Alternating between nineteenth-century England and present-day New York, this is the story of renowned British painter J. M. W. Turner and his circle of patrons and lovers. It is also the story of Henry Leiden, a middle-aged family man with a troubled marriage and a dead-end job, who finds his life transformed by his discovery of Turner’s The Center of the World, a mesmerizing and unsettling painting of Helen of Troy that was thought to have been lost forever.This painting...

Alternating between nineteenth-century England and present-day New York, this is the story of renowned British painter J. M. W. Turner and his circle of patrons and lovers. It is also the story of Henry Leiden, a middle-aged family man with a troubled marriage and a dead-end job, who finds his life transformed by his discovery of Turner's The Center of the World, a mesmerizing and unsettling painting of Helen of Troy that was thought to have been lost forever.This painting...

The Yellow Wallpaper is a story by the American writer Charlotte Perkins Gilman. It is regarded as an important early work of American feminist literature, illustrating attitudes in the 19th century toward women's physical and mental health. Presented in the first person, the story is a collection of journal entries written by a woman (Jane) whose physician husband (John) has confined her to the upstairs bedroom of a house he has rented for the summer. She is forbidden from working and has...

The third case in the compelling Boy Sherlock Holmes series is full of as many twists and turns as the backstreets of Victorian London.When a wealthy young girl vanishes as if by magic in Hyde Park, Sherlock is once again driven to prove himself. In a heart-stopping race against time, an innocent boy’s survival depends on Sherlock’s ability to solve the mysterious puzzle of the Vanishing Girl. As complex as the maze that protects the missing girl’s hiding place, this case takes She...

In this 7,400 word story, Holmes and Watson investigate the disappearance of a jewel from the library of the Mayor of Portsmouth.A 'locked room' mystery.

This Gaslamp Fantasy anthology features all-new stories set in a magical Victorian Era, with entries from Jeffrey Ford, Tanith Lee, and others.Renowned anthologist Ellen Datlow draws together some of today's most exciting historical fantasy authors for a bewitching journey into Victorian England. Queen Victoria's Book of Spells presents eighteen original stories ranging from steampunk adventures to Jane Austen-inspired works that some critics call Fantasy ...

The short story is often viewed as an inferior relation to the Novel. But it is an art in itself. To take a story and distil its essence into fewer pages while keeping character and plot rounded and driven is not an easy task. Many try and many fail. In this series we look at short stories from many of our most accomplished writers. Miniature masterpieces with a lot to say. In this volume we examine some of the short stories of Virginia Woolf. Adeline Virginia Woolf was born in 1882 and...

A short story by Elif Shafak from the collection Reader, I Married Him: Stories inspired by Jane Eyre.In ‘A Migrating Bird’, a young Turkish woman is drawn to a Dutch student on foreign exchange at her university.Edited by Tracy Chevalier, the full collection, Reader, I Married Him, brings together some of the finest and most creative voices in fiction today, to celebrate and salute the strength and lasting relevance of Charlotte Brontë’s game-changing novel and its beloved...

It's 1922 and Fleur Forsyte is now married to Michael Mont. Fleur throws herself into the roaring 20s with the rest of London, taking life as it comes. But the marriage is haunted by the ghost of a past love affair, and however vibrant Fleur appears, those closest to her sense her unhappiness.Michael, devoted to Fleur but not blind to her faults, is determined to stand by her through anything. He also finds himself caught up in the tragic and poignant story of a young couple strugg...

J.M.W. Turner was a painter whose treatment of light put him squarely in the pantheon of the world’s preeminent artists, but his character was a tangle of fascinating contradictions. While he could be coarse and rude, manipulative, ill-mannered, and inarticulate, he was also generous, questioning, and humane, and he displayed through his work a hitherto unrecognized optimism about the course of human progress. With two illegitimate daughters and several mistresses whom Turner made a career...

An English translation of Genet's classic symbolic drama, first performed in Paris in 1959.France's master of the absurd explores racial prejudice and stereotypes using the framework of a play within a play. The New York Times hailed The Blacks as "one of the most original and stimulating evenings Broadway or Off Broadway has to offer," while Newsweek raved that Genet's plays "constitute a body of work unmatched for poetic and theatrical ...

'Rosemary is an outstanding creation'Sunday Telegraph'Bragg writes with a timelessness'Financial TimesHalf-French and with an agile, inquiring mind, Rosemary Lewis cannot help being out of the ordinary in Thurston, the Cumbrian market town where she grows up between the wars. An early, bruising failure in love drives her inwards to the solace of books until she meets Edgar - vigorous, down to earth and determ...