Short Classic Literature

Nine of Wodehouse's funniest stories, as the Oldest Member reminisces about misadventures among the golf-obsessed. Including the eponymous 'goof' Ferdinand Dibble, a man whose non-success at golf has reduced him to such a state of diffidence as to hamper his romantic aspirations; high-stakes betting on the course among America's tainted millionaires; the heroic Rollo Podmarsh, persevering in the best round of his life under sentence of death; and the saga of William Bates, Jane Packard, and self-confessed vers libre poet Rodney Spelvin.

This collection of classic horror stories is sure to give you goose bumps, raise the hair on the back of your neck, and put some fright in your night. Includes Yours Truly, Jack the Ripper by Robert Bloch, Coin of the Realm by Charles L. Grant, Something Had to be Done by David Drake, The Graveyard Rats by Henry Kuttner, The Small Assassin by Ray Bradbury, Calling Card by Ramsey Campbell, The Words of Guru by C.M. Kornbluth, and Passengers by Robert Silverberg.

Something between a tale and a polemic, these 'fables of reason' are feats of narrative compression and contain much of Voltaire's best and funniest writing. From ribald tales of adultery to conversations between cosmic travellers, the stories in this collection pose moral, philosophical and social questions. Listener and protagonist alike find their assumptions challenged as Voltaire mingles rationality and fantasy.

Les deux des plus grands textes de la littérature française réunis dans cette compilation pour le plus grand plaisir des admirateurs de Maupassant.

La ironía, la honda melancolía y la inconfundible mirada desencantada de Oscar Wilde impregnan cada una de estas páginas, erigiéndose como un monumento paródico y duramente crítico hacia la sociedad victoriana de finales del siglo XIX. Todo ello esbozado con un estilo único, patente desde las sátiras de «El crimen de lord Arthur Savile» y «El fantasma de Canterville» hasta los cuentos de hadas como «El Príncipe Feliz», «El ruiseñor y la rosa» y «El gigante egoísta».

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!

This book is a collection of Jack London's short stories about his experiences sailing and seal hunting in the Pacific Ocean during the late 1800s. An additional adventure looks at life along the Sacramento River. A special section describes the different types of sailing vessels, and a glossary helps the listener understand nautical terms.

Charles Dickens wrote A Christmas Carol - A Ghost Story of Christmas in Five Staves when he was 31. Now with numerous adaptations for film, television, radio, stage - and indeed in audio - it has become an essential part of Christmas for many. Raconteurs Audio has created this collection to include Dickens’ two Christmas novellas, The Chimes and The Cricket on the Hearth, as well as some of his lesser known short stories with a Christmas theme.

The first in a series of 28 Tom Swift books by Victor Appleton, this book introduces us to our hero Tom Swift son of noted inventor, Barton Swift. Tom's father's invention for new and improved turbine motor is stolen by the Happy Harry Gang, who we will meet in future episodes since they manage to escape this time. Each chapter is a cliffhanger filled with intrigue, espionage and excitement!

Country doctor Kennedy tells the story of Amy Foster, a tender-hearted country girl, who alone takes pity on a starving and bewildered foreign castaway, feared and shunned by the rest of her community. The castaway proves to be amiable and intelligent, but this is not enough to overcome the prejudice aroused by his alienness.

Is the ‘perfect murder’ possible? Can that crime be committed with such consummate care, with such exacting skill, that it is unsolvable—even to the most astute investigator? In this unique collection, legendary crime writers Margery Allingham, Anthony Berkeley, Freeman Wills Crofts, Ronald Knox, Dorothy L. Sayers and Russell Thorndike each attempt to create the unsolvable murder, which Superintendent Cornish of the CID then attempts to unravel.

In this extraordinary fourth volume, Anne McCaffrey returns to her world of romance and adventure to tell the story of a Runner of Pern. Raymond E. Feist's Riftwar Saga is the setting for the revenge of The Wood Boy. And George R. R. Martin sets his adventure of The Hedge Knight in the generation before his epic A Song of Ice and Fire. The Legends series spans four audio volumes and includes short novels from the greatest living writers in all fantasy.

In Difficult Loves, Italy's master storyteller weaves tales in which cherished deceptions and illusions of love-including self-love-are swept away in magical instants of recognition. A soldier is reduced to quivering fear by the presence of a full-figured woman in his train compartment; a young clerk leaves a lady's bed at dawn; a young woman is isolated from bathers on a beach by the loss of her bikini bottom. Each of them discovers hidden truths beneath the surface of everyday life.

Feel the breath-taking tingle of suspense. Share the captivating horror of the supernatural in these six complete stories presented by a masterful reader.

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.

This reissue of the 1919 classic combines the immortal stories from Homer's Iliad and Odyssey into one glorious saga of heroism and magical adventure. Beloved by generations, Padraic Colum's masterful retelling of these epic adventures is remarkably fresh, consistently spellbinding, and unmatched for its richness and poetry.

This wide-ranging collection comprises the following six short stories by Joseph Conrad: Youth: A Narrative (1902); Karain: A Memory (1898); An Outpost of Progress (1898); The Lagoon (1898); Amy Foster (1909); The Anarchist - A Desperate Tale (1903). 'Youth: A Narrative' is an epic tale of a perilous voyage under sail to Bangkok, with a cargo of coal, narrated by Charles Marlow.

A Sportsman’s Notebook, Ivan Turgenev’s first literary masterpiece, is a sweeping portrayal of the magnificent 19th-century Russian countryside and the harsh lives of those who inhabited it. In a powerful and gripping series of sketches, a hunter wanders through the vast landscape of steppe and forest in search of game, encountering a varied cast of peasants, landlords, bailiffs, overseers, horse traders, and merchants. He witnesses both feudal tyranny and the submission of the tyrannized, against a backdrop of the sublime and pitiless terrain of rural Russia.

A spine-tingling collection of the greatest short stories by the father of science fiction, H. G. Wells. 'The Time Machine', 'The Empire of the Ants', 'The Crystal Egg', 'The Sea-Raiders', 'The Door in the Wall', 'A Dream of Armageddon', 'The Country of the Blind', 'Under the Knife', 'The Stolen Body', 'The Plattner Story', 'The Stolen Bacillus', 'The Magic Shop', 'The Inexperienced Ghost', and many more short fiction masterpieces.

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.