Classic Literature Short Stories

In his Commonplace Book and and his lengthy essay "Supernatural Horror in Literature", author H.P. Lovecraft carefully assessed weird tales through the ages. He named a great many stories that he admired. The H.P. Lovecraft Historical Society has curated a collection of 43 of the best of them and recorded them as audiobooks for your listening enjoyment. Read by the HPLHS' own Andrew Leman and Sean Branney and featuring original music by Troy Sterling Nies, these eerie tales will delight your mind and chill your blood.

Though known for his classic novels of adventure and coming of age, Mark Twain is equally esteemed for his short stories, which abound with the colorful characters and often comic antics listeners have come to expect from his longer works. Included here are two of his most beloved short stories: "The Story of the Bad Little Boy Who Didn't Come to Grief" and "The Story of theGood Little Boy Who Did Not Prosper."

Widely acclaimed as a progenitor of 20th-century Latin American fiction, Joaquim Maria Machado de Assis (1839-1908), the son of a mulatto father and a washerwoman, was hailed in his lifetime as Brazil's greatest writer. His prodigious output of novels, plays, and stories rivaled contemporaries like Chekhov, Flaubert, and Maupassant, but, shockingly, he was barely translated into English until 1963, and still lacks proper recognition today.

A collection of Smith's apace adventure stories featuring Captain Volmar, including the never before published novella, "Red World of Polaris."

Award-winning storyteller Barbara McBride-Smith breathes life (albeit a wizened Texan version) into the old Greek myths. With her incurable Texas drawl, she spins the Greek myths as you've never heard them before, rendering them 99% more fun while retaining 100% of their original insights into the crooked ways of the human heart and the no less crooked ways of the ancient Greek gods.

Three years have passed since Sherlock Holmes and his nemesis Moriarty vanished into the abyss of the Reichenbach Falls. In that time the criminals of London have been able to sleep safe in their beds. But the capital has never been in greater need of its protector.

These are short stories of one of the greatest writers in the world, Anton Chekhov. For more than 100 years, his humor and philosophy have surprised readers by their depth and brightness. These stories are for Russia and Russians, as much today as they were 100 years ago.

Innovative, startlingly perceptive and aglow with colour, these 15 stories were written towards the end of Katherine Mansfield's tragically short life. Many are set in the author's native New Zealand, others in England and the French Riviera. All are revelations of the unspoken, half-understood emotions that make up everyday experience - from the blackly comic 'The Daughters of the Late Colonel' and the short, sharp sketch 'Miss Brill', in which a lonely woman's precarious sense of self is brutally destroyed, to the vivid impressionistic evocation of family life in 'At the Bay'.

A spectacular collection of outstanding half-hour short stories...perfect for commuters or bedtime listening. 'The Whistle' by Hugh Walpole, 'The Well' by W. W. Jacobs, 'The Scrupulous Father' by George Gissing, 'The Debt' by Edith Wharton, 'The Problem of the Five Marks' by Melville Davisson Post, 'The Purple Wig' by G. K. Chesterton, 'Pickman's Model' by H. P. Lovecraft, 'Humplebee' by Geroge Gissing.

If you want to understand the daily life and psychology of the late Middle Ages, Ronald Ecker’s classic translation of The Canterbury Tales provides one of the very best means of doing so. Within its audio is to be found a broad range of society - high and low, male and female, rich and poor - who express their innermost beliefs and extravagant fantasies in a series of stories they tell as they make their way to Canterbury Cathedral.

Mental illness though can still carry a stigma. A case of ‘you’re not trying hard enough’, ‘or knuckling down and getting on with it’. But in more recent decades mental issues have come to be recognised as an illness, a disease rather than an affliction. We all remember horror stories of lobotomy’s and electric shock being used to ‘cure’ what society viewed as anti-social behaviour but illness, mental or physical is very real. Depression, schizophrenia, breakdown, psychosis are alarming events to have or to witness.

A terrific addition to your Henty audiobook collection! This collection of short stories contains narratives that continue the Henty tradition of heroes both brave and modest. These stories are sometimes sentimental and melancholy, unlike many of Henty's other writings. Henty was primarily known for his full-length novels for young people, but he regularly contributed short stories such as these to weekly boys' magazines such as the Boys' Own Paper and the Union Jack.

Aleksander Głowacki, who wrote under the nom de plume Boleslaw Prus, was born on 20th August 1847 at Hrubieszów in the Kingdom of Poland, at that time, controlled by the Russian Empire. It seems he had doubts as to the scale of his talents and early on adopted the name ‘Boleslaw Prus’, for both his journalistic and literary offerings. His work as a short-story writer met with much acclaim. He wrote several dozen of them, originally published in newspapers and ranging in length from micro-story to novella. His keen observation of everyday life and sense of humor are evident in them.

CONTENTS: A Suspicious Gift [Algernon Blackwood], Skeleton Lake: An Episode in Camp [Algernon Blackwood], The Wood of the Dead [Algernon Blackwood], A Baby Tramp [Ambrose Bierce], The Damned Thing [Ambrose Bierce], Dagon [H.P Lovecraft], The Horror of the Heights [Arthur Conan Doyle], The Descendant [H.P Lovecraft], The Cats of Ulthar [H.P Lovecraft], The Evil Clergyman [H.P Lovecraft], He [H.P Lovecraft], The Book [H.P Lovecraft], In the Vault [H.P Lovecraft], Nyarlathotep [H.P Lovecraft], Death and the Woman [Gertrude Atherton], The Striding Place [Gertrude Atherton].

A superb collection of captivating short stories by leading classic writers, including 'The Cone' by H. G. Wells, 'The Dream Woman' by Wilkie Collins, 'Fortunes Adrift' by Charles John Cutcliffe Hyne, 'The Kidnapping of Phil Altamore' by Ella Hepworth Dixon, 'The Table Under the Tree' by E. Phillips Oppenheim, 'In Yeddo Bay' by Jack London and many more gripping short stories by famous writers.

Niblock House is a rising executive at General Technics, one of a few all-powerful corporations. His work is leading General Technics to the forefront of global domination, both in the marketplace and politically - it's about to take over a country in Africa. Donald Hogan is his roommate, a seemingly sheepish bookworm. But Hogan is a spy, and he's about to discover a breakthrough in genetic engineering that will change the world...and kill him. Society is squeezed into hive-living madness by god-like mega computers and mass-marketed psychedelic drugs.

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

This collection contains: "Idle Thoughts on Babies"; "The Schartz-Meterklume Method"; "A Photographer's Day Out"; and more.

“I was sick, sick unto death with that long agony,” begins one of the most famous tales from the master of the macabre, Edgar Allan Poe. Through the tortures of the Spanish Inquisition, we follow the straying mind of the unnamed prisoner in his quest for hope in a world of darkness and despair. This episode skyrocketed The Classic Tales Podcast to number 3 on iTunes’ Top 100 Podcasts chart.

Most readers are familiar with Jack London's stories of the frozen northland, such as White Fang and To Light a Fire, but many critics feel he should be equally acknowledged for his fascinating stories of the South Pacific. Here is another remote corner of the world, a background for his magnificently colorful and entertaining Tales of the South Pacific.