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A sparkling selection of one-off comedy shows from Radio 4's Sunday night Stand Up Specials season: Since 2018, BBC Radio 4 has been making the nation laugh with its Stand Up Specials strand, featuring fantastic half-hour sets from a host of celebrated comedians. This wide-ranging collection brings together eleven of the very best acts, from established stars to new and emerging talent, as they 'zoom through angst from all angles' (The Guardian).

Adeena Stuart and Katharine Carnegie were born nearly three centuries apart. Yet, their music and an ancient cello connect them to each other and to a man doomed to die in 1746 after the Battle of Culloden. In book one of the Song for a Lost Kingdom series, Adeena receives an untitled musical score from her dying grandmother in Scotland.

James Thomson was born in Port Glasgow, Scotland, on the 23rd November 1834. Possessing a powerful and unique writing gift, unfortunately, his own demons curtailed him from leaving a larger literary legacy. Stories, essays and poems were submitted to various publications during his life and undoubtedly the creative high point of his life is ‘The City of Dreadful Night’. Within its bleak verse are the struggles of Thomson’s own chaotic tortures with depression, insomnia and alcoholism in the uncaring world that surrounded him.

Anton Chekhov is amongst the most vaunted of authors. His tales can take a small fragment of a person’s life and turn it into a narrative of unrivalled and compelling power. This volume perfectly illustrates Chekhov and his miniature masterpieces.

Christmas may come but once a year but evil, intrigue and malevolence are everyday events. Within this volume Christmas is a time when these dark forces form and coalesce to take life and liberty from people who may and who may not deserve the spin of its wheel. Some are merely evil, others have the beginnings of a conscience that displays itself in a dialogue with the devil, or perhaps only themselves. But, in this volume Christmas takes a ringside seat to the horrors of the human heart.

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. Whatever history and culture says WE think 3, a hat-trick of stories, is a great number to explore themes and literary avenues that classic authors were so adept at creating.

In the final instalment of the Song for a Lost Kingdom trilogy, Adeena Stuart and Katharine Carnegie search for the music that neither can complete on their own. Finding themselves living three centuries apart and each assuming the identity of the other, Adeena and Katharine must overcome their own unique challenges, all the while hiding the truth of who they really are from those around them.

And Adeena Stuart is not bound by anything that will stop her from saving the man she’s fallen in love with, even though he’s been dead for almost 300 years. In book two of the Song for a Lost Kingdom trilogy, her music provides the portal to James Drummond who is fighting alongside Prince Charles Edward Stuart in the 1746 Jacobite uprising. Though their cause is doomed, and James is destined to die shortly after the Battle of Culloden, Adeena’s determination never wavers.

Adeena Stuart and Katharine Carnegie were born nearly three centuries apart. Yet their music and an ancient cello connect them to each other and to a man doomed to die in 1746 after the Battle of Culloden. Katharine passion is her music, but she is lost for words to complete it in 1745 Scotland. Adeena is a rebellious teenage musician in 2003.

William Shakespeare, long hailed as history's greatest dramatic writer, has been lauded for his mastery of poetic expression, his insight into the human condition, and his deep exploration into the psyche and motivations of his characters.

Franz Kafka was born on 3rd July 1883 in Prague, then in Bohemia, the eldest of 6, into a middle-class Jewish family. Life for the young Kafka and his passion for literature was often made an ordeal by his over-bearing and domineering entrepreneur of a father. His literary works are few in number but towering in influence. His masterpieces include ‘The Trial’, ‘The Metamorphosis’ as well as a number of short stories which reveal facets of humankind that truthfully could only be born from Kafka’s brain and pen.

He’s entered the ultimate VRMMO. But will a glitch prevent him from leaving with his sanity? Unable to see color, smell, or taste, Dave longs for a more vibrant life. So when he learns of a Japanese company seeking beta testers in a unique full-immersion game, he jumps at the chance to escape his bland monochromatic world. But when a code-error causes him to skip the tutorial, he’s thrown into play with no skills - racing to restore his health points.

Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol was born on 1st April 1809 to a father, descended from Ukrainian Cossacks and a mother with a military background in the Ukrainian town of Sorochyntsi, then part of the Russian Empire and rich in Cossack traditions and folklore. Gogol had a profound and enduring impact on literature which can be evidenced from his masterpiece, "The Cloak", more popularly although wrongly translated as "The Overcoat" published in 1841. A hundred years later Vladamir Nabokov called it ‘The greatest Russian short story ever written'.