English Classic Short Stories

In three beautifully crafted, dramatic acts, James's little-known novel unravels the painfully complicated emotional bonds which exist within a group of friends and lovers connected by two neighboring homes as they fight publicly for preferment, reciprocation, and successful marriage....

This audiobook contains 17 short stories inspired from famous classic fairy tales. In addition to 17 classic tales, you’ll get another three bonus stories from Aesop’s Fables book.

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.

This collection brings together some of the most influential and beloved novels in the English literary canon. From dystopian futures to sweeping romantic tales, these works explore human nature, social class, morality, and the quest for identity. Spanning genres and centuries, The Essential British Classics Collection is a celebration of the best of British storytelling, offering profound insights into the human experience.

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.

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.

The ideal introduction to the genius of Ernest Hemingway, The Snows of Kilimanjaro and Other Stories contains ten of Hemingway's most acclaimed and popular works of short fiction. Selected from Winner Take Nothing, Men Without Women, and The Fifth Column and the First Forty-Nine Stories, this collection includes "The Killers," the first of Hemingway's mature stories to be accepted by an American periodical.

Showcasing the best of Ernest Hemingway’s short stories including his well-known classics - as featured in the magnificent three-part, six-hour PBS documentary by Ken Burns and Lynn Novick - this new collection is introduced by award-winning author Tobias Wolff.

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".

One of the most common arguments against Christianity is that the God of the Old Testament seemed so drastically different than the God of the New Testament. In the Old, many claim He seemed cruel and capricious, while in the New, He suddenly became a God of love and tolerance. Yet Jesus said, “If you’ve seen Me, you’ve seen the Father”, and the writer of Hebrews tells us that “Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, today, and forever”. If God hasn’t changed, how do we explain the apparent difference? The answer lies in a long-forgotten word: covenant.

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.

The ultimate collection of great short stories by the best Russian classic authors. 1. "Her Lover" by Maxim Gorky 2. "The Empty Drum" by Count Leo Tolstoy 3. "The Hoop" by Fedor Sologub 4. "The District Doctor" by Ivan Turgenev 5. "The White Dog" by Fedor Sologub 6. "The Cloak" by Nikolai Gogol 7. "A Soothing Dream" by Fedor Sologub 8. "The Christmas Tree and the Wedding" by Fyodor Dostoyevsky 9. "A Work of Art" by Anton Chekhov 10. "Children Wiser Than Their Fathers" by Count Leo Tolstoy

Annie Proulx's masterful language and fierce love of Wyoming are evident in this collection of stories about loneliness, quick violence, and wrong kinds of love. In "The Mud Below", a rodeo rider's obsession marks the deepening fissures between his family life and self-imposed isolation. In "The Half-Skinned Steer", an elderly fool drives west to the ranch he grew up on for his brother's funeral, and dies a mile from home.

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.

Fine-art aficionado. Master of disguise. Jewelry expert. Historian. Gentleman. Burglar. Arsene Lupin is all of these and more. In 1905, Maurice Leblanc introduced his gentleman-burglar in the story "L'Arrestation d'Arsène Lupin". Shortly thereafter, the stories were collected as one single volume. In these charming adventures, Lupin orchestrates a myriad of extravagant heists in the very face of the determined Inspector Ganimard.

Mental illness though can still carry a stigma. A case of ‘you’re not trying hard enough’, ‘or knuckling down and getting on with it’. But in more recent decades mental issues have come to be recognised as an illness, a disease rather than an affliction. We all remember horror stories of lobotomy’s and electric shock being used to ‘cure’ what society viewed as anti-social behaviour but illness, mental or physical is very real. Depression, schizophrenia, breakdown, psychosis are alarming events to have or to witness.

Sherwood Anderson was cited by Hemingway, Fitzgerald, Cather, and others as a major influence in the writing of short stories. "Winesburg, Ohio" is a landmark work many of us encounter as students. Anderson, in many ways, is best experinced in audio. He believed stories were meant to be told, as they are in the stories themselves. These nine are his best: "Brothers", "The Door of the Trap", "The Dumb Man", "The Egg", "Motherhood", "The New Englander", "The Other Woman", "Seeds", and "War."

A wonderful collection of short stories" by some of the all-time great American writers: 1. "The Diamond Lens" by Fitz James O’Brien; 2. "Titbottom’s Spectacles" by George William Curtis; 3. "The Fall of the House of Usher" by Edgar Allan Poe; 4. "The Eyes of the Panther" by Ambrose Bierce; 5. "The Lightning Rod Man" by Hermann Melville; 6. "Seeds" by Sherwood Anderson; 7. "Who Was She?" by Bayard Taylor; 8. "The Man who stole a Meeting House" by John Townsend Trowbridge; 9. "Memoirs of a Yellow Dog" by O. Henry

Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes tales are rightly ranked among the seminal works of mystery and detective fiction. Included in this collection are all four full-length Holmes novels and more than forty short masterpieces - from the inaugural adventure A Study in Scarlet to timeless favorites like “The Speckled Band” and more. At the center of each stands the iconic figure of Holmes - brilliant, eccentric, and capable of amazing feats of deductive reasoning.