English Classic Short Stories

John Glover reads a selection of unabridged short stories, including "Graveyard Shift," from Stephen King's best-selling collection Night Shift...

Step into a world where innocence meets the infinite, and the everyday collides with the supernatural. The Mysterious Stranger and Other Stories represents Mark Twain at his most philosophical, daring, and haunting. Far removed from his lighthearted tales of riverboats and boyhood adventures, Twain here explores the mysteries of existence, morality, and the fragile nature of human belief.

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.

From Santa's lost sleigh bell to the clever goose who made it snow, there's a festive adventure for everyone in these jolly short stories from Enid Blyton, the world's best-loved storyteller. These traditional tales are ideal for younger children. Each story stands alone and is the perfect length for bedtime or in the classroom.

Our ‘fight of flight’ response is something hardwired into the primitive part of our brain. Our need to survive, to outlive whatever danger poses, that immediate threat to our lives is little short of a marvel. Everything else is abandoned in order to survive. Whilst in modern times that ability has been somewhat modified and ‘reasoned’ away to an extent, in past years it’s what usually kept you alive. In this volume people struggle valiantly to survive and to exist no matter the extent of the threat they face.

A collection of classic works by Edgar Allan Poe, American author, poet, editor, and literary critic. Best known for his tales of mystery and the macabre, Poe was one of the earliest American practitioners of the short story and is considered the inventor of the detective fiction genre. He is further credited with contributing to the emerging genre of science fiction. He was the first well-known American writer to try to earn a living through writing alone, resulting in a financially difficult life and career.

Robert E. Howard, renowned creator of Conan the Barbarian, was also a master at conjuring tales of hair-raising horror. In a career spanning only 12 years, Howard wrote more than 100 stories, with his most celebrated work appearing in Weird Tales, the preeminent pulp magazine of the era.

"The Lottery," one of the most terrifying stories of the twentieth century, created a sensation when it was first published in the New Yorker. "Powerful and haunting," and "nights of unrest" were typical reader responses. This collection, the only one to appear during Jackson's lifetime, unites "The Lottery" with 24 equally unusual stories. Together they demonstrate her remarkable range - from the hilarious to the truly horrible - and power as a storyteller.

This audiobook contains four short stories by O. Henry, including "A Retrieved Reformation", "The Cop and the Anthem", "The Gift of the Magi" and "The Ransom of Red Chief".

Louis L’Amour’s tales of adventure cannot be surpassed for sheer storytelling excitement, and they stand as a testament to his legendary appeal. Here are timeless stories of danger and daring, wanderlust and heroism, filled with ordinary men and women facing often insurmountable challenges...

From the #1 New York Times bestseller At the Battle School, there is only one course of study: the strategy and tactics of war. Humanity is fighting an alien race, and we fight as one. Students are drawn from all nations, all races, all religions, taken from their families as children. There is...

Traversing a vivid landscape, from sunblasted hills and canyons to the nighttime streets of America’s greatest cities, some of Louis L’Amour’s most compelling fiction was set in his own time. Here are tales of innocents caught in the schemes of criminals, detectives hunting down truths...

Chesterton's talent as a mystery writer is displayed in this collection of detective stories, The Man Who Knew Too Much. In each story, the star detective, Horne Fisher, deals with another strange mystery: the vanishing of a priceless coin, the framing of an Irish "prince" freedom fighter, an eccentric rich man dies during an obsessive fishing trip, another vanishing during an ice skate, a statue crushing his own uncle, and a few more.

From one of America’s most beloved authors, a posthumous collection of newly discovered short stories and previously published essays and magazine pieces, offering a fresh perspective on the remarkable literary mind of Harper Lee. Harper Lee remains a landmark figure in the American canon –...

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.

This collection of 25 Hercule Poirot adventures is compiled from short stories written by Agatha Christie for The Sketch magazine in 1923 from March to December. In these stories, including "The Disappearance of Mr. Davenheim", "The Veiled Lady", and "The Adventure of the Egyptian Tomb", the eccentric private detective slowly and surely solves mysteries involving jealousy, revenge, and greed. These stories were well-received at the time and cemented Christie's reputation as the worthy successor to Arthur Conan Doyle.

Celtic mythology, Arthurian romance, and an intriguing interpretation of British history - these are just some of the themes embraced by the anonymous authors of the eleven tales that make up the Welsh medieval masterpiece known as The Mabinogion. They tell of Gwydion the shape-shifter, who can create a woman out of flowers; of Math the magician whose feet must lie in the lap of a virgin; of hanging a pregnant mouse and hunting a magical boar.

From one of the preeminent literary voices in Israel comes a darkly funny collection of surrealist stories exploring the increasingly complex relationship between humans and technology. Set in our world, alternate realities, distant futures, and the immortal realm, the stories in Autocorrect...

Jane Austen wrote Love and Friendship (originally spelled Love and Freindship [ sic]) when she was just 14 years old. The three notebooks that contain her early works, including this story, are currently on display at the Bodleian Library and the British Museum. Taking the form as letters written by the heroine to the daughter of her friend, this story resembles a fairy tale that lampoons the conventions of romantic stories at the time.

In the bizarre world of Franz Kafka, salesmen turn into giant bugs, apes give lectures at college academies, and nightmares probe the mysteries of modern humanity’s unhappiness. More than any other modern writer in world literature, Kafka captures the loneliness and misery that fill the lives of 20th-century humanity.