The promised cure for obesity turned out to be the catalyst that made the Black Death look like a quiet Sunday stroll. It infected hundreds, then thousands, then millions, until the world was all but consumed by the ravenous hordes it created. They found their way into every safe haven and fortress and massacred the few remaining survivors at will. Nowhere was safe. Nobody was immune. Nothing was sacred.And yet some resilient survivors remained. As a few clung on in small groups, s...

Speaking at a 1913 National Geographic Society gala, Hiram Bingham III, the American explorer celebrated for finding the “lost city” of the Andes two years earlier, suggested that Machu Picchu “is an awful name, but it is well worth remembering.” Millions of travelers have since followed Bingham’s advice. When Bingham first encountered Machu Picchu, the site was an obscure ruin. Now designated a UNESCO World Heritage Site, Machu Picchu is the focus of Peru’s tourism economy. Mark Rice’s hi...

Short stories and poetry: written by three Irish writers, two living in Wexford and one in Dublin who worked together virtually during the Covid 19 pandemic in 2020. All writing is fictional, some relating to the virus and its effects, others reflecting different topics inspired during the time. Writing the book provided the writers with an escape and they took comfort in the task.We hope it provides insights into a unique time and living during a global pandemic but mostly that it...

Murder in Maspalomas is a novel which starts in Dublin where Matt, an ordinary contract accountant finds himself contacted by the Sullivans, a notorious drug gang who are chasing a debt.The gang are led by Anto, a thirty something who came from a broken family, he broke it. His enforcer, Ciaran is his second in command and a right nasty piece of work who carries a piece wherever he goes. Rocky, in his early twenties wants to be Ciaran and wants to get tooled up. He carries some men...

Dean Worcester’s Fantasy Islands brings to life one of the most significant (but under examined) figures in the history of U.S. colonialism in the Philippines. Upon the outbreak of the Spanish-American War, Worcester, a scientist who had traveled twice to the Philippines on zoological expeditions, established himself as one of America’s leading experts on the Philippines. Over a fourteen-year career as a member of the U.S. colonial regime, Worcester devoted much of his time and en...

John Ferguson was born on the 18th August 1881 in Stirling in Scotland.He attended the High School there and little other information is available.It is known that he worked primarily in the banking industry.His literary canon is exceedingly small, this being the only volume of his poems ever published. What is known is that he suffered from ill-health and these poems were written whilst in a sanitorium.The book itself was very successful after its publicati...

Algernon Blackwood was born on 14th March 1869 in Shooter’s Hill, South East London, to a religious middle-class family. His mother was a widowed Duchess and his father was a Post Office administrator.Blackwood was interested in the paranormal and the supernatural at an early age, and had a thirst for anything on Buddhism, other Oriental philosophies, mysticism and occultism. In his writings the weaving of the supernatural into his various works, from ghost stories and children’s s...

Emma Magdolna Rozália Mária Jozefa Borbála Orczy de Orci, or more familiarly, Baroness Emmuska Orczy, was born on the 23rd September 1865, in Tarnaörs, Heves County, Hungary.The family lived in their ancestral home; a great, rambling farmhouse on the river Tarna. Orczy’s memories of the time were of sophisticated parties, sparkling conversation, joyful dancing and gypsy music. But fear of a peasant uprising meant moving to Budapest and then many years of semi-nomadic travels across...

It was hailed as the answer to the obesity epidemic; a pill that allows you to eat anything you like and still lose weight. Millions were attracted by the promise of a leaner, fitter body, but there was a fatal and unforeseen flaw in this new panacea. A tiny microbe, lurking within, slowly infects the users. In turn they pass the infection to others with a sneeze, a cough or a simple kiss, and before long tens of millions are infected and turned into mindless, shambling wrecks, with the so...

Montague Rhodes James is cited as perhaps the greatest English writer of ghost stories, an opinion few would disagree with.James was born on 1st August 1862 at Goodnestone Parsonage in Kent, where his father was Curate but at age 3 the family went to live at Livermere, near Bury St Edmunds in East Anglia.From early childhood he had a passion for mediaeval books and antiques. He was educated initially as a boarder at Temple Grove School in East Sheen, west London, before gai...

Joseph Conrad was born on 3rd December 1857 in Berdychiv in the Ukraine, then part of the Russian Empire. His birthplace had been part of Poland which its neighbours dismembered into their own Empires.Conrad’s early years were spent in constant movement, his father was politically active and frequently in trouble trying to help re-ignite a Polish state which meant arrests and exile and the young Conrad himself suffered from ill-health, spending a year at a retreat in Kyiv recoverin...

The bookshelves of British literature are incredible collections that have gathered together centuries of very talented authors. From these Isles their fame spread and whilst among their number many are now forgotten or neglected their talents endure. Among them is Frederick Greenwood.