English Classic Short Stories

A collection of classic works by Edgar Allan Poe, American author, poet, editor, and literary critic. Best known for his tales of mystery and the macabre, Poe was one of the earliest American practitioners of the short story and is considered the inventor of the detective fiction genre. He is further credited with contributing to the emerging genre of science fiction. He was the first well-known American writer to try to earn a living through writing alone, resulting in a financially difficult life and career.

This engaging collection of seven classic children’s stories presented by Voices in the Wind Audio Theatre includes Alice In Wonderland, Alice Through the Looking Glass, Snow White, Cinderella, Sleeping Beauty, The Secret Garden, and The Wonderful Wizard of Oz. Each story is performed by a full cast of award-winning voice actors enhanced by sound effects and music. Timeless classics that are sure to entice the imagination of the very young and the young at heart!

Annie Proulx's masterful language and fierce love of Wyoming are evident in this collection of stories about loneliness, quick violence, and wrong kinds of love. In "The Mud Below", a rodeo rider's obsession marks the deepening fissures between his family life and self-imposed isolation. In "The Half-Skinned Steer", an elderly fool drives west to the ranch he grew up on for his brother's funeral, and dies a mile from home.

Enjoy the short stories of three of the greatest writers of French literature, for the first time assembled together in audiobook and narrated in a lively way. Guy de Maupassant was an absolute master of the short story genre, delighting in clever plotting, concise style, and efficient storytelling, which he used to produce stunning pieces in a very condensed format. He produced more than 300 short stories; we selected for you nine of the most bizarre, influent, humorous or plain shocking.

Six of Wilkie Collins' best short stories: "The Dead Hand", "The Devil's Spectacles", "Major Namby", "Nine O'Clock", "A Terribly Strange Bed", and "My Black Mirror".

Since the first appearance of a vampire in Robert Southey’s Thalaba the Destroyer, we mortals have endured a morbid fascination with these peculiar creatures of the night. They come in many forms: charming and seductive; ghastly and terrible. Join us as we explore a number of classic yarns concerning the various guises of the vampire, from Aleksey Tolstoy’s horrifying description of a vampiric family to Robert E. Howard’s tale of a creature loosed from bondage after having been buried for over three centuries. Thank the gods these creatures are fictitious…aren’t they?

At the heart of these stories, as with all the best of Lovecraft’s work, is the belief that the Earth was once inhabited by powerful and evil gods, just waiting for the chance to recolonise their planet. Cthulhu is one such god, lurking deep beneath the sea until called into being by cult followers who – like all humans – know not what they do.

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.

No nation has ever achieved the literary diversity of America. From nativist humor to immigrant triumph, Americans have recorded their visions and hopes better than anyone

The Ultimate Classics Collection: Volume Three is the third instalment of our wide-ranging classic collections. Volume Three features 10 essential works that reach further back into early Greek and Italian stories from Dante, Machiavelli, and Homer, as-well as comparatively modern works from Daniel Defoe, Henry David Thoreau, and others. Read by a cast of incredible narrators including David Rintoul; Daniel Weyman; Rachel Atkins; and more, this is a chance to expand your listening by going back to some of the earliest pieces of classic literature.

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.

Aesop's Fables are stories based on allegories and caricatures featuring mostly animals. These stories got the collective name Aesop’s Fables from the person who collected the stories. Aesop, popularly believed to have been a Phrygian slave, collected his fables sometime around the sixth century BC. Whatever his real story may be, the fables he collected feature valuable lessons.

The G.K. Chesterton Classics Collection brings together some of the most celebrated works of one of the 20th century's most influential writers, spanning his diverse contributions to detective fiction, theology, storytelling, and poetry. This richly illustrated edition includes key works such as The Innocence of Father Brown, featuring the iconic amateur detective whose sharp intellect and moral insight unravel complex mysteries; Orthodoxy, Chesterton's profound defense of Christian faith; and The Ballad of the White Horse, a lyrical epic about King Alfred the Great.

A gripping collection of outstanding American classic short stories by some of America's greatest writers: 'A Ghost Story' by Mark Twain; 'Pomegranate Seed' by Edith Wharton; 'Pigeons from Hell' by Robert E. Howard; 'Pickman's Model' by H. P. Lovecraft; 'The Adventure of the German Student' by Nathaniel Hawthorne; 'Absolute Zero' by Morgan Robertson; and many more.

Return to the amazing worlds created by some of fantasy's most famous authors as they tell all-new, original tales set in their best-selling series with Legends - the greatest anthology of original fantasy short novels ever published!

In this extraordinary fourth volume, Anne McCaffrey returns to her world of romance and adventure to tell the story of a Runner of Pern. Raymond E. Feist's Riftwar Saga is the setting for the revenge of The Wood Boy. And George R. R. Martin sets his adventure of The Hedge Knight in the generation before his epic A Song of Ice and Fire. The Legends series spans four audio volumes and includes short novels from the greatest living writers in all fantasy.

Edgar Allan Poe was one of the most prolific authors of his time, eventually gaining recognition for his tales of horror and his uncanny ability to paint a macabre picture with words. The Complete Works Collection of Edgar Allan Poe contains over 150 stories and poems, separated into individual chapters, including all of Poe's most notorious works such as The Raven, Annabel Lee, A Dream Within a Dream, Lenore, The Tell-Tale Heart, and many more.

The diary is that most intimate of journals, of records. Within its pages the writer records and gives expression to their thoughts, their feelings, their emotional state on all the things that make up and surround them in this world. With authors of the calibre of Bulgakov, Woolf, Tolstoy, Twain and many others this volume explores characters whose lives seem dominated by these diaries, and the events that unfold are both compelling and literary journeys into the very personal and intimate side of their characters’ lives.

Swords. Sorcery. Dick Jokes. Truly do the gods smile upon you, dear listener, for the first four books in the hilarious Caverns and Creatures series are now available in one audiobook set. Join Tim, Dave, Julian, and Cooper as they are thrown into a hostile fantasy world filled with magic and monsters, and ruled over by a cruel and sadistic game master who taunts and harasses them while he sits back and eats their fried chicken.

"White Nights" is the third major Dostoyevsky short story that everyone should read or listen to, along with "A Faint Heart" and "The Christmas Tree and Wedding". The story contains a series of Winesburg, Ohio-like moments: a woman and man meet on the First Night; proceed to meet again on the Second and Third, almost fall in love, and at the last minute the former lover of the woman returns to take her away. But the point is that the man had a glorious moment....