Mary is a gas-station attendant with an epileptic son who can barely make ends meet, when she makes them meet at all. She has dreams of a forbidden love but can’t focus on those dreams when she can’t even buy her son’s medicine. She has a real knack for staying calm under pressure, and steadfastly does what she needs to in order to keep food on their table and a roof over their heads. One day she has an encounter with a woman who claims she can change Mary’s life in an instant.Afte...

A wise man once said ‘The safest place for a child is in the arms of his mother’s voice’. This is a perfect place to start our anthology of female short stories.Some of our earliest memories are of our mothers telling us bedtime stories. This is not to demote the value of fathers but more to promote the often-overshadowed talents of the gentler sex.Perhaps ‘gentler’ is a word that we should re-evaluate. In the course of literary history it is men who dominated by opportunit...

The language of Poetry is an art that most of us attempt at some point in our lives. Although its commonplace exposure has been somewhat marginalised in today’s often fast-paced lives we all recognise good verse that can empathise with our thoughts or open us up to experience new things in new ways, to better understand and to enjoy the many strands of our lives.But finding a starting point can be overwhelming, even off-putting, so in this series we offer up our Top 10 classic poet...

Alfred Francis Kreymborg was born on the 10th December 1883, in New York City's East Side.Despite attending New York public schools, he was largely self-educated teaching himself both the piano and mandolin. He was also an excellent chess player.As a poet he was an early American proponent of both free verse and prose poetry. His individual style was evident in his published volumes and he was critically acclaimed. Kreymborg was also very influential in the publishing world...

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.Most religions also have 3 this and 3 that and, of course, in these more modern times, three’s a crowd may be too many, except when it’s a ménage à trois. It seems good things usually come in threes.Whatever history and culture says WE think 3, a hat-trick of stories, is a great number to explore them...

The concept of right and wrong, of good and bad, is taught to us from childhood. It’s a guiding principle as we journey through the decades of life. Easy to keep to? Sometimes it’s easier not to.Authors of the talent of Franz Kafka, F Scott Fitzgerald, Robert Louis Stevenson and many others create characters and circumstances that test their capacity for morality to the limit.1 - Stories Exploring Morality - An Introduction2 - The Dead - Part 1 by James Joyce

The bookshelves of American literature are incredible collections that have gathered together centuries of very talented authors. From this continent their fame spread and whilst among their number many are now forgotten or neglected their talents endure. Among them is Mary Raymond Shipman Andrews.

The language of Poetry is an art that most of us attempt at some point in our lives. Although its commonplace exposure has been somewhat marginalised in today’s often fast-paced lives we all recognise good verse that can empathise with our thoughts or open us up to experience new things in new ways, to better understand and to enjoy the many strands of our lives.But finding a starting point can be overwhelming, even off-putting, so in this series we offer up our Top 10 classic poet...

Poetry. A form of words that seems so elegantly simple in one verse and so cleverly complex in another. Each poet has a particular style, an individual and unique way with words and yet each of us seems to recognise the path and destination of where the verses lead, even if sometimes the full comprehension may be a little beyond us.Through the centuries every culture has produced verse to symbolize and to describe everything from everyday life, natural wonders, the human condition ...

Sherwood Anderson was born on 13th September 1876 in Camden, Ohio.When his father’s business failed the family was forced to move on a regular basis before finally settling in Clyde, Ohio.Anderson, one of 7 children, left school at 14 to take a number of jobs to help with the family finances. These were difficult years.He moved to Chicago in search of opportunities before joining the Army for the US-Spanish War of 1898. He then entered Wittenberg Academy in Springfi...

William Edward Burghardt Du Bois was born on the 23rd February 1868, in Great Barrington, Massachusetts.He was the first African American to earn a Ph.D. from Harvard University in 1895. As a sociologist his writing, including the classic 1903 work ‘The Souls of Black Folk’, introduced the concept of "double consciousness"—the sense of 'twoness' felt by Black Americans—and his famous statement, "The problem of the twentieth century is the problem of the color line."Du Bois ...

Sherwood Anderson was born on 13th September 1876 in Camden, Ohio.When his father’s business failed the family was forced to move on a regular basis before finally settling in Clyde, Ohio.Anderson, one of 7 children, left school at 14 to take a number of jobs to help with the family finances. These were difficult years.He moved to Chicago in search of opportunities before joining the Army for the US-Spanish War of 1898. He then entered Wittenberg Academy in Springfi...