Showing results by narrator "Eve Karpf" in All Categories

Perhaps England's greatest literary family. To find one brilliant novelist in a family is extremely rare. But two? Three?

The Brontë sisters, Charlotte, Emily Jane and Anne, together with their brother Patrick, are famed throughout the world. And amongst their many talents was poetry. Of course, being Brontë's, they were rather good at that too.

Mirabai was a Rajput princess born to the Rathore clan in 1498 in Kudaki, Rajasthan, in northern India. Despite being one of the most significant saints in the Bhakti tradition and an immensely popular Hindu mystic and religious poet, very few facts are actually known about her life including her date of birth. It is clear that her mother died when she was very young and she was greatly influenced by her father, also a worshipper of Krishna. From a young age, Mirabai’s devotion to Krishna was absolute surrender and complete devotion.

Able to write comfortably in a number of genres, HG Wells was especially applauded for his science fiction works such as The Time Machine and War of the Worlds, but his forays into the social conditions of the times, with classics such as Kipps, were almost as commercially successful. His short stories are miniature masterpieces, many of which bring new and incredible ideas of science fiction to the edge of present-day science fact. Wells also received four nominations for the Nobel Prize in Literature.

When Katie's sister, Gillian, announces that she is marrying the appalling Christopher, Katie is horrified. When she realises she will have to be a bridesmaid, she feels sick! She is to have a boring teacher for a brother-in-law, and she'll have to wear a frilly blue dress.... Katie's promise to be on her best behaviour at the wedding goes horribly wrong as she tumbles headlong into the wedding cake before the celebrations have even begun.

When Devon farmer's daughter Roxanne Hawkins attends a local summer concert, the 14-year-old is blindingly stage-struck. On the day of St Petroc's autumn fair, Roxanne runs away to seek fame and fortune in the bright lights of London. There she stumbles across suave and sophisticated music-hall fixer Harry Bright, who persuades her to adopt the stage-name Annie Breeze. The popular double act Bright and Breeze is born.

When Roberta, Peter and Phyllis's father is arrested for a crime he did not commit and they have to start a new life in the country, they fear the happy times are gone forever. Little do they expect the exciting adventures and the new friends that await them.

Gilbert Keith Chesterton was born in Campden Hill, Kensington, on May 29th, 1874. Originally, after attending St Paul's School, he went to Slade to learn the art of illustration. In 1896 he joined a small London publisher and began his journalistic career as a freelance art and literary critic before going on to writing weekly columns in the Daily News and the Illustrated London News. Chesterton's poems range from the virtues and vices of England and the English to his worldview and religious beliefs.

These three stories are amongst the finest by Katherine Mansfield, a woman highly regarded as one of the greatest writers of short stories. In these bittersweet tales, she gently reveals the emotions and feelings within the lives of apparently unexceptional people. Her stories offer a sensitive insight into human behaviour, achieved not by creating scenes of high drama, but by revealing the motives and thoughts of believable characters.

In this series we look at short stories from many of our most accomplished writers. Miniature masterpieces with a lot to say. This volume is dedicated to one such recognised master of the short story, namely Katherine Mansfield, whose innovative stream of consciousness and symbolic narrative style profoundly influenced Virginia Woolf. She was born on 14th October 1888 into a prominent family in Wellington, New Zealand, the middle child of five. A gifted cellist who at one point considered taking it up professionally, her first attempts at writing were published in school magazines.

Francis Edward Ledwidge was born on 19th August, 1887, in the small village of Janeville in Slane, County Meath, in Ireland to parents that believed strongly in education. At the age of 5 his father died and the entire family, already desperately poor, were forced into work and by 13 the young Ledwidge took whatever job was to hand—from farm hand to road labourer. Throughout this time he applied himself to his poetry writing whenever and wherever he could. His poems were published on a regular basis from the age of 14 in the Drogheda Independent, his local paper.

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.

London 1927: the city is buzzing with life. By day, Grace Rutherford is a copywriter at one of London's biggest advertising agencies but by night she is Diamond Sharp, author of a racy gossip column. When Grace meets two Americans who are sworn enemies, she is drawn into a web of secrets and lies which will change her life forever....

For the female poet there was always the confining hand of men to instruct that their time was perhaps spent more productively elsewhere. These lines, these gilded verses often protest otherwise. The contribution of women in these earlier centuries is immense, and in this series we bring together poets who have created some of the most beautiful and expressive verses ever written. And remember these words, these telling lines, have been written against the grain of society's male bias. With their remembered words these female poets have given us a history that we can all now share.

We all love animals, even if sometimes its only from afar on TV or at a zoo. But many of us have felt a closer friendship and companionship with our friends in the animal world. We talk and react to them as if they really do understand us. Perhaps they do. In this volume Hardy, Thackeray, Carroll, DH Lawrence, Emily Dickinson, and many others share their words with our ears.

When a large plane is hijacked, the Prime Minister looks at the list of passengers and suddenly becomes very, very frightened. There is a name on the list that the Prime Minister knows very well - too well. There is someone on that plane who will soon be dead - if the hijackers can find out who he is! And there isn’t much time. One man lies dead on the runway. In a few minutes the hijackers will use their guns again. And the Prime Minister knows who they are going to kill.

George Robert Gissing was born on November 22, 1857, in Wakefield, Yorkshire. He was educated at Back Lane School in Wakefield. Gissing loved school. He was enthusiastic with a thirst for learning and always diligent. By the age of 10 he was reading Dickens, a lifelong hero. In 1872, Gissing won a scholarship to Owens College. Whilst there, Gissing worked hard but remained solitary. Unfortunately, he had run short of funds and stole from his fellow students. He was arrested, prosecuted, found guilty, expelled and sentenced to a month's hard labour in 1876.

As a poetical movement, Georgian poetry is easy to classify. It began naturally enough in 1910, when George V ascended to the throne of England. Edward Marsh, a civil servant, polymath and arts patron, decided that the verse of that time needed to be seen in its own right and from 1912-1922 set out to publish anthologies. Marsh agreed a deal with the poet and bookseller Harold Munro, who had recently opened The Poetry Bookshop in London’s Devonshire Street to publish the books in return for a share of the profits. 

Creakie Hall is falling down but there is no money in the bank so Aunt Gardenia Bogey-Mandeville needs to come up with a money making scheme pretty quickly or she and her niece and nephew will be out on the streets. It seems unlikely that opening the Hall as a hotel will be very successful, especially when the first guests through the door are two stuffy, fussy hotel inspectors, but with the 'help' of a pair of ancient ghosts who float down from the attic, all is not lost.

The art of writing a short story can be barely noticed by a reader or listener - such is the quality with which they are usually written. It is a difficult trade, an unforgiving discipline, but for those who master it, the rewards are many. In this series of works by our greatest female writers, we bring you a selection of those we consider the best. In Volume 2 we bring you the classics 'The Yellow Wallpaper' by Charlotte Perkins Gilman and 'Roman Fever' by Edith Wharton.

The art of writing a short story can be barely noticed by a reader or listener - such is the quality with which they are usually written. It is a difficult trade, an unforgiving discipline, but for those who master it, the rewards are many. In this series of works by our greatest female writers, we bring you a selection of those we consider the best.