Classic Literature Short Stories

This book won a World Fantasy Award. It's remarkable: The stories are rich, fascinating stuff - creepy and unsettling and phantasmic. Imagine what Tolkien's Lord of the Rings would have been like if Tolkien had tried to tell that story sympathetically from the point of view of the human denizens of Mordor and you'll have the slightest sense of what you're about to wade into... but only just a sense.

The earth's surface is no longer habitable. All humanity is sequestered beneath the ground, couched in isolation and contentment. The Machine provides the needs of humanity. Mankind becomes subservient drones to the life-supporting Machine. But what happens when the Machine stops?

This is a collection of stories about interesting, unusual, bright human characters and destinies. Contents: Gusev by Anton Chekhov ; Boule de Suif by Guy De Maupassant ; Alyosha the Pot by Leo Tolstoy ; Mateo Falcone by Prosper Mérimée ; Little Brother by Mary E. Mann ; Bartleby, The Scrivener by Herman Melville ; The Lightning-Rod Man by Herman Melville ; The Ambitious Guest by Nathaniel Hawthorne ; The Darling by Anton Chekhov ; A Simple Heart by Gustave Flaubert

My Man Jeeves, first published in 1919, introduced the world to affable, indolent Bertie Wooster and his precise, capable valet, Jeeves. Some of the finest examples of humorous writing found in English literature are woven around the relationship between these two men of very different classes and temperaments. Where Bertie is impetuous and feeble, Jeeves is coolheaded and poised.

Hot on the heels of Gardner Dozois's acclaimed anthology The Book of Swords comes this companion volume devoted to magic. How could it be otherwise? For every Frodo, there is a Gandalf... and a Saruman. For every Dorothy, a Glinda... and a Wicked Witch of the West. What would Harry Potter be without Albus Dumbledore... and Severus Snape? Figures of wisdom and power, possessing arcane, often forbidden knowledge, wizards and sorcerers are shaped - or misshaped - by the potent magic they seek to wield.

Jack London was one of the most notable authors of his time, and this collection showcases some of his most popular short stories. Filled with reflections on the human condition, our interactions with wilderness, and the chance of underlying magic that surrounds us all, these short stories offer a brief respite from the bustling world around us. This collection of short stories contains "A Thousand Deaths", "An Odyssey of the North", "A Relic of the Pliocene", "The Law of Life", "The Minions of Midas", "To Build a Fire", "Grit of Women", "That Spot", "Flush of Gold", and "Lost Face".

The Cockney Novelists flourished towards the end of the 19th century and spilled over into the next. They included Arthur Morrison, Edwin Pugh, William Pett Ridge and Clarence Rook. Authors being authors, they, of course, dealt with their subject matter in different ways. As a group they moved away from treating the London working classes as comedy cameos or social stereotypes.

Written initially in French, later translated by the author into English, Molloy is the first book in Dublin-born Samuel Beckett's trilogy. It was published shortly after WWII and marked a new, mature writing style, which was to dominate the remainder of his working life. Molloy is less a novel than a set of two monologues narrated by Molloy and his pursuer, Moran.

A scintillating collection of Ambrose Bierce's humorous and macabre short stories.

This bundle contains two audiobooks: Aesop’s Fables Volume 1 and Aesop’s Fables Volume 2. There are 25 short stories in Volume 1 and 27 short stories in Volume 2. So you’ll get total of 52 short stories with this bundle.

An astonishing collection of fifty of the greatest short stories ever written by some of literature's most highly acclaimed writers. 1. "Odour of Chrysanthemums" by D. H. Lawrence; 2. "Miss Harriet" by Guy de Maupassant; 3. "Twenty-six Men and a Girl" by Maxim Gorky; 4. "Hot Potatoes" by Arnold Bennett; 5. "Rats" by M. R. James; 6. "Zodomirsky’s Duel" by Alexandre Dumas; 7. "The Story of an Hour" by Kate Chopin; 8. "The Cask of Amontillado" by Edgar Allan Poe; 9. "The Encased Man" by Anton Chekhov.

Emily Dickinson (1830-1886) was a reclusive poet whose only friendships were carried out in correspondence. Despite writing almost 1800 poems in her life, very few were published until after her death. Here, the poems are presented in chronological order in their original form, unaltered by editorial revision, in one volume. It offers a wide-angle view of Dickinson's poetic development, from the clunky rhyme schemes of her youth, through valentines she wrote in the early 1850s, to the gloomy, hell-obsessed writings of her last years.

The extraordinarily evocative stories depict the generation born in a small-town America during the Depression and growing up in a world where the old sexual morality was turned around and material comforts were easily had. Yet, as these stories reflect so accurately, life was still unsettling, and Updike chronicles telling moments both joyful and painful. The texts are taken from his recent omnibus, The Early Stories, 1953-1975.

This choice collection of spine tingling tales runs the gamut from slightly spooky to "I'm sleeping with all the lights on tonight!" A splendid grouping of tales from the pens of some of the great writers of the past. Enjoy these classic stories alone or with a friend, whenever your ears are free.

Bawdy and exotic, Tales from the Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night features the wily, seductive Scheherazade, who saves her own life by telling tales of magical transformation, genies and wishes, flying carpets and fantastical journeys, terror and passion to entertain and appease the brutal King Shahryar.

Sometimes a journey can be of discovery. And in this compilation, Ruskin Bond has discovered hair-raising stories of other people's journeys taken many, many years ago. Bond describes the old track from Rajpur to Mussorie, surrounded by oak trees and colonial buildings in 'The Kipling Road'. Braving blizzards and bandits, M. Huc takes a momentous journey to Ladakh in 'Journey to the Forbidden City', while Osa Johnson, the only woman adventurer in the book, gives her awe-inspiring account of cannibals in 'A Woman Among Cannibals'.

A vintage collection of some of the greatest short stories ever written: "The Purloined Letter", by Edgar Allan Poe; "The Nose", by Nikolai Gogol; "The Story of an Hour", by Kate Chopin; "The Gift of the Magi", by O. Henry; "The Apparition of Mrs. Veal", by Daniel Defoe; "The Lifted Veil", by George Eliot; "Life of Ma Parker", by Katherine Mansfield; "The Baron", by Katherine Mansfield; "The Cask of Amontillado", by Edgar Allan Poe; "The Seventh Pullet", by Saki; and more.

This is A Madman's Diary, and Other Stories by Lu Xun, a renowned writer of modern Chinese literature. Lu Xun was a novelist, editor, translator, literary critic, essayist, and poet who wrote both in Vernacular Chinese and Classical Chinese. He became the titular head of the League of Left-Wing Writers in Shanghai in the 1930s.

Hailed as one of the world's supreme masterpieces on the subject of death and dying, Leo Tolstoy's "The Death of Ivan Ilyich" is the story of a worldly careerist, a high court judge who has never given the inevitability of his death so much as a passing thought. But one day, death announces itself to him, and to his shocked surprise he is brought face to face with his own mortality.

The stories collected in the twelve volumes of Andrew Lang's Fairy Books of Many Colors have captivated generations of readers. In The Blue Fairy Book, the first in his legendary series, Lang compiled and edited tales from the Brothers Grimm, Madame d’Aulnoy, and French, Scandinavian, and Middle Eastern sources. He captured the folkloric traditions and dark origins of dozens of the world's best-known fairy-tale characters, including Sleeping Beauty, Little Red Riding Hood, Snow-White, Cinderella, and Rumpelstiltskin.