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  Top 10 Short Stories The - The...

  Arnold Bennett, William Hope...

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  Short stories have always been a sort of instant access into an author’s brain, their soul and heart.  A few pages can lift our lives into locations, people and experiences with a sweep of landscape, narration, feelings and emotions that is difficult to achieve elsewhere. 
   
  In this series we try to offer up tried and trusted ‘Top Tens’ across many different themes and authors. But any anthology will immediately throw up the questions – Why that story? Why that author?  
   
  The theme itself will form the boundaries for our stories which range from well-known classics, newly told, to stories that modern times have overlooked but perfectly exemplify the theme.  Throughout the volume our authors whether of instant recognition or new to you are all leviathans of literature. 
   
  Some you may disagree with but they will get you thinking; about our choices and about those you would have made.  If this volume takes you on a path to discover more of these miniature masterpieces then we have all gained something. 
   
  The Victorian era ceases but England strides on. Confident, bestriding the globe as policeman and enforcer of her Imperial ways.  In literature her authors create majestic works that beguile an ever growing audience that now covers the world.  
   
  01 - The 20th Century - The English - An Introduction 
  02 - The Matador of the Five Towns by Arnold Bennett 
  03 - Kew Gardens by Virginia Woolf 
  04 - The Rocking Horse Winner by D H Lawrence 
  05 - Count Magnus by M R James 
  06 - Gabriel-Ernest by Saki 
  07 - The Kit Bag by Algernon Blackwood 
  08 - The Salvation of a Forsythe - Part 1 by John Galsworthy 
  09 - The Salvation of a Forsythe - Part 2 by John Galsworthy 
  10 - August Heat by W F Harvey 
  11 - The Diary of a God by Barry Pain 
  12 - The Voice in the Night by William Hope Hodgson

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  The Philistine - A touching...

  E M Delafield

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  Edmée Elizabeth Monica Dashwood, née de la Pasture, and more commonly known as E M Delafield, was born in Steyning, Sussex on 9th June 1890.   
   
  Raised in the fading years of the Victorian era with its Empire and strict moral codes Delafield, not yet married at twenty-one, joined a French religious order, in Belgium, but soon decided that this was a totally wrong choice for her.   
   
  Her next challenge was her work during the horror of the First World War.  Delafield decided to take up a position as a nurse in a Voluntary Aid Detachment in Exeter.  It was whilst here that she managed to write her first novel, ‘Zella Sees Herself’.   
   
  With the end of the war new opportunities were sought and she now took up a position for the South-West Region of the Ministry of National Service in Bristol.  With it came enough time to write two more novels: ‘The War Workers’ (1918) and ‘The Pelicans’ (1918).   
   
  On 17th July 1919, she married Colonel Arthur Paul Dashwood, OBE, an engineer responsible for building the massive docks at Hong Kong Harbour.  The marriage produced two children; Lionel and Rosamund.  That same year her fourth novel, ‘Consequences’, was published.   
   
  The couple spent their early years in Malaya but returned to England to live in Croyle, an old house in Kentisbeare, Devon.  Delafield continued to collect responsibilities and organise whatever she could.  At the initial meeting of the Kentisbeare Women's Institute, Delafield was unanimously elected president, and also became a Justice of the Peace, raised the children and, of course, continued to write her best-selling novels.   
   
  Her greatest work is undoubtedly the largely autobiographical ‘Diary of a Provincial Lady’, which is a simply structured journal of the life of an upper-middle class Englishwoman, living mostly in a Devon village of the 1930s.  It spawned several best-selling sequels.  Her works also includes stage and radio plays, film scripts and short stories.  
   
  After the death of her son in 1940, her health began to markedly decline.    
   
  E M Delafield died on 2nd December 1943 after collapsing whilst giving a lecture in Oxford.  She was 53.

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  Blue Billy’s Rogue Lexicon

  David Lawrence

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  Oliver Twist meets The Crimson Petal and the White in this devilishly funny, emotionally charged tale of finding a new path in life after a great fall. 
   
   
   
  William Dempsey rose from a life of thieving and prostitution to be the personal plaything of the Marquess of Argyll. Then a betrayal sees him returned to the rough streets of London without patronage, his West End apartment, or a place among the ton. 
   
   
   
  So on a stormy night, he arrives at a house in Southwark—Marathon Moll's in the Mint—the bawdyhouse he worked in during his ascent and where he earned the name Blue Billy. Here, amidst the parties and antics at Moll's, he meets Tom, a quiet, conflicted man, who senses in Billy a kindred soul. The attraction is immediate, and they take the first, tentative steps towards each other. 
   
   
   
  Then an ambitious young rogue arrives at the house. A man who asks Billy to fulfil the promise of his failed youth—he asks him to reclaim the language of his past, even if it costs him his future. 
   
   
   
  Contains mature themes.

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  The Kudzu Queen

  Mimi Herman

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  Longlisted for the Center for Fiction First Novel Prize 
   
   
   
  Fifteen-year-old Mattie Lee Watson dreams of men, not boys. So when James T. Cullowee, the Kudzu King, arrives in Cooper County, North Carolina, in 1941 to spread the gospel of kudzu—claiming that it will improve the soil, feed cattle at almost no cost, even cure headaches—Mattie is ready. Mr. Cullowee is determined to sell the entire county on the future of kudzu, and organizes a kudzu festival, complete with a beauty pageant. Mattie is determined to be crowned Kudzu Queen and capture the attentions of the Kudzu King. As she learns more about Cullowee, however, she discovers that he, like the kudzu he promotes, has a dark and predatory side. When she finds she is not the only one threatened, she devises a plan to bring him down. Based on historical facts, The Kudzu Queen unravels a tangle of sexuality, power, race, and kudzu through the voice of an irresistibly delightful (and mostly honest) narrator.

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  The Lost Books ~ Romance and...

  Mo Conlan

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  In a scheme to pay for his endless wars and lavish court, Henry Tudor seizes England's rich monasteries and convents. Thousands of illuminated manuscripts are stolen and destroyed. 
  Squire Henry Truelove of Cornwall, hero of this novel, has simpler ambitions: to win the hand of his reluctant ladylove, Morwenna. But life takes a bad turn for the squire when his family's estate faces ruinous taxation. Truelove and his friends form a band of "holy pirates" to bring down the corrupt taxman, and to rescue the precious lost books. 
  This tale of tumultuous Tudor times will especially please readers who enjoy little known histories and interesting language. The narrative is often lighthearted, with amusing repartee. The mission of the Holy Pirates, though, is vital and dangerous — to save the precious books and their own skins.

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  A Christmas Carol

  Charles Dickens

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  Here is our version of Charles Dickens classic story, "A Christmas Carol."  This is a fully dramatized performance including sound effects and music and a full range of voice actors.

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