The Detective has been a mainstay of fiction writing ever since we can remember.Their deductive powers, their intuition and fleet-footed grasp of every detail can often turn the unlikeliest situation, or bunch of red herrings, into a breakthrough to capture even the most ingenious and dastardly of criminals.In this series our classic authors explore not only various themes, such as Occult Detectives, Female Detectives, Curious Crimes and a whole host more, but also bring a ...

Edgar Poe was born in Boston Massachusetts on 19th January 1809. His father abandoned his family the following year and within a year his mother had died leaving him an orphan.He was taken in by the Allan family but never formally adopted although he now referred to himself as Edgar Allan Poe. His father alternatively spoiled or chastised him and tension was frequent over gambling debts and monies for his education. His university years to study ancient and modern languages was cut...

In an effort not to be judged by others we sometimes become our own harshest critic and judge. We want to hold ourselves up to others in a good and inspirational, successful light and as a shining example. Naturally our very talented authors have narratives which put a different gloss on that argument.

Edgar Poe was born in Boston Massachusetts on 19th January 1809. His father abandoned his family the following year and within a year his mother had died leaving him an orphan.He was taken in by the Allan family but never formally adopted although he now referred to himself as Edgar Allan Poe. His father alternatively spoiled or chastised him and tension was frequent over gambling debts and monies for his education. His university years to study ancient and modern languages was cut...

Edgar Poe was born in Boston Massachusetts on 19th January 1809. His father abandoned his family the following year and within a year his mother had died leaving him an orphan.He was taken in by the Allan family but never formally adopted although he now referred to himself as Edgar Allan Poe. His father alternatively spoiled or chastised him and tension was frequent over gambling debts and monies for his education. His university years to study ancient and modern languages was cut...

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 mod

Francis Scott Key Fitzgerald was born on 24th September 1896 in Saint Paul, Minnesota into an upper-middle class family. Whilst his mother was pregnant with him, his two young sisters tragically died. Fitzgerald once said this was when his destiny as a writer was ordained.His intelligence and talent was recognised from an early age, with his first story, about a detective being published in the school magazine when he was just 13.In 1913 he enrolled at Princeton but his dev...

Howard Phillips Lovecraft is among the greatest American masters of fantasy and the supernatural.Born in 1890, a native of Providence, Rhode Island, his health was uncertain from childhood and he led a sheltered early life. His semi-invalidism enabled him to read omnivorously, and as a shy imaginative child he began to invent what would in his adult life become a whole macabre fantastic world of his own, peopled by creatures out of his own weird imagination.As an adult he w...

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...

We all know ‘time’ as that singular thing that journeys us from the present to the future. In this volume its really not like that at all. These stories jump backwards and slip forwards and sometimes set themselves on repeat just because that is the intention of our talented authors. They love to play with their imaginations and take us along for the ride.

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 literature the ambition is much narrower. In order to be known, to be popular, you had to be published. And for that people had to know you existed and your ideas worth reading. Obviously for most of humanity’s time people couldn’t read and texts couldn’t be publishe...

Robert William Chambers was born on 26th May 1865 in Brooklyn.Chambers was educated at the Brooklyn Polytechnic Institute, and then the Art Students' League. From there he studied in Paris at the École des Beaux-Arts, and at Académie Julian, from 1886 to 1893. His illustrative work was good and displayed at the Salon from as early as 1889.On returning to New York, he sold illustrations to Life, Truth, and Vogue magazines. His career then took a dramatic turn for reasons tha...