English Classic Short Stories

Pulitzer Prize-winning American novelist Edith Wharton was most well known for her novels that illuminated privileged life in the 19th century, such as The Age of Innocence and The House of Mirth. In addition to her award-winning novels, she also wrote poetry and short stories. Collected here are some of her best works of short fiction, including: "The Eyes", a famous ghost story; "The Daunt Diana", which tells about the love of art; "The Moving Finger", an eerie story about a man clinging to his wife's memory; and "The Debt", a story of loyalty.

A newly married woman longs, irrationally, for a silk umbrella, a husband chases away his wife's beloved cat, a betrayed mother impulsively sacks her housekeeper. Underneath the surface of these precisely observed tales of love, marriage and family life in mid-century Copenhagen pulse currents of desire, violence and despair, as women and men dream of escaping their conventional roles and finding freedom and happiness - without ever truly understanding what that might mean.

A spine-tingling collection of the greatest short stories by the father of science fiction, H. G. Wells. 'The Time Machine', 'The Empire of the Ants', 'The Crystal Egg', 'The Sea-Raiders', 'The Door in the Wall', 'A Dream of Armageddon', 'The Country of the Blind', 'Under the Knife', 'The Stolen Body', 'The Plattner Story', 'The Stolen Bacillus', 'The Magic Shop', 'The Inexperienced Ghost', and many more short fiction masterpieces.

A thoroughly engaging collection of great classic tales by the very best American authors. 1. 'From Beyond' by H. P. Lovecraft 2. 'The Mysterious Card and the Card Unveiled' by Cleveland Moffett 3. 'Pigs Is Pigs' by Ellis Parker Butler 4. 'The Club of One-Eyed Men' by Arthur Somers Roche 5. 'Afterward' by Edith Wharton 6. 'The Furnished Room' by O. Henry 7. 'A Descent into the Maelström' by Edgar Allan Poe 8. 'Regret' by Kate Chopin 9. 'The Terrible Old Man' by H. P. Lovecraft 10. 'The Dumb Man' by Sherwood Anderson

The inevitable is understood by each and every one of us who faces the final calling. So too are the effects on those left behind. The memories are there but the empty space, the void can never be refilled. It remains a dark, unreliable pit of loneliness. The sadness and often depression, the lack of will to continue may swamp us all. Unquenchable, undeniable. But loss can, after mourning, give the opportunity to reappraise the lost and how we can each move forward. In the literary world an accessible balance can be given.

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'.

"Of the place where he had been a boy he had written well enough. As well as he could then." So thought a dying writer in an early version of The Snows of Kilimanjaro. The writer was, of course, Ernest Hemingway. The place was the Michigan of his boyhood, where he remembered himself as Nick Adams. The now-famous "Nick Adams" stories show a memorable character growing from child to adolescent to soldier, veteran, writer, and parent - a sequence closely paralleling the events of Hemingway's life.

Brought to life by Academy Award®-winning actor F. Murray Abraham and an ensemble cast of narrators, and featuring original music by Michael Bacon, this collection contains Hans Christian Andersen’s most beloved fairy tales, as well as a selection of lesser-known favorites. Unlike the Brothers Grimm, who collected and retold folklore and fairy tales, Hans Christian Andersen adopted the most ancient literary forms and distilled them into a genre that was uniquely his own. His fairy tales are remarkable for their sense of fantasy, power of description, and vivid imagination.

Welcome to Bald's farm. Well, perhaps it's not Bald's farm anymore. The old man has kicked the bucket, setting off a wave of conflict from the flooded farmhouse kitchen to the muddy pig pen to the tall wheat fields. In this darkly funny, slightly supernatural chain of tales, no creature is safe. Not Leonard Grey, a spider with sophisticated tastes. Not Esmeralda, a resentful one-legged pig. Not Tulip, a plant with a mean streak.

The first thing every listener will want to know is whether Anne Shirley appears in these stories of Avonlea and Spencervale. She certainly does. As a matter of fact, page one starts off in this manner: "Anne Shirley was curled up on the window seat of Theodora Dix's sitting room one Saturday evening, looking dreamily afar at some fair starland beyond the hills of sunset. Anne was visiting for a fortnight of her vacation."

The author of outstanding travel books, autobiographical works and novels, including the classic "The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn", "Mark Twain" (Samuel Langhorne Clemens, 1835–1910) is regarded by many as America's finest humorist and a major writer of short stories. The four selections in this volume span his entire writing career and are among his best-known stories.

Frank Pettingell, Emma Hignett, Siobhan McKenna and Boris Karloff read eight short stories by the literary greats, including Poe, Kipling, Defoe, Chekov, and Wilde.

"The Queen of Spades" is the best known and probably the best of all Russian short stories. It confronts the great riches of a few and the impoverishment of the many in the form of the assistant to the fabulously rich and old Countess; Hermann, who seeks great wealth through any means; and the countess's knowledge of how to win one's fortune on three cards. The denouement is worthy of being considered one of the finest in literature.

A mysterious island, shrouded in fear, evil, and darkness. Here the amoral General Zaroff hunts. And what, you ask, is the most dangerous game? It is the manner and substance of his nightly killings.

As far as children are concerned, a REAL WITCH is easily the most dangerous of all the living creatures on Earth. This edition of The Witches, part of The Roald Dahl Classic Collection, is perfect for Dahl fans old and new. So, enter a world where invention and mischief can be found throughout the book and where magic might be at the very tips of your fingers.

In his second collection, including the iconic and much-referenced title story featured in the Academy Award-winning film Birdman, Raymond Carver establishes his reputation as one of the most celebrated short-story writers in American literature. What We Talk About When We Talk About Love is a haunting meditation on love, loss, and companionship, and finding one's way through the dark.

Nelson Mandela's Favorite African Folktales is an audiobook benefiting children orphaned and impacted by HIV/AIDS in South Africa, featuring Gillian Anderson, Benjamin Bratt, LeVar Burton, Ricardo Chavira, Don Cheadle, Matt Damon, Whoopi Goldberg, Sean Hayes, Hugh Jackman, Samuel L. Jackson, LaTanya Richardson Jackson, Scarlett Johansson,

Debra Messing, Helen Mirren, Parminder Nagra, Sophie Okonedo, CCH Pounder, Alan Rickman, Blair Underwood, and more.

Eight brilliant short stories from the best female short story writer of her age. Katherine Mansfield's wit, pathos and descriptive genius combine in this collection to take the listener from a wry smile one minute to the verge of tears the next.

More than any other writer before or since, Louis L'Amour brought the American West to life. His action-packed stories deal with eternal themes: honor, deceit, passion, betrayal, loyalty, courage, love. His settings are historically accurate, his prose riveting, and his characters colorful: good guys, bad buys, toughs, roughs, sidekicks and saints.

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.