Simon Prebble
Following the death of a friend, the poet and pets' mortician Dennis Barlow finds himself entering the artificial Hollywood paradise of the Whispering Glades Memorial Park. Within its golden gates, death, American-style,...
Evelyn Waugh's short fiction reveals in miniaturized perfection the elements that made him the greatest satirist of the twentieth century. The stories collected here range from delightfully barbed portraits of the British...
4) Hard times
“Facts alone are wanted in life.” The children at Mr. Gradgrind’s school are sternly ordered to stifle their imaginations and pay attention only to cold, hard reality. The effects of Gradgrind’s teaching on his own children, Tom and Louisa, are particularly profound and leave them ill-equipped to deal with the unpredictable desires of the human heart. Luckily for them, they have a friend in Sissy Jupe, the child of a circus
...10) Proof of guilt
15) Titanic
The Island of Dr. Moreau is an 1896 science fiction novel by H.G. Wells. It is the tale of Prendick, a British scientist, who is shipwrecked off Sumatra, then rescued and brought to an unnamed island. There he meets the evil scientist prototype, Dr. Moreau: a white-haired Old Testament type who, with the aid of a man named Montgomery, is changing animals into crazy man-beasts. Hyena-swine, Dog Man, Wolf woman - Prendick is horrified by the cruel
...17) The confession
In the midst of the Napoleonic Wars in 1806, most people believe magic to have long since disappeared from England - until the reclusive Mr. Norrell reveals his powers and becomes an overnight celebrity.
Another practicing magician then emerges: the...