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A poor boy discovers the value of honesty and industry. More than that, he discovers the value of his relationship with God. (Introduction by Robert Harder)

LibriVox volunteers bring you 12 recordings of The Demon of the Gibbet by Fitz-James O'Brien. This was the Fortnightly Poetry project for February 10, 2013.<br><br>Fitz James O'Brien was an Irish-born American writer, some of whose work is often considered a forerunner of today's science fiction. After emigrating to the United States in 1852 he contributed numerous articles in prose and verse to Harpers Magazine, Vanity Fair and Atlantic Monthly. He died IN April 1862 from severe wounds suffered in the American Civil War. (Summary from Wikipedia)

3Outwitting The Hun; My Escape From A German Prison Camp

By Pat O'Brien

A true war narrative, published in 1918 while WWI was still going on. (Summary by David Wales)

4Handbook of Home Rule: Being Articles on the Irish Question

By James Bryce, William Ewart Gladstone, Edwin Lawrence Godkin, Malcolm MacColl, John Morley, Richard Barry O'Brien and Henry Thring

The issue of Irish home rule was the dominant political question of British and Irish politics in the late 1800s to early 1900s. Published in 1887, this work contains articles in favour of the measure. (Irish home rule was finally approved in 1914 but implementation was suspended until after WWI.)<br> "The object of the writers has been to treat the difficult questions connected with the Government of Ireland in a dispassionate spirit; and the volume is offered to the public in the hope that it may, at a time of warm controversy over passing events, help to lead thoughtful men back to the consideration of the principles which underlie those questions, and which it seeks to elucidate by calm discussion and by references to history." (Summary by TriciaG & from Editor's Note)

5Great Ghost Stories

By Edward Bulwer-Lytton, Amelia Ann Blanford Edwards, Joseph Lewis French, Théophile Gautier, Thomas Hardy, E. T. A. Hoffmann, M. R. James, Frederick Marryat, Fitz-James O'Brien, Margaret O. Oliphant, Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch and William Sharp

A great collection of 12 classic stories about ghosts and the supernatural. Included are stories by Thomas Hardy, Fitz-James O'Brien, and Margaret Oliphant. Recommended for fans of classic ghost stories of yesteryear. - Summary by Phyllis Vincelli

Irish-born author Fitz-James O'Brien is a underrated genius of weird fiction, serving as the missing link between Edgar Allan Poe and later purveyors of the form like Algernon Blackwood, Ambrose Bierce and Arthur Machen. This collection contains several of O'Brien's most well-known weird tales including "The Diamond Lens" (a seance, a murder and a world beneath a microscope!) and "What Was It?" (an invisible murderous creature that predates Wells' The Invisible Man and Ambrose Bierce's "The Damned Thing"), both stories taking a scientific approach to the fantastical and supernatural. Also included are stories like the bizarre killer puppets of "The Wondersmith", the spacial legerdemain of "The Lost Room", a mystery from beyond the grave with "A Pot of Tulips", an exotic and fantastical tale of the Orient with "The Dragon Fang" and several others that illustrate the sheer talent and imagination of a near forgotten master of the weird. (Summary by Ben Tucker)

7Liberation: Marines in the Recapture of Guam

By Cyril J. O'Brien

Guam became a territorial possession of the United States with the signing of the Treaty of Paris in 1899, ending the Spanish-American War. Earlier, on 21 June 1898, First Lieutenant John Twiggs “Handsome Jack” Myers had led a party of Marines ashore from the protected cruiser Charleston to accept the surrender of the Spanish authorities. Thus began a long Marine presence on Guam. The island, southernmost of the Marianas chain, was discovered by Ferdinand Magellan in 1521, but not occupied until 1688 when a small mission was established there by a Spanish priest and soldiers. When control of the rest of the Mariana Islands was given to Japan as a mandate power in 1919, Guam became an isolated and highly vulnerable American outpost in a Japanese sea. This American territory, 35 miles long, nine miles at its widest and four at its narrowest, shaped like a peanut fell quickly and easily in the early morning of 10 December 1941. With the opening of a two-hour, ever-increasing bombardment by six battleships, nine cruisers, a host of destroyers and rocket ships, laying their wrath on the wrinkled black hills, rice paddies, cliffs, and caves that faced the attacking fleet on the west side of the island, liberation day for Guam began at 0530, 21 July 1944. - Summary by Cyril J. O’Brien