Short For Teens

A powerful collection of short stories telling the tales of a Mexican American childhood ideal for fans of Gary Soto. Welcome to Southern Texas. Meet Loco, a dog with a passion for firecrackers, and Pedro, an altar boy forced to lean a hard lesson from two of the toughest, oldest men ever to serve the Lord. Jordan and Todd are two boys from California who don't know what they're in for when they push their Texas cousins a little too far.

Siblings Alexina and Stephen are down on their luck this year and resign themselves to not having a Christmas dinner. But when their wealthy, gourmand uncle James invites himself to their house for Christmas, the pair scramble to lay out a sumptuous feast, including his favorite, Mince pie. But 10 minutes before the turkey is done, an unforeseeable disaster occurs that threatens to ruin everything.

In Aunt Cyrilla's Christmas Basket, Lucy Rose tries to talk her folksy Aunt Cyrilla out of bringing her big, bulgy, funny-looking basket to the city to deliver Christmas goodies to their relatives in the city. When their train is stranded during a snow storm, Aunt Cyrilla and her fellow passengers team up to provide a proper Christmas morning for the little ones in their care.

It's Christmas Eve in Ingleside and a family reunion is underway. Old Nanny looks on at all the merriment and is angry that no one has spoken a word about the recently deceased Miss Avis. Unable to bear it any longer Nanny creates a miniature holly wreath to bring to Miss Avis' grave. But shortly after she arrives, she hears footsteps approaching the grave.

In The End of the Young Family Feud, three sisters accept an invitation from their Aunt Jean to join them at their father's ancestral home for Christmas. But when they arrive, there is no one there to greet them, a feast has been laid out along with presents for all three and the home is in a strange state of disarray. Will they meet the feared Uncle William, who has a long-standing feud with their father?

Out on the prairie, the Joseph family is all astir with concealing their Christmas gifts for one another. But will Santa come this year? After all, the crops had failed this summer and they were on short commons. When their town neighbors, the Ralstons ask to take refuge overnight at the Joseph's on Christmas Eve, they make a shakedown bed in front of the fire. But what will become of the big bundle of gifts they carried in with them?

Clorinda laments being poor around Christmastime to her Aunt Emmy. Emmy remarks that some of the best presents aren't bought and paid for and declines to explain, only asking Clorinda to think it out. When she does this, Clorinda determines to give a little bit of herself in priceless presents to her loved ones near and far.

In Matthew Insists on Puffed Sleeves, Anne Shirley's guardian Marilla keeps Anne dressed in plain, dark clothes unlike the other girls her age. Matthew Cuthbert, Anne's kindred spirit and sometime benefactor, struggles to figure out how to solve this problem. He overcomes his shyness to ensure that a wonderful, unexpected present is waiting for Anne on Christmas day.

Boxed set containing all the volumes of the What a Girl Wants series by Emma Reid and Third Cousins. From Book 1: Sarah has spent her whole life fighting against her father’s wishes. She doesn’t care about his old beliefs and traditions; she just wants to go to college. Sarah’s determined to do something with her life that doesn’t involve baking pies and being a good wife, and she’s convinced that with enough hard work, she’ll manage it all. That is, until she gets put on a class assignment with Robert Hasting who seems intent on causing trouble in her life.

The Dreaded Summons and Other Misplaced Bills investigates seven unfortunate accounts piled together to make you laugh. The collection opens with Tina Teatree, who has a compulsion for weeding that soon digs up the root of her problem. The title story is "The Dreaded Summons", about an introvert and his friendship with a lost manatee. Other stories reveal the Breakfast Hunter, J.J. Whitweather, Shirley Short, and Fig B. Willingsbee.

Sarah has been left with nothing - not even hope. The person she trusted the most has deceived her and now she doesn’t know what to do. All she knows is what she is being forced to do. If she doesn’t get a job quickly then she’s going to lose her place at college. Robert can’t believe he’s messed things up so badly. It isn’t even his own pain that he’s bothered about. It’s the fact that he’s hurt Sarah. He knows that he has to make things right. He knows that he has to prove to her that she’s worth so much more to him than money. So he comes up with a plan....

Sarah has decided that supporting Rob is the right thing to do, even if it puts her in an awkward position. She knows that with the loss of his father, he’s going to need her when he returns home to a place that he hasn’t been in years. She’s worried, though. She’s worried about how his sisters are going to treat her after his father took such a disliking to her and told her she would never be part of the family.

"The Adventure of the Norwood Builder" is one of the 56 Sherlock Holmes short stories written by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. It was the second tale published in The Return of Sherlock Holmes in 1903.

This is a selection from Kipling's The Second Jungle Book.

A collection featuring three classic horror stories, read by actor Earl Hammond: "The Tell-Tale Heart", "The Cask of Amontillado", and "The Black Cat".

"The Adventure of the Abbey Grange" is one of the 56 Sherlock Holmes short stories written by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle and is one of 13 stories in the collection The Return of Sherlock Holmes.

Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley was an English romantic and gothic novelist who is most famous as the author of Frankenstein, or The Modern Prometheus. She was married to the notable Romantic poet Percy Bysshe Shelley. She also wrote a number of shorter "tales of the unnatural", of which "The Mortal Immortal", a story of a man who will not die, is the most famous.

There’s nothing better than taking your timid little cousin Thad to one of those sweet haunted houses the 4-H Club decorates for Halloween. Except, of course, if the house turns out to actually be haunted. A short story from Guys Read: Thriller, edited by Jon Scieszka.

Mary E. Wilkins Freeman is known primarily as a "feminist" and "local color" writer, for such classic tales as "The Revolt of Mother". She wrote very entertaining stories that included clear depictions of the pressures that often silenced or devalued women and their concerns. This famous story gets that message across but not without a bit of humor.

Professor Van Dusen solves a variety of different mysteries together with his friend, Hutchinson Hatch, a reporter for a fictional newspaper called The Daily New Yorker. The professor is known as the "Thinking Machine", and he solves problems by the remorseless application of logic. In this story, he thinks his way out of a maximum-security prison.