Short Classic Literature

The first American book on personal finance, "The Way to Wealth" by Benjamin Franklin is still the best and wisest money book ever written. Originally published in 1758 as the preface to "Poor Richard's Almanack", this little gem has been through innumerable printings and sold millions of copies to those in search of smart but entertaining advice about hard work, earning and saving money and debt.

When it comes to the holidays, no story captures the true spirit of giving like O. Henry’s classic "The Gift of the Magi". And in celebration of the season, Audie Award® winners Katherine Kellgren, Oliver Wyman, and Jonathan Davis bring to life this timeless Christmas tale, plus two more of O. Henry’s holiday gems: "The Cop and the Anthem" and "The Last Leaf".

Here is a collection of the Oscar Wilde's famous fairy tales, read by a cast of leading British actors. Additional narrators include Geoffrey Palmer O.B.E., Sir Donald Sinden, and Elaine Stritch. Music: 'Reverie De Sebastian' by Steve Davies.

This complete collection includes all of the published stories of Eudora Welty. There are 41 stories in all, including those in the earlier collections A Curtain of Green, The Wide Net, The Golden Apples, and The Bride of the Innisfallen, as well as previously uncollected stories.

In the four decades since his first book appeared in print, Terry Pratchett has become one of the world’s best-selling and best-loved authors. Here for the first time are his short stories and other short form fiction collected into one volume. A Blink of the Screen charts the course of Pratchett’s long writing career: from his schooldays through to his first writing job on the Bucks Free Press, and the origins of his debut novel, The Carpet People; and on again to the dizzy mastery of the Discworld series.

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.

Something between a tale and a polemic, these 'fables of reason' are feats of narrative compression and contain much of Voltaire's best and funniest writing. From ribald tales of adultery to conversations between cosmic travellers, the stories in this collection pose moral, philosophical and social questions. Listener and protagonist alike find their assumptions challenged as Voltaire mingles rationality and fantasy.

When Sergeant Major Morris brings a mummified monkey’s paw to the White family, they embrace it as a morbid curiosity. When they learn that an old Fakir has enchanted the paw, they continue to treat the thing lightly. But the workings of the paw, once set in motion, cannot be undone, no matter what they try.

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.

Actor David Ian Davies' telling of Poe's Gothic horror tale "The Tell-Tale Heart" captures this classic narrative of the unnamed murderer in all its exquisite vileness, its self-effacing insanity that poses rationality where none exists.

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.

We are all classicists - we come into touch with the classics on a daily basis: in our culture, politics, medicine, architecture, language, and literature. What are the true roots of these influences, however, and how do our interpretations of these aspects of the classics differ from their original reality?

"The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County" is a wild yarn involving a case of mistaken identity, a gambler who’d bet on anything, and a very unusual frog named Daniel Webster. First published in The Saturday Press in 1865, the tale was immensely popular, and in 1867 an expanded version was published with 26 additional short stories, told as only Mark Twain could tell them.

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."

Sir Henry Marquis, the Sleuth of St. James’ Square, shines in these 16 unique mystery and crime stories from Melville Davisson Post.

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.

"He travels fastest who travels alone...but not after the frost has dropped below zero 50 degrees or more." (Yukon Code) Jack London’s best short story.

Assembled and edited by Julian Hawthorne and first published in 1907, the Old Time English volume of The Lock and Key Library features ten classic mysteries and ghost stories by Charles Dickens, Edward Bulwer-Lytton, Thomas de Quincey, Charles Robert Maturin, Laurence Sterne, and William Makepeace Thackeray. This volume of The Lock and Key Library is sure to haunt and charm fans of ghost and detective mysteries alike.

This audiobook contains Plato's most notable books, narrated brilliantly by Kevin Kollins. The works contained in this audiobook include The Republic, The Apology, Crito, and Symposium. Enjoy these four amazing philosophical works that have stood the test of time.

This Children’s Short Story Collection contains many short stories great for kids of all ages.