Short Classics

Mark Gatiss ( Sherlock, Doctor Who, Game of Thrones) reads chilling tales by the unsung master of the classic ghost story: E. F. Benson. There's nothing sinister about a London bus. Nothing supernatural could occur on a busy train platform. There's nothing terrifying about a little caterpillar. And a telephone, what could be scary about that? Don't be frightened of the dark corners of your room. Don't be alarmed by a sudden inexplicable chill.

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.

Actor David Ian Davies' telling of Poe's Gothic horror tale "The Tell-Tale Heart" captures this classic narrative of the unnamed murderer in all its exquisite vileness, its self-effacing insanity that poses rationality where none exists.

Die Entdeckung eines erstaunlichen Erzählers. Dieses Hörbuch versammelt haarsträubende Reise-, aberwitzige Lügen- und tragikomische Liebesgeschichten, die Kästner zwischen den frühen Zwanzigerjahren und der Nachkriegszeit schrieb. Viele davon erschienen nur in Tageszeitungen. Es zeigt sich, dass die Form der Erzählung für Erich Kästner ein Experimentierfeld war, das er höchst unterhaltsam zu durchmessen wusste.

James Joyce's disillusion with the publication of Dubliners in 1914 was the result of ten years battling with publishers, resisting their demands to remove swear words, real place names and much else, including two entire stories. Although only 24 when he signed his first publishing contract for the book, Joyce already knew its worth. Joyce's aim was to tell the truth — to create a work of art that would reflect life in Ireland at the turn of the last century.

This collection of over 50 stories brings together three of Enid Blyton's earliest and most imaginative story collections - The Book of Fairies (1924), The Book of Brownies (1926) and The Book of Pixies (1989) - and shows Blyton at her most imaginative and playful.

A newly married woman longs, irrationally, for a silk umbrella, a husband chases away his wife's beloved cat, a betrayed mother impulsively sacks her housekeeper. Underneath the surface of these precisely observed tales of love, marriage and family life in mid-century Copenhagen pulse currents of desire, violence and despair, as women and men dream of escaping their conventional roles and finding freedom and happiness - without ever truly understanding what that might mean.

The King in Yellow is a book of 10 classic short stories about the supernatural. The first four mention "The King in Yellow", a forbidden play which induces despair or madness in those exposed to it. The tales have a macabre undertone, focusing on characters that are inhabitants of the demi-monde.

This triumphant final volume of Spinechillers begins with Doug Bradley's personal guide to the writers and the history of the stories. M. R. James' classic "Number 13" starts off this volume with a mystery about a disappearing and reappearing hotel room, can you guess the room number? Story two is the tale of a cat that can not only talk, but spills secrets that should have been truly left behind. Next, we present one of the most famous stories by H.P. Lovecraft, "The Call of Cthulhu".

"Of the place where he had been a boy he had written well enough. As well as he could then." So thought a dying writer in an early version of The Snows of Kilimanjaro. The writer was, of course, Ernest Hemingway. The place was the Michigan of his boyhood, where he remembered himself as Nick Adams. The now-famous "Nick Adams" stories show a memorable character growing from child to adolescent to soldier, veteran, writer, and parent - a sequence closely paralleling the events of Hemingway's life.

From money-making schemes involving placing wagers on vicars to poor Bingo having to produce the village school Christmas entertainments, every one of Wodehouse’s superb short stories are guarantee to raise a smile from even the most stony-faced listener!

Paru en 1887 avec d'autres récits, "Le Horla" est incontestablement le plus original et le plus effrayant de tous les contes fantastiques de Maupassant. Pour l'écrire, l'auteur s'est documenté auprès du docteur Charcot, célèbre spécialiste des névroses et des hystéries. Mais surtout, il s'est probablement inspiré des troubles nerveux qui commençaient alors à le détruire et qui allaient bientôt l'empoter.

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.

Have you ever seen a Shakespeare play and come away without fully understanding it? Or wished you had known the basis of the plot before seeing a play by Shakespeare? Are you studying Shakespeare? Would you like to increase your knowledge of the plays without reading the originals? Then these are the recordings for you!

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!

The Forgotten Worlds of H. G. Wells is a curated collection of 14 masterfully written short stories — strange, stirring, and visionary tales that have quietly stood in the shadow of his more famous works. Here, Wells explores the edges of science, consciousness, and the unknown with unsettling brilliance and lyrical force.

Winesburg, Ohio is a short story cycle by Sherwood Anderson. The plot revolves around the life of George Willard, from his childhood to him leaving the town as an adult. The work comprises 22 stories, with the first, "The Book of the Grotesque", serving as introduction. The book is considered a pioneering work of modernist literature due to the prominence giving to the psychological insight of the characters and the simple prose style.

A simple writing style coupled with almost prophetic content characterize George Orwell's works. Orwell's most famous pieces include the satirical novel Animal Farm and dystopian masterpiece 1984. His colorful autobiographical novel Down and Out in Paris and London is also an unforgettable read. Throughout his writings, Orwell accurately and scathingly criticized totalitarianism while supporting democratic socialism.

Herbert George Wells (1866-1946) was a prolific English writer, now best remembered for his science fiction novels and often credited as being the father of science fiction. 'The Country of the Blind' is the strange story of a mountain guide who accidently falls off a cliff ledge in the Andes. He survives the fall unhurt, and finds himself in a remote valley where a tribe lives completely cut off from the rest of the world.

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.