Cat Anthology

Edgar Award-winning editor Otto Penzler collects more than 50 of his all-time favorite holiday crime stories - many of which are difficult or nearly impossible to find anywhere else. From classic Victorian tales by Arthur Conan Doyle, Robert Louis Stevenson, and Thomas Hardy, to contemporary stories by Sara Paretsky and Ed McBain, this collection touches on all aspects of the holiday season, and all types of mysteries. They are suspenseful, funny, frightening, and poignant.

Welcome to Happy Cat, Georgia, where the men are hot, the romance is swoon-worthy, and the animals don’t play by the rules. This box set includes four stand-alone but linked romantic comedies, as well as a bonus novella featuring a British single dad who’s head-over-heels for his nanny.

Stirring up all the romance and excitement a bride could hope for - plus a healthy dose of unforeseen shenanigans - four of today's most dazzling best-selling authors deliver the wedding of the year, where there's something - and someone - for everyone. Opposites attract when a wealthy cattleman and a penniless artist decide to get hitched at a Texas dude ranch in tornado country - and the whirlwind festivities are as filled with surprises as their love.

For the first time - in one Audible-exclusive collection - it's 13 stories of Jane Yellowrock, the shape-shifting skinwalker and vampire hunter for hire whose business card reads, "Have Stakes - Will Travel". Jane carries inside her the soul of her Beast, the mountain lion's soul which merged with hers when she accidently performed black magic as a child. Now, she and her Beast stalk the dark streets of New Orleans, bringing rogue vampires true death.

It is in Skinwalker that Jane Yellowrock first meets George Dumas (Bruiser) and Leo Pellissier. Now, in "First Sight", that encounter is revisited - only this time from Bruiser’s point of view.

Spencer Quinn’s first original audio short story reveals how everyone’s favorite detective duo - Chet the Dog and P.I. Bernie Little - came to meet before their first big case in Dog On It. As fans know, Chet first met Bernie on that fateful day when he flunked out of K-9 police school. The details of that day, though, have always remained a little vague (like so much in Chet’s doggy brain). All we know is that Chet had been the best leaper in his K-9 class, but for some reason he failed his final leaping test...and that a cat was involved...and that there was some blood. But whose?

Alan Bennett reads The Owl and the Pussy-Cat and Other Nonsense Rhymes by Edward Lear. The poems and limericks include "The Daddy Long-Legs and the Fly", "The Owl and the Pussy-Cat", "The Duck and the Kangaroo", "The Table and the Chair", "The Broom, the Shovel, the Poker and the Tongs", "Mr and Mrs Discobbolos", "The Nutcrackers and the Sugar Tongs", "The Two Old Bachelors", "The Pobble Who Has No Toes", "The Jumblies", "The Dog with a Luminous Nose", and many more.

Like a series of Penthouse letters penned by Kathy Acker, Lie with Me recounts a woman's sexual escapades, picking up random men in bars for a series of increasingly extreme encounters, hoping to understand love from the far side of sluttiness. In The Way of the Whore, Mira, an introverted Jewish girl obsessed with Jean Genet, allows herself to be seduced by the sex industry, determined to find meaning in her tormented relationships with cruel men.

This anthology, created exclusively for this audio edition, features both fiction and nonfiction tales of our feline friends. It's the perfect gift for the many millions of cat lovers in the world. Subtitled "29 Cat Tales from Great Writers", it includes selections by Catherine Aird, Lewis Carroll, Barbara Holland, George Orwell, Saki, P.G. Woodhouse, and others.

From the winner of the National Book Foundation's 2000 Medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters comes a "sweet, funny...thought-provoking" (Milwaukee Journal Sentinel) collection of short stories. In The Cat's Pajamas we are treated to a treasure trove of Bradbury gems, old and new - eerie and strange, nostalgic and bittersweet, searching and speculative - all but two of which have never been published before.

Already a bestseller in Japan, The Goodbye Cat is a collection of simple yet charming, funny, and often very moving tales (tails?) woven by seven wise felines and their humans. Bursting with love and warmth, The Goodbye Cat exquisitely explores the cycle of life and how, in different ways, the steadiness and devotion of a well-loved cat never lets us down. A joyous celebration of the wondrousness of cats and why we choose to share our lives with them.

First published in an 1843 edition of the Saturday Evening Post, "The Black Cat" tells the story of a man and his increasingly antagonistic relationship with his cat. Akin to "The Tell-Tale Heart" and "The Cask of Amontillado", "The Black Cat" investigates the psychological effects of guilt as well as the potentially destructive and violent consequences of alcoholism.

Finding seeds of inspiration in the Brothers Grimm, seventeenth-century French lore, and Scottish ballads, Kelly Link spins classic fairy tales into utterly original stories of seekers—characters on the hunt for love, connection, revenge, or their own sense of purpose. Twisting and winding in astonishing ways, expertly blending realism and the speculative, witty, empathetic, and never predictable—these stories remind us once again of why Kelly Link is incomparable in the art of short fiction.

Ready for some stories from the vast wilderness of Canada? It's home to the sasquatch: a creature that's revered and feared by the natives there since before time was recorded. Settle back with a cup of hot chocolate, lock the doors, and be ready to call your best friend in case you start seeing big hairy faces in the window (but be aware that your friend may also be listening to these stories, so have a backup plan).

This collection brilliantly explores the ways in which women are horrifying, as much as it captures the horrors that are done to them. Spanning a range of genres and topics - from the mundane to the murderous and supernatural - these are stories about sex and punishment, guilt and anger, the pleasure and terror of inflicting and experiencing pain. These stories fascinate and repel, revolt and arouse, scare and delight in equal measure. And, as a collection, they point a finger at you, daring you to feel uncomfortable.

Cat O'Nine Tales is the fifth collection of irresistible short stories from the master storyteller and bestselling author Jeffrey Archer. Ingeniously plotted, with richly drawn characters and Archer's trademark of deliciously unexpected conclusions, some of these thirteen stories were inspired by the two years Jeffrey Archer spent in prison, including the story of a company chairman who tries to poison his wife while on a trip to St Petersburg—with unexpected consequences.

Knowing, perceptive, and wickedly funny, Matt Klam loves his characters but spares them nothing: the swaggering womanizer Sam falls in love with a woman across a crowded room who, upon closer inspection, turns out to be not quite what he expected; a self-doubting young professional attends the posh wedding of his successful friend and delivers a disastrous toast; the chicken one man's girlfriend is preparing for dinner comes to embody the darkly corrosive element in their relationship.

‘Stories are like Russian dolls; open them up, and in each one you’ll find another story.’ Conjured from a wickedly imaginative pen, here is a new collection of short stories that showcases Joanne Harris’s exceptional storytelling art. Sensuous, wicked, mischievous, uproarious and wry, here are tales that combine the everyday with the unexpected; wild fantasy with bittersweet reality.

As soon as I encountered Nikki, my bear went wild with need. But my mate died in childbirth years ago, and as a military trained doctor, I still beat myself up for not being able to save her. I never thought I’d love again. But the way my bear yearns for her now has me thinking otherwise.

This dazzling anthology includes epic interstellar adventures, tales of space and wonder, from some of the brightest names in science fiction.