Short Classic Literature

Young Zaya was very sad and lonely when her mother died, but she eventually found solace in the company of birds, who proved to be her only friends. When Zaya sees the form of the Giant-Plague, she immediately tries to warn her the people in her city about what is coming, but almost everyone disregards her as crazy. The only who doesn't is a kind old man, Knoal, who believes Zaya and joins her cause of trying to warn about the Giant. Zaya's birds help protect her and Knoal from the Giant, but they can't stay safe forever.

When a young couple moves into their new home, they are taken aback by the strange behavior of their new landlord. While at first he bid them to do all of the fixing-up the home needed on their own, he quickly changed his tune and was persistent in his attempts to help them tackle some of the rooms himself. The source of his desire to help lies in the fact that the old tenant may have hidden a fortune within the walls - a fortune that winds up belonging to the young couple after all!

Young Prince Zaphir, son of King Mago, was a kind young man much beloved by his people and all the animals around the kingdom. He is also quite taken with a young princess, the Princess Bluebell, who feels the same way for him. When a giant descends on the land and the army and other brave men who volunteer to fight him are defeated, Zaphir decides to face the Giant one on one, before more men risk their lives.

Originally published in The New Yorker in 1954, The Ponder Heart is easily Eudora Welty’s most comic novel, a lighthearted burlesque that rivals Caldwell’s Tobacco Road for capturing rural idioms, and the novels of Mark Twain for high farce.

Young Claribel was a girl taught goodness by her parents and lived a happy life, especially when she went to school. Claribel loved her teacher, a kindly woman who taught her students the importance of honesty above all else. Her teacher taught them of the Beautiful City where the Good and Honest children would go one day, and Claribel wanted nothing more. One day in class, whilst working on her math, she became bored and distracted and began to draw a lily that she saw out the classroom window.

The Eroes of Thames tells the story of a famous swimmer, Peter Jimpson and his son, also named Peter, trying to maintain their fame in the big city of London. The father designed a skit in which his son would fake drowning in the Thames, and a random passerby (actually Peter himself) would dramatically rescue the boy. His plan is thwarted when a pair of grifters catch onto Peter's scheme and prevent him from following through with it as planned.

On an early October morning, Psyekoff, the right hand-man to Lieutenant Marcus Ivanovitch Klausoff, informs the inspector of police that he suspects Klausoff has been murdered. Immediately, the inspector and his team head to Klausoff’s home to investigate the matter. After examining the outside of the house, the inspector sends word to the magistrate, asking him to come investigate the case. When the magistrate and his assistant arrive, they check Klausoff’s room, only to find that he is not in there.

Miguev, a married, intelligent collegiate assessor, is haunted with anxiety and worry. Miguev has a secret that he doesn't want his wife, the town, or his colleagues to discover. His mistress, after becoming pregnant and having his child, has recently tried to extort money from him in exchange for her silence. She threatens to ruin his reputation and divulge his secret shame to everyone unless he pays her. In the height of his fear and worry about his present situation, his fears seem to come alive....

The Gombeen Man is an evil moneylender who several peasants owe money to. When the peasants find themselves unable to repay the wicked man on time, he is quick with his desire to take their land from them, refusing to take the payment from them in the future if they should be able to come up with it. The poor peasants are then forced to come up with a plan to keep their land from the evil Gombeen Man. This short story is actually a chapter from Stoker’s novel The Snake’s Pass, about a romance between an English tourist and an Irish peasant.

When several employees of the bank are arrested for corruption, the merchant Avdeyev doesn't give the ordeal much thought, figuring the men going to jail deserve it. His opinion changes however when he returns home to find his wife and son very upset - his house had just been searched by officials in connection to the bank corruption. Avdeyev had signed papers for the bankers without knowing what they were and so had essentially signed his life away by his carelessness.

Olga Ivanovna, a beautiful young woman floating around in a famous and fabulous social circle, falls in love with a simple man who does not belong to the same social group, Osip Dymov. Dymov worked at the same hospital as her father. When her father fell ill, Dymov was captivated by Olga's dedication to her father, and she soon returned the romantic notions. As they settled into married life, Olga continued to frequent with her artistic friends, visiting them every day and continuing to live a fun, exciting life.

Three men, Mihailo the porter, Nikandr the fish merchant, and Stepan the coachman, sit around a table in the coach-house playing a game of "kings" with Stepan's eight-year old grandson, Alyoshka. While each card player competitively tries to win the coveted position of "king" in the game, a more serious atmosphere casts a sad shadow over the estate in which the coach-house is situated. The man of the house, for whom the porter and coachman work, has attempted suicide, and he lies in the estate house struggling somewhere between life and death.

"Crooken Sands" is a short fantasy/horror tale by the author of Dracula. The story follows a London merchant on a mysterious adventure in Scotland.

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.

Hoffmann, among the greatest and most popular of the German Romantics, is renowned for his humorous and sometimes horrifying tales of supernatural beings. This selection, while stressing the variety of his work, focuses on those stories in which the real and the supernatural are brought into contact and conflict. This new translation includes The Golden Pot, The Sandman, Princess Brambilla, Master Flea, and My Cousin's Corner Window.

This audiobook, read by Audie award-winning narrators, includes unabridged recordings of an extensive range of Fyodor Dostotevsky's short stories.

Grimms' Fairy Tales, originally known as the Children's and Household Tales, is a German collection of fairy tales as told by the Grimm Brothers (also known as Brothers Grimm), Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm, first published on 20 December 1812. In this collection of 62 fairy tales, you will find Rapunzel, Hansel and Gretel, Rumpelstiltskin, the Frog-Prince and Snow White and Rose Red, among other timeless works.

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.

This recording contains four of Katherine Mansfield's best stories. In The Daughters of the Late Colonel, two sisters are recently bereaved; while in Her First Ball a young girl attends her first dance. The Singing Lesson features Miss Meadows, a music teacher in turmoil; and in The Stranger, a middle-aged couple are reunited.

Words have power. Some words have more power than others. So when a group of monks seek to enlist modern technology in their quest to list all nine billion names of god, there is no telling what may happen.