Short Classics

Under the Sunset is a fairy tale written by the famous Bram Stoker, writer of Dracula. This little tale is about a land described as 'under the sunset' and the story of what happens when hearts grow cold.

This audiobook contains 17 short stories inspired from famous classic fairy tales. In addition to 17 classic tales, you’ll get another three bonus stories from Aesop’s Fables book.

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.

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.

The two strikingly original short novels brought together here - in new translations by award-winning translators - were both literary gambles of a sort for Fyodor Dostoevsky. The first real expression of his genius, The Double is a surprisingly modern hallucinatory nightmare in which a minor official named Goliadkin becomes aware of a mysterious doppelgänger. Written 20 years later under the pressure of crushing debt, The Gambler is a stunning psychological portrait of a young man's exhilarating and destructive addiction.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Revisit the famous and fantastic realms conjured up by the world's most celebrated authors of fantasy in Legends - the greatest collection of original fantasy short novels ever published, where the best of the best tell all-new original tales set in the lands they created. Each audiobook presents the novels complete and unabridged, and will be sensational listening for the millions of fans of these writers and worlds.

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.

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.

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.

Russian literature exudes an atmosphere of mysticism, which is said to be a natural result of the simplicity of her people. Often, instead of being "about" anything, Russian stories sometimes seem to be the "thing" in itself. Be this as it may, it is an undeniable fact that with hardly any portent of future greatness to come, Russian literature suddenly sprang fully developed into existence in the 19th century.

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.

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?

Fifty great classic short stories selected from the works of the best writers of the last century.