Short Stories Fairy Tales

"Years later," Donald Davis remember of his childhood," I came to realize that when you come from a long-dammed-up Scots-Irish gene pool it is an okay thing to wish for something, but it is not an OK thing to get it."

A toy giant and a clockwork unicorn star in this retelling of Aesop's fable "The Lion and the Mouse" in a steampunk fantasy setting.

Thirteen award-winning fantasy and science fiction writers offer up their versions of these classic fairy tales as well as other favorites, including The Ugly Duckling, Ali Baba, Hansel and Gretel, and more. Some of the stories are funny, some are strange, and others are dark and disturbing - but each offers something as unexpected as a wolf at the door.

Jack Brown is an unhappy painter whose glass is always half-empty. He lives on the top floor of an apartment complex next to a perky, optimistic witch named Cassie and her troublesome cat. This Halloween, beneath a full moon, Jack stumbles onto a magic spell that brings him far more than he bargained for. Will his pride allow him to ask Cassie for help? And if so...will he manage to do it before he is doomed?

When we came to America, we brought anger and socialism and hunger. We also brought our demons. In Burning Girls and Other Stories, Veronica Schanoes crosses borders and genres with stories of fierce women at the margins of society burning their way toward the center. This debut collection introduces listeners to a fantasist in the vein of Karen Russell and Kelly Link, with a voice all her own.

Inspired by Hans Christian Andersen's "The Red Shoes", New York Times best-selling author K. W. Jeter's "La Valse" forges a fable about love, the decadence of technology, and a gala dance that becomes the obsession of a young engineer - and the doom of those who partake in it. In "You Will Attend Until Beauty Awakens", national best-selling author and John W. Campbell Award winner Jay Lake tells the story of Sleeping Beauty - and how the princess was conceived in deception, raised in danger, and rescued by a prince who may be less than valiant.

Dyana Graceford never asked for her engagement to the mysterious Prince Rydan, who has been locked away in a tower for most of his life due to an unknown but terrible affliction. She had no way of knowing, however, that this unwanted engagement would lead her into the woods of the infamous witch who burdened the prince with his curse. Can she convince the witch to lift it? Or will Prince Rydan be doomed to spend the rest of his life as a monster?

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, Jurnee Smollett, Charlize Theron, and Blair Underwood.

Meet Syrenka, a little mermaid who must convince her father the Sea King, not to start a war against the humans. Except she had become the very thing he despised...she is secretly living on land as a human. A fairy tale fantasy adventure prequel! This short story takes place after the events in Hans Christian Andersen’s Little Mermaid and before Roy Mauritsen’s epic Shards of the Glass Slipper series.

What if you could get high on someone else's emotions? When Alice joins her boyfriend's university experiment in shared consciousness she discovers a world where thoughts are reality and concepts are smells. Her scientific brain, still trying to prove whether or not two people can exist in the same headspace, is soon overwhelmed by the presence of other people, some dreaming, others hunting.

“Deluge” is a stand-alone backstory of two characters from the Paternus trilogy. In this short story, myths, fables, and legends from around the world are combined to recount the adventures of Fintán mac Bóchra and Myrddin Wyllt in ancient Ireland and tell the “true” tale of the global disaster known as the Great Flood.

Danny is trapped in Leria, an alternate realm, made by sorcerers and for sorcerers. There’s only one problem with this magical world: Four of the five kingdoms have been invaded by an authoritarian regime. Having narrowly escaped Leria and found his way back to his realm, will Daniel risk it all and go back, in order to save an ally that he’d made and left in turmoil? If he was a sorcerer by blood and his mother had never mentioned it to him, could it be that his magical heritage comes from his long-deceased father?

American Fairy Tales, A Collection of 3 Short Stories, #02 contains three stories written in 1901 by L. Frank Baum. This audiobook contains three of Baum's stories: "The Girl Who Owned a Bear", "The Enchanted Types", and "The Laughing Hippopotamus".

A decade after Nocturnes first terrified and delighted listeners, John Connolly, best-selling author of 13 acclaimed thrillers featuring private investigator Charlie Parker, gives us a second volume of tales of the supernatural.

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.

American Fairy Tales, A Collection of 3 Short Stories, #04 contains three short stories written in 1901 by L. Frank Baum. This audiobook contains 3 of Baum's stories: "The Dummy That Lived", "The King of the Polar Bears", and "The Mandarin and the Butterfly".

American Fairy Tales, A Collection of 3 Short Stories, #01 contains three stories written in 1901 by L. Frank Baum. This audiobook contains three of Baum’s stories: "The Box of Robbers", "The Glass Dog", and "The Queen of Quonk".

In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, unique tales inspired by traditional literary forms appeared frequently in socialist-leaning British periodicals, such as the Clarion, Labour Leader, and Social Democrat. Based on familiar genres, these stories were meant to entertain readers of all ages - and some challenged the conventional values promoted in children’s literature for the middle class. Acclaimed critic and author Michael Rosen brings together more than 40 of the best and most enduring examples of these stories in one beautiful volume.

Eighteen extraordinary authors devise all-new fairy tales: imaginative reinterpretations of the familiar, evocative new myths, speculations beyond the traditional realm of "once upon a time." Often dark, occasionally humorous, always enthralling, these stories find a certain Puss in a near-future New York, an empress bargaining with a dragon, a princess turned into a raven, a king's dancing daughters with powerful secrets, great heroism, terrible villainy, sparks of mischief, and a great deal more.

If life really was a fairy tale, Zakara would never be the damsel in distress. She'd be a thief, and Prince Charming wouldn't have a clue how to steal the heart of the conniving criminal. Zakara saves not one, but three men locked inside the tallest tower. Her first instinct is to ditch them as soon as possible, but they have one thing that intrigues her more than wealth: Magic. Fae magic once ruled the world, until it disappeared without a trace. Only myths of the magic wielders linger in their destroyed society.