Classic Literature Anthology

This recording contains four of Katherine Mansfield's best stories. In The Daughters of the Late Colonel, two sisters are recently bereaved; while in Her First Ball a young girl attends her first dance. The Singing Lesson features Miss Meadows, a music teacher in turmoil; and in The Stranger, a middle-aged couple are reunited.

Les deux des plus grands textes de la littérature française réunis dans cette compilation pour le plus grand plaisir des admirateurs de Maupassant.

The profoundly original and wildly entertaining short stories of a legendary Twilight Zone writer. It is only natural that Charles Beaumont would make a name for himself crafting scripts for The Twilight Zone - for his was an imagination so limitless it must have emerged from some other dimension. Perchance to Dream contains a selection of Beaumont's finest stories, including five that he later adapted for Twilight Zone episodes.

The compelling novel that began Shirley Jackson's legendary career Pepper Street is a really nice, safe California neighborhood. The houses are tidy and the lawns are neatly mowed. Of course, the country club is close by, and lots of pleasant folks live there. The only problem is they knocked...

The author of outstanding travel books, autobiographical works and novels, including the classic "The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn", "Mark Twain" (Samuel Langhorne Clemens, 1835–1910) is regarded by many as America's finest humorist and a major writer of short stories. The four selections in this volume span his entire writing career and are among his best-known stories.

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!

This is a story from the Murders in the Rue Morgue (The Dupin Stories) collection. Auguste Dupin, investigator extraordinaire, was the remarkable creation of Edgar Allan Poe. Written in the 1840s, Poe presented the acutely observant, shrewd but idiosyncratic character who, with his chronicler, provided the inspiration for the more famous Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson.

“I was sick, sick unto death with that long agony,” begins one of the most famous tales from the master of the macabre, Edgar Allan Poe. Through the tortures of the Spanish Inquisition, we follow the straying mind of the unnamed prisoner in his quest for hope in a world of darkness and despair. This episode skyrocketed The Classic Tales Podcast to number 3 on iTunes’ Top 100 Podcasts chart.

Dubliners is a collection of 15 short stories by James Joyce, first published in 1914. The stories comprise a naturalistic depiction of Irish middle-class life in and around Dublin in the early years of the 20th century. The stories were written when Irish nationalism was at its peak, and a search for a national identity and purpose was raging; at a crossroads of history and culture, Ireland was jolted by various converging ideas and influences.

Spanning four decades in the mid-19th century, the interconnected novellas of Old New York lay out in vivid detail the complex and inscrutable codes, customs, and taboos of New York society in classic Wharton style.

Just So Stories is a collection of contemporary children's stories by Rudyard Kipling. Many of the stories are fictitious explanations for natural occurrences, including the stories How the Whale Got His Throat and How the Camel Got His Hump. These stories will keep children entertained for hours.

In this collection of classic ghost stories from Japan, beautiful princesses turn out to be frogs, paintings come alive, deadly spectral brides haunt the living and a samurai delivers the baby of a Shinto goddess with mystical help. Here are all the phantoms and ghouls of Japanese folklore: 'rokuro-kubi', whose heads separate from their bodies at night; 'jikininki', or flesh-eating goblins; and terrifying faceless 'mujina' who haunt lonely neighbourhoods.

Henry van Dyke shares a wonderful morality tale in his 1895 The Other Wise Man, as a metaphor for the life of a true Christian. Telling the story of a fourth king who saw the signs but never reached the Christ child in time, van Dyke introduces us to the values of good deeds and charity while searching for the path to Jesus. Because as Jesus keeps eluding the fourth king, he unknowingly gets closer to him with every righteous act he performs.

The inevitable is understood by each and every one of us who faces the final calling. So too are the effects on those left behind. The memories are there but the empty space, the void can never be refilled. It remains a dark, unreliable pit of loneliness. The sadness and often depression, the lack of will to continue may swamp us all. Unquenchable, undeniable. But loss can, after mourning, give the opportunity to reappraise the lost and how we can each move forward. In the literary world an accessible balance can be given.

Kurt Vonnegut made his mark as one of America’s most influential writers with novels such as Slaughterhouse Five, named one of the 100 best English-language novels by Time. Published posthumously, While Mortals Sleep is a collection of 16 short stories, written early in Vonnegut’s career, that further cements his status as an American literary icon.

Here are 11 short stories and one novella by Anton Chekhov, one of the finest masters of what is acknowledged as a difficult genre. There is the richly comic "Oh! The Public" about a hassled ticket inspector, a wry look at morals and manners in "The Chorus Girl", and the melancholic tale of a cab driver in "Misery".

Flamboyant, theatrical and ambitious, Margaret Cavendish was one of the 17th century's most striking figures: a woman who ventured into the male spheres of politics, science, philosophy and literature. The Blazing World is a highly original work: part Utopian fiction, part feminist text, it tells of a lady shipwrecked on the Blazing World where she is made empress and uses her power to ensure that it is free of war, religious division and unfair sexual discrimination. This volume also includes 'The Contract' and 'Assaulted and Pursued Chastity'.

The title work in this collection of ten short stories and poems is widely regarded as the most famous of Edgar Allan Poe’s writings. This unsettling tale in verse tells of a man’s slow descent into madness as he mourns the loss of his lover. The mysterious visit of a talking raven that utters only one word sparks the man’s steady decline.

From one of the world's most beloved and outspoken public intellectuals comes an illuminating book on the nature of criticism "Readers will be surprised, stimulated, instructed, impressed."―The New Yorker “What is a beginning? What must one do in order to begin? What is special about...

William Shakespeare is arguably the most pivotal and widely read figure in the history of English literature. This comprehensive collection highlights some of the bard’s best works, adapted to be more easily digestible for children. Featured within are some of the bard’s most famous and compelling works, including: The Comedy of Errors, Hamlet, Macbeth, The Merchant of Venice, Othello, Romeo and Juliet, The Tempest, and many more.