Short Classics

Written over the course of Leskov's career, each story in The Enchanted Wanderer elucidates the very essence of the human condition; themes of love, despair, loneliness, and revenge are explored against the backdrop of 19th-century working-class Russia. Leskov deftly layers social satire and subtle criticism atop myth and fable, resulting in a richly entertaining collection.

The revered author’s definitive collection of short fiction, which explores enduring spiritual and science fiction themes such as space, time, reality, fantasy, God, and the fate of humankind. As powerful, inventive, and profound as his theological and philosophical works, The Dark Tower reveals another side of Lewis’s creative mind and his longtime fascination with reality and spirituality. It is ideal listening for fans of J. R. R. Tolkien, Lewis’s longtime friend and colleague.

H.H. Munro (Saki) is one of the undisputed masters of the short story. In this complete compendium, the full gamut of his subjects and themes is experienced. His stories are imbued with humorous satire, biting irony, and often the macabre, all of which have one target: the stupidities and hypocrisies of Edwardian upper-class society.

Author Peter Ackroyd has won the Somerset Maugham Award, the Whitbread Novel of the Year, and the Guardian Fiction Prize, and was shortlisted for the Booker Prize. Based on Geoffrey Chaucer’s immortal work, this retelling of The Canterbury Tales follows a party of travelers as they tell stories amongst themselves about love and chivalry, saints and legends, travel and adventure. Through allegory, satire, and humor, the tales help pass the time during their journey.

Contents: - Washington Irving. The Legend of Sleepy Hollow - Edgar Allan Poe. The Gold Bug - Herman Melville. Bartleby, the Scrivener - Bret Harte. The Luck of Roaring Camp - Leo Tolstoy. The Death of Ivan Ilyich - Fyodor Dostoevsky. The Dream of a Ridiculous Man - Rudyard Kipling. Rikki-Tikki-Tavi - Charlotte Perkins Gilman. The Yellow Wallpaper - Anton Chekhov. The Lady with the Dog - D.H. Lawrence. The Prussian Officer - James Joyce. Araby - Ivan Turgenev. First Love.

The novels of Jane Austen have been celebrated for centuries. In this unique collection, listeners will be able to experience her wit, irony, and social commentary at its best.

Aesop's Fables are stories based on analogies 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.

This inspiring anthology collects enduring and entertaining stories that have enthralled young and old, by the cherished authors whose tales have captivated children for generations. Perfect for the family car trip or at-home listening, these recordings sparkle with the wit and wonder of time-tested storytelling.

School Days is a collection of stories that captures the splendour of our school days. Here Ruskin Bond has weaved together some of the most adventurous and engaging school stories written by master storytellers like Charles Dickens, Mark Twain, Samuel Smiles, Anton Chekhov, Richmal Crompton and others.

With the help of the most iconic children’s stories of all time—including Aesop’s fables, The Three Little Pigs, Hansel and Gretel, and so many others—bedtime stories are proven to help foster a bond between parents and children, lower kids' stress levels, and reinforce their literacy skills and mastery of language.

More than 50 years after publishing his first story, Hugo Award-winning author Asimov remains one of the great names in science fiction. Almost single-handedly he transformed the field from the romantic and Gothic legacy of Jules Verne and Edgar Rice Burroughs into the rational, clear-minded genre that exists today. This selection of some of Asimov's most enduring and unforgettable stories is read by the author himself. These vintage tales encompass the full range of Asimov's versatility, while displaying his puckish sense of humor.

Edgar Allan Poe was a writer, poet, editor and literary critic. Poe is best known for his poetry and short stories, particularly his tales of mystery and the macabre, and is widely regarded as a central figure of Romanticism in the United States and of American literature. Poe was one of the country's earliest practitioners of the short story and considered to be the inventor of the detective fiction genre, as well as a significant contributor to the emerging genre of science fiction.

Tadeusz Borowski’s concentration camp stories were based on his own experiences surviving Auschwitz and Dachau. In spare, brutal prose he describes a world where where the will to survive overrides compassion, and prisoners eat, work, and sleep a few yards from where others are murdered; where the difference between human beings is reduced to a second bowl of soup, an extra blanket, or the luxury of a pair of shoes with thick soles; and where the line between normality and abnormality vanishes.

This new Cyanide Publishing edition contains three classic audiobooks by Maurice LeBlanc as well as background articles.Follow the exploits of Arsene Lupin, the greatest of all white-glove thieves and the original gentleman burglar. Mystery and tension build, but humor prevails throughout as Monsieur Lupin and Chief Inspector Guerchard try mightily to outwit each other. Slapstick humor, witty asides, and some unexpected twists.

Kabu kabu - unregistered, illegal Nigerian taxis - generally get you where you need to go. Nnedi Okorafor's Kabu Kabu, however, takes the listener to exciting, fantastic, magical, occasionally dangerous, and always imaginative locations you didn't know you needed. This debut short-story collection by an award-winning author includes notable previously published material, a new novella cowritten with New York Times best-selling author Alan Dean Foster, six additional original stories, and a brief foreword by Whoopi Goldberg.

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.

Written some 40 years after Moby Dick, Melville's Billy Budd is a moving tale of good versus evil. Set aboard a British navy ship at the end of the eighteenth century, a young, innocent sailor's charm and good nature put the men around him at ease. Ship life agreed with Billy. He made friends quickly and was well liked, which infuriated John Claggart, the ship's cold-blooded superior officer.

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.

From money-making schemes involving placing wagers on vicars to poor Bingo having to produce the village school Christmas entertainments, every one of Wodehouse’s superb short stories are guarantee to raise a smile from even the most stony-faced listener!

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?