Books published by publisher Miniature Masterpieces

This comes to you courtesy of Miniature Masterpieces who have an excellent range of quality short stories from the masters of the craft. Do search for Miniature Masterpieces at any digital store for further information.This audiobook is also duplicated in print as an ebook. Same title, same words. Perhaps a different experience but with Amazon’s whispersync you can pick up and put down on any device. Start on audio, continue in print and any which way after that. This, and these are, Miniature Masterpieces. Join us for the journey.M.R. JAMES – AN INTRODUCTIONMontague Rhodes James was born on 1st August 1862 and, as M.R. James, is best known to the general public as a writer of remarkable ghost stories. He was also a medievalist scholar and provost of King's College, Cambridge and later of Eton College.James dismantled and did away with many of the existing concepts of ghost stories. Instead his stories were placed in a more realistic and contemporary setting. His protagonists were usually quite reserved or shy and led the reader into the horrible but exquisite agony of telling themselves – as they were drawn relentlessly in – that, there but for the grace of God…….Well, we’re about to find out……

'Puck of Pook's Hill' is a fantasy book by Rudyard Kipling, published in 1906, containing a series of short stories set in different periods of English history. It can count both as historical fantasy – since some of the stories told of the past have clear magical elements, and as contemporary fantasy – since it depicts a magical being active and practising his magic in the England of the early 1900s when the book was written.The stories are all narrated to two children living near Burwash, in the area of Kipling's own house Bateman's, by people magically plucked out of history by the elf Puck, or told by Puck himself. (Puck, who refers to himself as "the oldest Old Thing in England", is better known as a character in William Shakespeare's play A Midsummer Night's Dream.) The genres of particular stories range from authentic historical novella (A Centurion of the Thirtieth, On the Great Wall) to children's fantasy (Dymchurch Flit). Each story is bracketed by a poem which relates in some manner to the theme or subject of the story.

"He is one of those people who would be enormously improved by death." 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 Saki. Hector Hugh Munro was born in Akyab Burma on the 18th December 1870. With the death of his mother, Hector was sent to England to live with his Grandmother and Aunts and endured a strict family upbringing. Educated at Pencarwick School in Exmouth, Devon and at Bedford School it was only on a few occasions that he was able to travel with his father to fashionable European spas and tourist resorts. In 1893, Hector followed his father into the Indian Imperial Police, where he was posted to Burma. Two years later, having contracted malaria, he resigned and returned to England. In England he started his career as a journalist, writing for the newspapers; the Westminster Gazette, Daily Express, Bystander, Morning Post, and Outlook. In 1900, Munro's first book, an historical study, appeared: The Rise of the Russian Empire. From 1902 to 1908, Munro worked as a foreign correspondent for The Morning Post in the Balkans, Warsaw, Russia and Paris; he then gave that up and settled in London. His postings gave him a large amount of inspiration for his ‘Reginald’ stories as well as his perhaps more famous stories of the macabre and unusual. His wit, general mischievousness and delight in turning things on their head brought him great acclaim. In November 1916, when sheltering in a shell crater near Beaumont-Hamel, France, he was killed by a German sniper. His alleged last words "Put that bloody cigarette out!". He was 45. Many of these stories are also available as an audiobook from our sister company Word Of Mouth. Many samples are at our youtube channel http://www.youtube.com/user/PortablePoetry?feature=mhee. An Audiobook version is available at Amazon, Audible, Itunes and all other major digital retailers.

Pearl Zane Grey was born January 31st, 1872, in Zanesville, Ohio. From an early age, he was intrigued by history, fishing, baseball, and writing, all of which would stimulate his later success. Grey was an avid reader of adventure stories, consuming dime store novels by the dozen. By age fifteen he had written his first story; Jim of the Cave. His father, a difficult man, tore it to shreds and then beat him. He and his brother were keen fisherman and baseball players with aspirations of playing in the major leagues. Eventually, Grey was spotted by a baseball scout and received offers from colleges. Grey took up an offer from the University of Pennsylvania to studied dentistry. Naturally arriving on a scholarship really meant you had to be able to play. He rose to the occasion by playing against the Riverton club, pitching five scoreless innings and a double in the tenth which tied down the win. Sports scholarship kids can be average scholars. Grey certainly was. He preferred to spend his time outside class not trying to raise his grades but playing baseball, swimming, and writing. At university he was shy and teetotal, more of a loner than a party animal. Grey struggled with the idea of becoming a writer or baseball player for his career, but unhappily resolved that dentistry was the practical choice. Grey set up his dental practice in New York as Dr. Zane Grey after graduating in 1896. Though a dentist his real ambition now was to be a writer and New York had lots of publishers. Evenings were set aside for writing to offset the tedium of his dental practice. His first magazine article, "A Day on the Delaware," a human-interest story about a Grey brothers’ fishing expedition, was published in the May 1902 issue of Recreation magazine. After some rejections he wrote his first Western, The Heritage of the Desert in 1910. It was the breakthrough. It quickly became a bestseller. Here was Grey’s over arching themes; Manifest Destiny, the conquest of the Old West, and men wrestling with elemental conditions. Two years later Grey produced his best-known book, Riders of the Purple Sage (1912), his all-time best-seller. With its publication Zane Grey became a household name. Grey started his association with Hollywood when William Fox bought the rights to Riders of the Purple Sage for $2,500 in 1916. His writing career would now rise in sync with that of the movie industry. During the crash and subsequent depression of the 1930s, the publishing industry was hard work. Sales fell off. Serializations were harder to sell. Grey was lucky. He had avoided investing in the Stock Market, he was still writing and very popular and continued to earn royalty income. This also coincided with the time that nearly half of the film adaptations of his novels were made. Zane Grey died of heart failure on October 23rd, 1939, at his home in Altadena, California. He was interred at the Lackawaxen and Union Cemetery, Lackawaxen, Pennsylvania.

This comes to you courtesy of Miniature Masterpieces who have an excellent range of quality short stories from the masters of the craft. Do search for Miniature Masterpieces at any digital store for further information.This audiobook is also duplicated in print as an ebook. Same title, same words. Perhaps a different experience but with Amazon’s whispersync you can pick up and put down on any device. Start on audio, continue in print and any which way after that. This, and these are, Miniature Masterpieces. Join us for the journey.Thomas Hardy – An IntroductionMany giants of Literature originate from the shores of these emerald isles; Shakespeare, Dickens, Chaucer, The Bronte’s and Austen to which most people would willingly add the name Thomas Hardy.Far From The Madding Crowd, Tess Of The D’Urbervilles, The Mayor Of Casterbridge are but three of his literary masterpieces. But let us add to this his short stories. They are often overlooked as being the poor, under-developed relative of a greater work. But from writers of the calibre of Hardy this is just not so. He picks stories and creates characters that drive, meld and create pages that in their numerically shorter length are in fact the perfect length.

If ever a writer needed an introduction Arthur Conan Doyle would not be considered that man. After all, Sherlock Holmes is perhaps the foremost literary detective of any age. Add to this canon his stories of science fiction and his poems, his historical novels, his plays, his political campaigning, his efforts in establishing a Court of Appeal and there is little room for anything else. Except he was also an exceptional writer of short stories of the horrific and macabre. Something very different from what you might expect. Born in Arthur Conan Doyle was born on 22 May 1859 at 11 Picardy Place, Edinburgh, Scotland. From 1876 - 1881 he studied medicine at the University of Edinburgh following which he was employed as a doctor on the Greenland whaler Hope of Peterhead in 1880 and, after his graduation, as a ship's surgeon on the SS Mayumba during a voyage to the West African coast in 1881. Arriving in Portsmouth in June of that year with less than £10 (£700 today) to his name, he set up a medical practice at 1 Bush Villas in Elm Grove, Southsea. The practice was initially not very successful. While waiting for patients, Conan Doyle again began writing stories and composed his first novel The Mystery of Cloomber. Although he continued to study and practice medicine his career was now firmly set as a writer. And thereafter great works continued to pour out of him.

Rudyard Kipling was one of the most popular writers of prose and poetry in the late 19th and 20th Century and awarded the Noble Prize for Literature in 1907.Born in Bombay on 30th December 1865, as was the custom in those days, he and his sister were sent back to England when he was 5. The ill-treatment and cruelty by the couple who they boarded with in Portsmouth, Kipling himself suggested, contributed to the onset of his literary life. This was further enhanced by his return to India at age 16 to work on a local paper, as not only did this result in him writing constantly but also made him explore issues of identity and national allegiance which pervade much of his work.Whilst he is best remembered for his classic children’s stories and his popular poem ‘If..’ he is also regarded as a major innovator in the art of the short story.This comes to you courtesy of Miniature Masterpieces who have an excellent range of quality short stories from the masters of the craft. Do search for Miniature Masterpieces at any digital store for further information.This audiobook is also duplicated in print as an ebook. Same title, same words. Perhaps a different experience but with Amazon’s whispersync you can pick up and put down on any device. Start on audio, continue in print and any which way after that. This, and these are, Miniature Masterpieces. Join us for the journey.

Ozma of Oz: A Record of Her Adventures with Dorothy Gale of Kansas, the Yellow Hen, the Scarecrow, the Tin Woodman, Tik-Tok, the Cowardly Lion and the Hungry Tiger; Besides Other Good People too Numerous to Mention Faithfully Recorded Herein published on July 30, 1907, was the third book of L. Frank Baum's Oz series. It is the first Oz book where the majority of the action takes place outside of the Land of Oz. Only the final two chapters take place in Oz itself. The story centers on Dorothy’s desire to return home though not as desperate as in the first book it is her uncle's need for her rather than hers for him that makes her return.

Mary Eleanor Wilkins Freeman was born on October 31, 1852 in Randolph, Massachusetts. Her parents were orthodox Congregationalists and this resulted in a strict religious upbringing much of which seeped into her later writing. Mary was quickly successful writing stories and verse for children as a teenager. As a secretary to the author and physician, Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr., she began writing poetry and novels with a strong New England regional flavor. In her twenties she developed an interest in the supernatural and the result was a collection of short stories which combined domestic realism with supernaturalism and these have proved very influential. Her best known work was written in the 1880s and 1890s while she lived in Randolph. She is best known for two collections of stories, A Humble Romance and Other Stories (1887) and A New England Nun and Other Stories (1891). Her stories deal mostly with New England life and are among the best of their kind. Freeman is also remembered for her novel Pembroke (1894). In 1902 she married Dr. Charles M. Freeman of Metuchen, New Jersey. She wrote a great deal and published constantly to 1918 and the tide of work seemed to slow. By April 1926, Mary became the first recipient of the William Dean Howells Medal for Distinction in Fiction from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. She died in Metuchen on March 13th, 1930 and was interred in Hillside Cemetery in Scotch Plains, New Jersey.

Glinda of Oz: In Which Are Related the Exciting Experiences of Princess Ozma of Oz, and Dorothy, in Their Hazardous Journey to the Home of the Flatheads, and to the Magic Isle of the Skeezers, and How They Were Rescued from Dire Peril by the Sorcery of Glinda the Good is the fourteenth Land of Oz book written by children's author L. Frank Baum, published on July 10, 1920. It is the last book of the original Oz series. Like most of the Oz books, the plot features a journey through some of the remoter regions of Oz; though in this case the pattern is doubled: Dorothy and Ozma travel to stop a war between the Flatheads and Skeezers; then Glinda and a cohort of Dorothy's friends set out to rescue them.