Short Stories

An incomparable master storyteller in all forms, in The Corn Maiden and Other Nightmares Joyce Carol Oates spins six imaginative tales of suspense. The Corn Maiden is the gut-wrenching story of Marissa, a beautiful and sweet, but somewhat slow, eleven-year-old girl with hair the color of corn silk. Her single mother comes home one night to find her missing and panics, frantically knocking on the doors of her neighbors.

Harlan Ellison's masterwork of myth and terror as he seduces all innocence on a mind-freezing odyssey into the darkest reaches of mortal terror and the most dazzling heights of Olympian hell in his finest collection. Deathbird Stories is a collection of 19 of Harlan Ellison's best stories, including Edgar and Hugo winners, originally published between 1960 and 1974.

Award-winning author and human rights activist Ishmael Beah brings us The Door to Tamba, a powerful story centered on a mining village in West Africa where the destruction of earth and pollution of life impacts the mind, body, and soul of communities. Hindolo, a storyteller, returns to his hometown after 30 years and recalls the solitary and formidable old man who opened his home to him and introduced a world of literature and imagination, which for many years, was his only escape. Hindolo begins writing the stories down on paper stolen from a nearby mine to share with his classmates.

Herman Melville’s tale of corporate discontent, Bartleby, the Scrivener, tells the story of a quiet, hardworking legal copyist who works in an office in the Wall Street area of New York City. The business where he works handles the official financial paperwork of wealthy men. One day, Bartleby’s employer requests he proofread one of the documents he has copied. Bartleby declines the assignment with the inscrutable “I would prefer not,” the first of what will become many refusals.

A Pulitzer Prize finalist and winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award, New York Times best-selling author Dave Eggers is the voice of a generation. This stunning collection of his matchless short fiction includes the highly acclaimed “The Only Meaning of Oil-Wet Water.”

In these two famous short novels, Leo Tolstoy takes readers to the brink of despair. At the end of life, worldly ambition offers no consolation for the spiritually empty soul, but Tolstoy is the master of themes and redemption. He turns his morbid topic into hope, leading toward spiritual awakening. Tolstoy offers his readers a lifetime of perspective on death.

"Through all the world there goes one long cry from the heart of the artist: give me leave to do my utmost." This line from "Babette's Feast" lends itself to both of the stories in this audio collection, which tell of unbreakable human spirit and total commitment to life choices. "Babette's Feast," now an award-winning film, takes a humorous look at a pure-spirited community in which love, lost youth, self-denial, and creative urges contribute to making the right choices. And "Sorrow-Acre," the most anthologized of Isak Dinesen's stories, challenges the most profound choice of all. Emmy and Tony Award-winning actress Colleen Dewhurst's warm, sensitive interpretation reveals the subtle beauty of Dinesen's prose.

With an introduction by J. J. Pierce, this volume features the 12 most important stories by Cordwainer Smith, a unique writer who has fused wonder and poetry into imaginative tales that transcend both science and fiction.

From New York Times best-selling author Kendall Ryan comes Forbidden Desires: The Complete Series, containing every title in the sexy and intense best-selling series. This box set includes four best-selling novels: Dirty Little Secret, Dirty Little Promise, Torrid Little Affair, and Tempting Little Tease.

In the words of Alexander McCall Smith: "You feel the rocking of the train, you hear the sound of its wheels on the rails; you are in the world rather than suspended somewhere above it. And sometimes there are conversations to be had, which is what the overarching story in this collection is all about. It is a simple device: people brought together entertain one another with tales of what happened to them on trains. It takes place on a journey I frequently make myself and know well, the journey between Edinburgh and London. It is best read on a train, preferably that one."

Acclaimed best-selling author Peter F. Hamilton has taken the science fiction world by storm with his stunning, grand-scale epic: The Reality Dysfunction, The Neutronium Alchemist, and The Naked God. Now, with this collection of six stories and a short novel, Hamilton spans more than five centuries in the future history of bitek, affinity genes, Edenists, Adamists, xenocs, the Saldanas, and the starship Lady Macbeth.

From the opening story, "Willing" - about a second-rate movie actress in her 30s who has moved back to Chicago, where she makes a seedy motel room her home and becomes involved with a mechanic who has not the least idea of who she is as a human being - Birds of America unfolds a startlingly brilliant series of portraits of the unhinged, the lost, the unsettled of our America. Lorrie Moore explores the personal and the universal, the idiosyncratic and the mundane, with all the wit, brio, and verve that have made her one of the best storytellers of our time.

Another rollicking short story from the Chronicles of St Mary’s author Jodi Taylor. Question: What sort of idiot installs his mistress in his wife’s house? Especially when that mistress is Cleopatra VII Thea Philopator, queen of Egypt and the most notorious woman of her time? Answer: Julius Caesar - poised to become king of Rome. Or as good as.

This collection contains a mixture of stories about ghosts and contacts from spirits, some by celebrated authors, together with essays on psychical research. As Joseph French notes in the preface, even for the skeptic, tales of ghostly activity retain a distinct fascination. The widespread interest in psychic phenomena in the early twentieth century proved to be a significant stimulus to literary production.

This short thriller takes Joe Ledger into the mysterious, troubled town of Pine Deep, Pennsylvania, the setting for Maberry’s chilling Pine Deep Trilogy. In Pine Deep, nothing is what it seems.

At the age of 12, Joel Knox is summoned to meet the father who abandoned him at birth. But when Joel arrives at the decaying mansion in Skully's Landing, his father is nowhere in sight. What he finds instead is a sullen stepmother who delights in killing birds; an uncle with the face - and heart - of a debauched child; and a fearsome little girl named Idabel who may offer him the closest thing he has ever known to love.

Jesus was a skilled storyteller and perceptive teacher who used parables from everyday life to effectively convey his message and meaning. Life in first-century Palestine was very different from our world today, and many traditional interpretations of Jesus' stories ignore this disparity and have often allowed anti-Semitism and misogyny to color their perspectives. In this wise, entertaining, and educational book, Amy-Jill Levine offers a fresh, timely reinterpretation of Jesus' narratives.

The world is rapidly changing. We surf future-shock every day, as the progress of technology races ever on. Increasingly we are asking: how do we change to live in the world to come? Multi-award-winning editor Jonathan Strahan brings us another incredible volume in his much praised science-fiction anthology series.

More than any writer before or since, Louis L'Amour brought the American West to life. His action-packed stories deal with eternal themes: honor, deceit, passion, betrayal, loyalty, courage, love. His settings are historically accurate, his prose riveting, and his characters colorful: good guys, bad guys, toughs, roughs, sidekicks, and saints.

This classic tale is a fantastical fable of two dear friends - one of whom goes astray and is literally lost to the north woods, while the other undertakes an epic journey to rescue him. This charming, strange, and wonderful story is a timeless allegory about growing up and the challenges of staying true to one's self, and it served as the wintry inspiration for the blockbuster hit Frozen.