Classic Literature Short Stories

A collection of ten classic short stories including "Lost Hearts", "Miss Brill", "The Yellow Paint", "An Encounter", and "The Phantom Coach".

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.

In this romance anthology, 10 Austenesque authors sketch Pride and Prejudice heroine Elizabeth Bennet's character through a collection of re-imaginings, set in the Regency through contemporary times. In Elizabeth: Obstinate, Headstrong Girl, she bares her most intimate thoughts, all the while offering biting social commentary about life’s absurdities. Elizabeth overcomes the obstacles of others’ opinions, not to mention her own flaws, to find a love truly worthy of her - her Mr. Darcy - all with humor and her sparkling charm.

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.

This short story by F. Scott Fitzgerald is included in the collection entitled Tales of the Jazz Age. It follows a 16-year-old boy from an affluent family in Mississippi on his way to the most exclusive preparatory school in the world. It is at this school that the boy, named John, meets Peter, a boy whose father is the richest man in the world. John is invited to stay in their home in the west on a break. As John learns more and more about the wealthy family, he discovers their dark, haunting secrets and finds himself running for his life.

Wolff here returns with fresh revelations - about biding one's time, or experiencing first love, or burying one's mother - that come to a variety of characters in circumstances at once everyday and extraordinary. A retired Marine enrolls in college while her son trains for Iraq. A lawyer takes a difficult deposition. An American in Rome indulges the Gypsy who's picked his pocket.

Widely acclaimed as a progenitor of 20th-century Latin American fiction, Joaquim Maria Machado de Assis (1839-1908), the son of a mulatto father and a washerwoman, was hailed in his lifetime as Brazil's greatest writer. His prodigious output of novels, plays, and stories rivaled contemporaries like Chekhov, Flaubert, and Maupassant, but, shockingly, he was barely translated into English until 1963, and still lacks proper recognition today.

A fascinating collection of short stories by great writers that examine aspects of the first world war, from action in the trenches, to the psychological impact of war on individuals and their relationships, to heroic adventure stories, to ghosts and war graves. A wonderful collection!

Don Paolo Drago, “dragon by name, dragon by nature,” appears to dominate this world, yet he barely controls his own thoughts and feelings. Despite himself, he is drawn into the destiny of two orphans. Yet tragedy stalks the life of Don Paolo. His own daughters and wife are dead and long buried in the grave. Like a living ghost, he waits for death, carrying on a wretched existence. His bitterness is his one defense, in a world full of emptiness. Yet the arrival of the orphans challenges everything he has believed.

As a dense yellow fog swirls through the streets of London, a deep melancholy has descended on Sherlock Holmes, who sits in a cocaine-induced haze at 221B Baker Street. His mood is only lifted by a visit from a beautiful but distressed young woman - Mary Morstan, whose father vanished 10 years before. Four years later, she began to receive an exquisite gift every year: a large, lustrous pearl. Now she has had an intriguing invitation to meet her unknown benefactor and urges Holmes and Watson to accompany her.

Published in chronological order, with extensive story and bibliographic notes, this series not only provides access to stories that have been out of print for years, but gives them a historical and social context. Series editors Scott Conners and Ronald S. Hilger excavated the still-existing manuscripts, letters and various published versions of the stories, creating a definitive "preferred text" for Smith's entire body of work. This third volume of the series brings together 21 of his fantasy stories.

These four novels remain classics 100 years after they were published. They not only shaped the literature of the 20th century, but they altered our views of life and reality—and what can and cannot be written about. These novels—all written a century ago—remain gripping and unforgettable. These audio versions bring their powerful narratives vividly to life for the modern listener.

Perhaps best known for her classic novel The Age of Innocence, Wharton loved the short story form because its brevity allowed her to concentrate on telling the story. In these three powerful stories, Edith Wharton transports the listener to the turn of the century, where she depicts (without turning to sensationalism) the shocking topics of the time. Often, she opens just after an incident, allowing the listener to be immersed straight into the story.

The first American book on personal finance, "The Way to Wealth" by Benjamin Franklin is still the best and wisest money book ever written. Originally published in 1758 as the preface to "Poor Richard's Almanack", this little gem has been through innumerable printings and sold millions of copies to those in search of smart but entertaining advice about hard work, earning and saving money and debt.

In the realm of narrative literature, the appeal of the short story is that it provides nearly immediate satisfaction. Here is a collection of wonderful classic short stories by such great authors as Saki, G.K. Chesterton, Edgar Wallace and O. Henry.

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.

After executing the perfect crime, a woman inherits an estate by poisoning its original owner and learns that we are sometimes our own worst enemy.

Emily Dickinson (1830-1886) was a reclusive poet whose only friendships were carried out in correspondence. Despite writing almost 1800 poems in her life, very few were published until after her death. Here, the poems are presented in chronological order in their original form, unaltered by editorial revision, in one volume. It offers a wide-angle view of Dickinson's poetic development, from the clunky rhyme schemes of her youth, through valentines she wrote in the early 1850s, to the gloomy, hell-obsessed writings of her last years.

En El Príncipe Feliz, Oscar Wilde narra, de manera sumamente conmovedora, el primer y último intento de un príncipe por ayudar a su pueblo; para ello contará con la ayuda de una intrépida golondrina, y juntos, lo entregarán todo en nombre del amor. El sufrimiento de los hombres y de las mujeres es aún más sorprendente, no hay misterio tan grande como la miseria... Vuela sobre mi ciudad, pequeña golondrina, y dime qué ves allí.

Widely considered one of Isaac Bashevis Singer's most notable works of short fiction, "Gimpel the Fool" was originally written in Yiddish. It was later translated into English by Saul Bellow and appeared inthe 1953 edition of Partisan Review. The story, a parable, tells of a foolish, unlucky baker named Gimpel, who isconstantly tricked and heckled by other villagers. His follies ultimately reveal a moral lesson.