Short Classic Literature

I'm Tamlir Kynthelig, mercenary. I lost my home, my family was slaughtered, and my kingdom was usurped. And then things really got bad. I saved King Mynogin and won the honor of a likely-fatal run through the Temple of Cocidius to gain him its treasure. Trust me when I say this isn't a change in my luck. Gathering the temple's eight artifacts has never been accomplished, and a thousand men have perished to its beasts and puzzles.

This is a story from the Murders in the Rue Morgue (The Dupin Stories) collection. Auguste Dupin, investigator extraordinaire, was the remarkable creation of Edgar Allan Poe. Written in the 1840s, Poe presented the acutely observant, shrewd but idiosyncratic character who, with his chronicler, provided the inspiration for the more famous Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson.

An engrossing collection of detective stories featuring all the great classic sleuths, including Sherlock Holmes, Father Brown, Max Carrados, J. G. Reeder, and C. Auguste Dupin. 1.The Tea-Leaf by Edgar Jepson & Robert Eustace 2.The Queer Feet by G. K. Chesterton 3.The Curious Circumstances of the Two Left Shoes by Ernest Bramah 4. The Club of One-Eyed Men by Arthur Somers Roche 5.Diamond Cut Diamond by F. Britten Austin 6.The Game Played in the Dark by Ernest Bramah

En una ocasión, Leopoldo Alas «Clarín» afirmó que Emilia Pardo Bazán era «uno de los españoles que más saben y mejor entienden lo que ven, piensan y sienten. Tratar con ella es aprender mucho». La crítica suele estar de acuerdo en afirmar que donde mejor se recoge su habilidad como escritora es, precisamente, en sus cuentos - valientes, modernos, de impecable factura-. Leer estas piezas supone una grata sorpresa.

Mathilde Loisel, the lowly born wife of a clerk, has always felt she was meant for greater things. She imagines beautiful gowns, glittering parties, a home of opulence, and a life of comfort. Her only wish is to be flattered and admired, and she is miserable that she will never know that life. But out of the blue, her husband comes home with an invitation to a ball. She buys a new dress but mourns her lack of jewels. But wait!

Most readers are familiar with Jack London's stories of the frozen northland, such as White Fang and To Light a Fire, but many critics feel he should be equally acknowledged for his fascinating stories of the South Pacific. Here is another remote corner of the world, a background for his magnificently colorful and entertaining Tales of the South Pacific.

In these eight intriguing tales, Holmes and Watson solve cases that range from the suspicious to the downright strange. They encounter mysteries as diverse as vanishing staff, secret plans and eccentric lodgers as Holmes is struck down by a rare tropical disease and, later, lured away from retirement to help his country on the eve of war.

Here are the greatest stories of one of the greatest writers working in any genre today. All ten of the stories gathered here are Hugo or Nebula award winners - some even have the distinction of winning both. With a new Introduction by the author and personal afterwords to each story, plus a special look at three of Willis' unique public speeches - this is unquestionably the collection of the season, an audiobook that every Connie Willis fan will treasure.

This original compilation from Skyboat Media features the most inventive and poetic of Alexander Pushkin’s short fiction. Exposed to French culture at a young age, Pushkin’s work reflects these sensibilities, and he combines this with stories of his Russian ancestors that his grandmother would relate to him and his siblings during their summers near Moscow.

The first ever collection of short stories from the New York Times bestselling, National Book Award-winning author of The Friend Over the course of thirty years, Sigrid Nunez has become one of contemporary fiction’s most beloved and distinctive voices, producing nine profound, penetrating, and...

The incomparable Ray Bradbury is in the driver's seat, off on 21 unforgettable excursions through fantasy, time, and memory, and there are surprises waiting around every curve and behind each mile marker. The journey promises to be a memorable one.

"Monkey Nuts" was written by D.H. Lawrence in 1922. "Monkey Nuts" turns the traditional love story on its head. It is the woman (the new liberated woman Lawrence had little time for) who does the chasing and the boy who is reluctant. Lawrence seems to be saying it is the unspoken love between the two men in the story which is more satisfying than the possible love between the man and the woman, which the boy rejects. Although the older man goes through the motions of chasing the girl, even he seems to realize the sterility of one-sided love.

Alison Larkin Presents is delighted to publish these selected New York short stories by Edith Wharton, whose inside knowledge of New York's upper class is put to sparkling use here.

The Ultimate Classics Collection: Volume Four is the fourth instalment of our wide-ranging classic collections. Volume Four features 12 timeless works that largely focuses on the greats of American and British literature, with novels from Charles Dickens, Edith Wharton, Thomas Hardy, Victor Hugo, and others. Read by a cast of incredible narrators including Miranda Raison, Pearl Mackie, Adam Sims, David Rintoul, and more, this is a chance to expand your listening with some of the greatest authors of all time.

"The Cask of Amontillado" is Edgar Allan Poe's short but enigmatic masterpiece. Set in an unnamed Italian city, we hear the story of how Montresor lures Fortunato through the catacombs into the Montresor family vault and there chains him up and bricks him in for eternity. Why he does it we will never know, but he does so with a casual savagery that is truly chilling.

Truman Capote makes whisky-soaked fruitcake in Alabama; Laurie Lee slides across a frozen pond in Gloucestershire; and Shirley Jackson is outwitted by a wily Santa Claus at the bank. Ghosts haunt the Christmases of Muriel Spark and Elizabeth Bowen, while Dostoyevsky, Daphne du Maurier and Italo Calvino take a cynical view of the season and Selma Lagerlof and Angela Carter celebrate its miracles. Ranging from Cork to Lagos to the Wild West, and from Paris to San Paolo to outer space, this is Christmas as imagined by some of the greatest short-story writers of all time.

How easily does love turn to hate? In what is arguably one of Edgar Allen Poe's most disturbing tales, we join our narrator as he cruelly injures and betrays his once beloved cat. Our deeply disturbed narrator shows a malicious streak and lack of conscience that is painful to witness. The narrative forces us to question to what extent we can escape our conscience. As we realize all is not as it seems.

This is a story from the Fall of the House of Usher collection. The horrors of the Spanish Inquisition, with its dungeon of death, and the overhanging gloom on the House of Usher demonstrate unforgettably the unique imagination of Edgar Allan Poe. Unerringly, he touches upon some of our greatest nightmares: Premature burial, ghostly transformation, words from beyond the grave. Written in the 1840s, they have retained their power to shock and frighten even now.

First published in 1911, The Innocence of Father Brown contains stories involving one of the greatest characters in the history of detective fiction: Father Brown. He is a Roman Catholic priest who has an uncanny insight into human evil. Rather than the large serial villains in, for example, Sherlock Holmes stories, the mysteries Father Brown solved were more local murders by small-town crooks, narrowing the suspect list down to those in the area of the crime.

A breathtaking collection of 80 classic short stories inspired by different locations, people and customs across the globe...