Classic Literature Short Stories

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.

The four stories in this compilation, not by James, are meant to serve as prime illustrations of the best work of a few of his contemporaries and immediate antecedents.

Award-winning storyteller Barbara McBride-Smith breathes life (albeit a wizened Texan version) into the old Greek myths. With her incurable Texas drawl, she spins the Greek myths as you've never heard them before, rendering them 99% more fun while retaining 100% of their original insights into the crooked ways of the human heart and the no less crooked ways of the ancient Greek gods.

A full-frontal confrontation of the ways we perform desire and shame—from the downright bizarre to the frighteningly relatable—by the award-winning author of A Sharp Endless Need An employee at a hunting ground where people pay to act out hate crimes prepares to meet their girlfriend’s...

A gripping collection of propulsive, psychologically suspenseful stories by the legendary Joyce Carol Oates “who is surely on any shortlist of America’s greatest living writers” (The New York Times Magazine) “A genius in the truest sense of the word.”—Rebecca Makkai “One of the...

Inside this delightful collection, you'll uncover seven tales from literary legends whose work shaped the world of writing. From gothic horror to existentialist reflections on life and society, inside you'll also find your fair share of adventures, fantastical places, compelling characters, and moral lessons.

Lauren Groff presents nine stories of astonishing insight and variety, each revealing a resonant drama within the life of a 20th-century American woman. In some of these stories, enormous changes happen in an instant. In others, transformations occur across a lifetime---or several lifetimes. Throughout the collection, Groff displays particular and vivid preoccupations.

Eighteen of the very best American short stories, each a classic in its own right. Stories include "The Little Frenchman and his Water Lots", by George Pope Morris; "The Angel of the Odd", by Edgar Allan Poe; "The Schoolmasters’s Progress", by Caroline M.S. Kirkland; "The Watkinson Evening", by Eliza Leslie; "Titbottom’s Spectacles", by George William Curtis; "My Double and "How He Undid Me", by Edward Everett Hale; "A Visit to the Asylum for Aged and Decayed Punsters", by Oliver Wendell; and more.

Edgar Allan Poe was a writer, poet, editor and literary critic. Poe is best known for his poetry and short stories, particularly his tales of mystery and the macabre, and is widely regarded as a central figure of Romanticism in the United States and of American literature. Poe was one of the country's earliest practitioners of the short story and considered to be the inventor of the detective fiction genre, as well as a significant contributor to the emerging genre of science fiction.

Now available for the first time in audio as a digital download, a selection of stories from Grace Paley. Whether writing about relationships, little girls, loving and bickering couples, angry suburbanites, frustrated job-seekers, or Jewish children performing a Christmas play, GRACE PALEY...

“Ahmad’s compassion, her deep care for the psychological and emotional nuances of her characters, never wavers.” – The New York Times Book Review In a searing collection by the award-winning author of The Return of Faraz Ali, characters seek to make their futures their own in a Pakistan...

This new Cyanide Publishing edition contains three classic audiobooks by Maurice LeBlanc as well as background articles.Follow the exploits of Arsene Lupin, the greatest of all white-glove thieves and the original gentleman burglar. Mystery and tension build, but humor prevails throughout as Monsieur Lupin and Chief Inspector Guerchard try mightily to outwit each other. Slapstick humor, witty asides, and some unexpected twists.

Loss in any form seems to burden us with more weight than anything that can possibly be gained or learnt from. The loss of a person, a loved one, is often overwhelming. Lives so interwoven that the severing or loss of one life leaves the other weakened, unable to function for some time. Recovery comes in a myriad of forms but is usually debilitating, slow and, in the end, we are not as whole as we once were.It is a subject that authors return to again and again.

In this 1914 collection of short stories by P.G. Wodehouse, listeners are beckoned into the whimsical universe of P.G. Wodehouse, where wit dances hand in hand with charm. Through these stories, Wodehouse showcases his mastery of the short form, offering vignettes that sparkle with his trademark humor and keen observation of human nature.

He went searching for a fresh start. He didn’t expect to find unusual friends, fierce enemies, and primal powers. Jason thought that it was the end of his life after being hunted and attacked by a band of ruthless thugs. Instead, he tapped into the source of creation and emerged from his death experience with magical powers. As a new mage, Jason finds himself part of a wonderful - and dangerous - new supernatural world.

In a remote part of 19th-century Afghanistan, two British adventurers pursue their ambition to rule an empire. Using betrayal, threats, and guns, they win the respect of a primitive tribe and become worshipped as gods until one day they draw blood, and the game is up. "The Man Who Would Be King" is an action-packed tale about the pitfalls of colonialism and the temptations and evils of power.

"White Nights" is the third major Dostoyevsky short story that everyone should read or listen to, along with "A Faint Heart" and "The Christmas Tree and Wedding". The story contains a series of Winesburg, Ohio-like moments: a woman and man meet on the First Night; proceed to meet again on the Second and Third, almost fall in love, and at the last minute the former lover of the woman returns to take her away. But the point is that the man had a glorious moment....

Ernest Hemingway’s In Our Time provides listeners a semi-autobiographical coming-of-age story following lead character Nick Adams through a series of short stories around the time of World War I. It was praised by fellow authors John Dos Passos and F. Scott Fitzgerald for its precision and simplicity in its messaging. With gruff prose and blunt dialogue that would become standards of his career, it established Hemingway as one of the most promising young American writers of his era.

T.C. Boyle was first feted as a master of the short story for his critically acclaimed Greasy Lake. With these stories applauded by People magazine as "wickedly comical," he displays once again a virtuosity and versatility rare in literary America today. Without a Hero zooms in on American...

This collection of 11 stories spans virtually the whole of Tolstoy's creative life. While each is unique in form, as a group they are representative of his style, and touch on the central themes that surface in War and Peace and Anna Karenina. Stories as different as "The Snowstorm", "Lucerne", "The Diary of a Madman", and "The Devil" are grounded in autobiographical experience. They deal with journeys of self-discovery and the moral and religious thought that characterizes Tolstoy's works of criticism and philosophy.