even went so far as to apparently kill off Holmes in a lethal brawl with his arch-nemesis, Moriarty.

During the Victorian era the publishing of magazines and periodicals accelerated at a phenomenal rate. This really was mass market publishing to a hungry audience eager for literary sustenance. Many of our greatest authors contributed and expanded their reach whilst many fledging authors also found a ready source for their nascent works and careers. Amongst the very many was ‘The Yellow Book’.

John William Polidori was born on 7th September 1795, in London, to Gaetano Polidori. In 1816 Dr Polidori was given the job of Byron’s personal physician and accompanied him on a trip through Europe. The publisher John Murray offered Polidori £500 to keep a diary of their travels. At the Villa Diodati, Byron’s rented villa at Lake Geneva in Switzerland, the pair met with Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin, Percy Bysshe Shelley, and Mary's stepsister, Claire Clairmont.

Short stories have always been a sort of instant access into an author’s brain, their soul and heart. The Russian Literary Tradition has justly earned a magnificent reputation. The Russian Empire of the Czars was a huge and disparate patchwork of peoples ruled by an overbearing elite that employed a middle-class bureaucracy to keep the working class firmly underfoot. Within its vaulted ranks are a role call of many of the greatest literary talents of the ages.

James Augustine Aloysius Joyce was born on the 2nd February 1882, in Dublin, into a middle-class family, and the eldest of ten surviving siblings. After publishing a poetry volume, ‘Chamber Music’, in 1907, his short story collection ‘The Dubliners’, in 1914, helped establish his talent in the rapidly changing world. Although far from home Joyce’s literary heart and works were set in his recollections of Dublin. Characters are close resemblances of family and friends and indeed enemies.

Gibran Khalil Gibran was born on 6th January 1883, in the village of Bsharri, Beirut Vilayet, then part of the Ottoman Empire. His first book in English, ‘The Madman’, became an international phenomenon. Gibran was regarded as a literary rebel and a leading figure of the Arabic literary Renaissance and made influential contributions to Western poetry, stories and thought. Madame Rose Hanie is an exquisite short story that unravels the real calling of love and its experience in a society where women were too often treated as second-class. Rose Hanie thinks very differently.

Oscar Fingal O'Flahertie Wills Wilde was born on the 16th October 1854, in Dublin, Ireland. The son of Dublin intellectuals Oscar proved himself an outstanding classicist at Trinity College and then at Oxford. His only novel, ‘The Picture of Dorian Gray’, was published in 1890 and he then moved on to writing for the stage with ‘Salome’ in 1891. His society comedies were enormous hits and turned him into one of the most successful writers of late Victorian London. This collection of light-hearted and witty stories was written by Oscar Wilde in 1891.

Montague Rhodes James is cited as perhaps the greatest English writer of ghost stories, an opinion few would disagree with. Many of his elegant yet terrifying tales were created by discarding the prevailing gothic clichés and placing his characters and narrative in a realistic setting. Thereby the stories gained atmosphere and menace on a grand scale and he was famed as the originator of the antiquarian ghost story. Although story-telling and writing these 30 or so tales was a hobby, when published their effect transformed the genre and still chill the bones in our more modern times.

Amy Levy was born in London, England, in 1861, the second of seven in a fairly wealthy Anglo-Jewish family. The children read and participated in secular literary activities and became firmly integrated into Victorian life. Amy’s writing career began early; her poem ‘Ida Grey’ appeared when she was only fourteen. Her acclaimed short stories ‘Cohen of Trinity’ and ‘Wise in Their Generation,’ were published by Oscar Wilde in his magazine ‘Women's World’.