Showing results by narrator "Mark Rice-Oxley" in All Categories

The year is 1187 and European crusaders still control Jerusalem. The Sultan Saladin has unleashed war on the Crusader Kingdoms and the Christian armies have suffered a catastrophic defeat at the Battle of the Horns of Hattin. In the aftermath of the sultan's victory, Sir Byron Fitzwalter finds himself wounded and alone. Desperate to survive, Fitzwalter flees to the Sea of Galilee where destiny intervenes.

Throughout the long centuries of human history is the want, and the need, to share information, to exchange ideas and for that knowledge and experience, for curiosity and learning, to be the basis of a civil society. In this volume we offer up a small selection of talents from the literary landscape of the Russian male author whose time has now come again.

Short stories have always been a sort of instant access into an author’s brain, their soul and heart. They 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 the vast Empire of the Russians literature was a way to exchange ideas, values and cultures. Yet each author, each story, each character is an individual example of a journey that, story by story, has transformed the glimmering arc of its literature.

Fyodor Mikhailovich Dostoyevsky was born in Moscow on 11th November, 1821 to distinguished multi-ethnic parents from a Lithuanian background. His childhood years were at the family home in hospital grounds which also contained an orphanage, an insane asylum and a cemetery for criminals. The young Fyodor often disobeyed his father by talking to the ill in the hospital gardens. In 1846 he published his first novel ‘Poor Cow’ to great literary acclaim. As he began his next work he was arrested and incarcerated for treason and participation in the political and literary Petrashevsky Circle.

The Russian novel has a reputation that is immense, both in narrative and in length. Unquestionably though the ideas, themes and characters make many novels rightly revered as world class, as icons of literature. Whilst Tolstoy, Gogol, Dostoevsky, Pushkin and Chekhov are a given in any Russian collection we also explore and include Andreyev, Korolenko, Turgenev, Blavatsky and many others to create a world rich and dense across a sprawling landscape of diverse people, riddled with the class and unfairness in perhaps some of the most turbulent times that Russia has ever experienced.

Short stories have always been a sort of instant access into an author’s brain, their soul and heart. They can lift our lives into locations, people and experiences with a sweep of landscape, narration, feelings and emotions that is difficult to achieve elsewhere. The zenith of Empire is bookended by two catastrophic wars that slaughter vast swathes of humanity. And yet authors manage to record and create fragile libraries of humanity, its talents, its dreams and increasingly its nightmares.

There is something about the number 3. The Ancient Greeks believed 3 was the perfect number, and in China 3 has always been a lucky number, and they know a thing or two. Whatever history and culture says WE think 3, a hat-trick of stories, is a great number to explore themes and literary avenues that classic authors were so adept at creating.

Sometimes we want to be a little scared when we hear a story. Our nerves to tingle, the hair on our necks to gradually stand up. We can suspend our own reality for a while as authors lay out their wares of anxiety, worry, tension, and then increase the levels one by one until we are gripped by forces that make us afraid. It’s a real feeling. In this volume story after story assault our senses with mere words, with thoughts and descriptions that twist and deceive, with outcomes that we dread and shudder at the thought of.

There is something about the number 3. The Ancient Greeks believed 3 was the perfect number, and in China 3 has always been a lucky number, and they know a thing or two. Whatever history and culture says WE think 3, a hat-trick of stories, is a great number to explore themes and literary avenues that classic authors were so adept at creating.

There is something about the number 3. The Ancient Greeks believed 3 was the perfect number, and in China 3 has always been a lucky number, and they know a thing or two. Whatever history and culture says WE think 3, a hat-trick of stories, is a great number to explore themes and literary avenues that classic authors were so adept at creating.

There is something about the number 3. The Ancient Greeks believed 3 was the perfect number, and in China 3 has always been a lucky number, and they know a thing or two. Whatever history and culture says WE think 3, a hat-trick of stories, is a great number to explore themes and literary avenues that classic authors were so adept at creating.

There is something about the number 3. The Ancient Greeks believed 3 was the perfect number, and in China 3 has always been a lucky number, and they know a thing or two. Whatever history and culture says WE think 3, a hat-trick of stories, is a great number to explore themes and literary avenues that classic authors were so adept at creating.

Simon Newcomb was born in 1835. He was a Canadian-American astronomer, applied mathematician and autodidactic polymath. He was fluent in several languages, and also published several popular science books, a science fiction novel and short stories.

Amyas Stafford Northcote was born in 1864 to an aristocratic family. His literary career was mainly centered on one book ‘In Ghostly Company’ which, at the time, were favourably compared to those of M R James. He died in 1923.

Herbert Currington Ridout was born in 1881. His literary life included being a journalist, editor, and short story writer although he also had various jobs in the music business and was later a radio broadcaster on the BBC. He died in 1948.

Frederick George Loring was born in 1869. He was an English naval officer and writer, and an early expert in wireless telegraphy. As a writer his talents extended to both poetry and the short story; ‘The Tomb of Sarah’ being a classic of the genre. He died in 1951.

Alice Askew (born in 1874) along with her husband, Claude (born in 1865) wrote over 90 novels and short stories in various magazines between 1904 and 1918. Alice and Claude both died on 6th October, 1917.

This story was printed with some fanfare in Pearson’s Magazine and lauded for its originality. Despite its success the author is as mysterious now as he was then. Did he write other stories? No one knows.

Edmund Gill Swain, born in 1861, was an English cleric and author. As a chaplain of King's College, Cambridge, he was a colleague of the scholar and author M R James. Swain is best known for his 1912 short story collection ‘The Stoneground Ghost Tales’. He died in 1938.

Richard Henry Malden was born in 1879. During his career he was a prominent Anglican churchman, editor, classical and Biblical scholar, as well as a writer of ghost stories. He died in 1951.