Classic American Short Stories Anthology

Elizabeth Gaskell, famed author of Cranford, is cherished for her incise social observations and portrayals of the changing nature of English life through the Industrial Revolution of the Victorian era. In Cousin Phillis, Paul Manning has only recently left home to work on the railway line for the dashing Mr Holdsworth. Lodging with an Independent Minister on the outskirts of London, he becomes acquainted with his distant cousins, where he is delighted to meet his genial relations, and not least his cousin Phyllis

These rib-ticklers include Mark Twain's "The Story of the Old Ram" and "The Story of a Speech"; E. P. Butler's "Pigs Is Pigs"; W. A. Butler's "Nothing to Wear"; Charles Dudley Warner's "How I Killed a Bear"; Eugene Field's "Oon Criteek de Bernhardt", William Livingstone Alden's "Carrie's Comedy", and Edith Wharton's "The Pelican".

With Nathaniel Hawthorn's "The Maypole of Merrymount", A Magical Reality Chautauqua Show records a pivotal incident in our earliest American history, with legend and lore casting significant light on our origins. Hawthorne's craft allows us to be present for the birth pangs of our wildly adventurous American enterprise.

With "Buckshot Cheney's Last Train Ride" and "A Mysterious Visit", a Magical Reality Chatauqua Show celebrates the comic genius of Americana's premier folk humorist. Mark Twain has been making us laugh for generations and, with "Buckshot Cheney's Last Train Ride" and the preposterous income tax insights of "A Mysterious Visit," American Listener's Theatre presents us with the greatest known antidote to the waves of fear that grip the nation: some belly shaking laughter at the expense of our tormentors.

While Robert Louis Stevenson is most famous for novels like Treasure Island and Kidnapped, he also wrote a number of excellent stories of the supernatural. "Markheim" is one of his best.

Thomas Hardy (1840-1928) was an English novelist and poet whose work is best known for combining the traditions of Romanticism with a realistic portayal of a declining rural society in Victorian England. "The Fiddler of the Reels" tells the story of a love triangle. The enigmatic, brilliant and rakish violin player, Wat Ollamore, who arrives in the small South Wessex village of Mellstock, exercises a diabolical fascination with the young, impressionable Car'line Aspent.

A dramatized, abridged performance of Alice in Wonderland with Eva Le Gallienne, Bambi Linn, and Margaret Webster.

During a visit to her dying friend, a woman discovers to her horror that his family and his home are one. SonicMovies are premium audios with strong vocal performances enhanced by music and sound effects to such an extent they sound like movies, hence, SonicMovies.

Two older men are set to oppose each other for sharing a similar interest in business. Once a pie is mashed into the head of one, and a bit of a 'raslin' match is concluded, the elderly men set about making up while planning the largest business in the nation. If their plan works it would change America, but would their wives approve? Will the men even be bold enough to share their idea with their brides?