Classic Literature Short Stories

Роль классической литературы в жизни каждого без исключения человека невозможно переоценить. Именно из классики мы узнаем о прошедших эпохах, традициях, быте и нормах поведения прошлого.

Here is a collection of the Oscar Wilde's famous fairy tales, read by a cast of leading British actors. Additional narrators include Geoffrey Palmer O.B.E., Sir Donald Sinden, and Elaine Stritch. Music: 'Reverie De Sebastian' by Steve Davies.

The brilliance of this story is in how a normal bureaucrat, a judge in this case, has a small accident that winds up gradually taking his life. As he deals with this incident, with hope at first and then despair, he comes to terms with his family, his life, and the mediocrities that we all suffer with, except for the exceptional few. This story rings a particularly poignant note for those in early middle age facing the next part of their lives. This story is considered Tolstoy's best.

Œuvre la plus connue de Stefan Zweig, cette nouvelle relate une partie d'échecs durant laquelle un inconnu oppose une résistance inattendue à l'un des grands champions de la discipline. Mais qui est cet homme dont on apprendra plus tard qu'il fut prisonnier du régime nazi ? Comment fait-il pour jouer si bien aux échecs ?

From a variety of masterfully rendered perspectives, these six stories depict people at painful odds with the world around them. A wife can only surrender to a desert night by betraying her husband. An artist struggles to honor his own aspirations as well as society's expectations of him. A missionary brutally converted to the worship of a tribal fetish is left with but an echo of his identity. Whether set in North Africa, Paris, or Brazil, the stories in Exile and the Kingdom are probing portraits of spiritual exile, and man's perpetual search for an inner kingdom.

Charles Dickens started his literary career as a journalist reporting for ‘The Morning Chronicle,’ a profession which encouraged his observing eye. This collection of essays and short stories was first published in that journal and anticipates, and frequently demonstrates, the genius that was to come.

The stories in this volume, selected by Pulitzer Prize winner Elizabeth Strout, are tales of families trying to heal their wounds, save their marriages, and rescue their children. In "Ralph the Duck," a security guard struggles to hang on to his marriage. In "Name the Name," a traveling teacher attends to students outside the school, including his own son, locked in a country jail. In Busch's work, we are reminded that we have no idea what goes on behind closed doors or in the mind of another.

Though The Arabian Nights are generally known as stories for children, they were originally tales for adults full of adventure, sexuality, violence, and the supernatural. They certainly inspired the imagination of Sir Richard Burton, the 19th century explorer, linguist, and erotologist who brought all his worldly experience and superbly expressive prose style to bear on the tales of Sindbad the Seaman and Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves.

The hunter becomes the hunted. You listened to The Most Dangerous Game in high school and college, but you've never experienced Richard Connell's classic short story like this before! As part of our Otio Dramatized Classic series, Otio Stutios has transformed this iconic story into a full-cast audio production skillfully assembled by world-class sound designer Brandon Leith and executive producer George Caudill.

This reissue of the 1919 classic combines the immortal stories from Homer's Iliad and Odyssey into one glorious saga of heroism and magical adventure. Beloved by generations, Padraic Colum's masterful retelling of these epic adventures is remarkably fresh, consistently spellbinding, and unmatched for its richness and poetry.

With a horse between his thighs and a weapon in his grip, the dashing Brigadier Etienne Gerard, Colonel of the Hussars of Conflans, gallops through the Napoleonic campaigns on secret missions for his beloved Emperor and his country. He encounters danger and hair-breadth escapes but never loses his bravado, his eye for a pretty girl, his boastfulness, or his enormous vanity. Gerard is Conan Doyle’s most lovable character.

O. Henry, the pseudonym of the American writer William Sydney Porter (1862-1910), is best known for writing stories full of wit, wordplay, and warm characterizations, and particularly for their clever twist endings. This volume contains 20 of O. Henry's best and best-loved stories. They are marked by coincidence and surprise endings as well as the compassion and high humor that have made O. Henry's stories popular for the last century.

Algernon Blackwood, a journalist and broadcast narrator, was one of the most prolific writers of ghost stories in the history of the genre. The title story, "The Touch of Pan", explores the lingering presence of myth in everyday life. In "The Glamour of the Snow", Blackwood winds a tale about a man's infatuation with a supernatural winter beauty. In "The Attic", the ghost of an usurer haunts the old Chateaux and, on the anniversary of a young boy's death, the boy's cat brings the family together. "The Willows" follows two campers who are on a canoe trip down the Danube.

To this irresistible debut collection of short stories, Richard Russo brings the same bittersweet wit, deep knowledge of human nature, and spellbinding narrative gifts that distinguish his best-selling novels. His themes are the imperfect bargains of marriage; the discoveries and...

This collection of Willa Cather stories - her first book of fiction and the capstone of her early career - is as relevant today as at the time of its initial publication. As different and individually distinguished as the seven stories may be, they share as their subject the role and status of the artist in American society.

W.W. Jacobs was an English writer, famous for his humorous short stories, particularly those relating the preposterous adventures and misadventures of sailors on leave. This collection, Short Cruises, contains some of W.W. Jacobs' most popular characters, including the night watchman at the docks in Wapping who relates the stories of his friends Ginger Dick, Sam Small, and Peter Russet.

Anton Chekhov is widely considered one of the best short-story writers of all time. Having influenced such writers as Ernest Hemingway, Raymond Carver, and James Joyce, Chekhov’s stories are often noted for their stream-of-consciousness style and their vast number. Raymond Carver once said, “It is not only the immense number of stories he wrote - for few, if any, writers have ever done more - it is the awesome frequency with which he produced masterpieces, stories that shrive us as well as delight and move us, that lay bare our emotions in ways only true art can accomplish.”

Thought-provoking, lyrical, and timeless, this collection lingers in the imagination long after the final word. Press play now and let Bliss and Other Stories transport you into a world where every glance, gesture, and thought brims with meaning, subtle revelation, and unforgettable beauty.

The G.K. Chesterton Classics Collection brings together some of the most celebrated works of one of the 20th century's most influential writers, spanning his diverse contributions to detective fiction, theology, storytelling, and poetry. This richly illustrated edition includes key works such as The Innocence of Father Brown, featuring the iconic amateur detective whose sharp intellect and moral insight unravel complex mysteries; Orthodoxy, Chesterton's profound defense of Christian faith; and The Ballad of the White Horse, a lyrical epic about King Alfred the Great.

Chekhov has always been huge inspiration for many great writers who came in contact with Chekhov's art. Thomas Mann wrote that Chekhov's short stories attain full epic stature and can even surpass in intensity the great towering novels. 'If I understood that better in later life than in my youth, this was largely owing to my growing intimacy with Chekhov's art; for his short stories rank with all that is greatest and best in European literature,' he concluded.