Short Classics

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.

This collection from grand master Robert A. Heinlein includes five short stories sure to please science fiction fans everywhere. The title story tells the tale of a young man who meets a time-traveling bartender whose origins - and relation to the young man - are more complex and stranger than the Ouroboros ring on the barkeep's finger.

With a rare blend of learning, economy, and cutting insight, George Fredrickson surveys the history of Western racism from its emergence in the late Middle Ages to the present. Beginning with the medieval antisemitism that put Jews beyond the pale of humanity, he traces the spread of racist thinking in the wake of European expansionism and the beginnings of the African slave trade. And he examines how the Enlightenment and nineteenth-century romantic nationalism created a new intellectual context for debates over slavery and Jewish emancipation.

Fairytales are a universal part of childhood. No matter what time or what place you grew up, you have at one point or another heard that classic phrase “once upon a time.” They are usually the first stories we ever hear or read. These types of tales set us up to understand the art of stories and storytelling, and they are certainly worth revisiting. Here in The Blue Fairy Book, the first of Andrew Lang’s beloved collections of classic fairy stories, you will return to the tales you already know.

This superlative collection of futuristic tales explores ground-breaking supernatural themes from the founding heroes of the science fiction genre. The short story form is perfect for capturing the atmospheric tension of these legendary stories.

Today, nearly 40 years after his death, Nobel Prize winner John Steinbeck remains one of America's greatest writers and cultural figures. We have begun publishing his many works for the first time as Penguin Classics. This season we continue with the seven spectacular and influential books East of Eden, Cannery Row, In Dubious Battle, The Long Valley, The Moon Is Down, The Pastures of Heaven, and Tortilla Flat.

This is Raymond Carver's third collection of stories, a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize, including the canonical titular story about blindness and learning to enter the very different world of another. The 12 stories in Cathedral mark a turning point in Carver's work.

In this romance anthology, 10 Austenesque authors sketch Pride and Prejudice heroine Elizabeth Bennet's character through a collection of re-imaginings, set in the Regency through contemporary times. In Elizabeth: Obstinate, Headstrong Girl, she bares her most intimate thoughts, all the while offering biting social commentary about life’s absurdities. Elizabeth overcomes the obstacles of others’ opinions, not to mention her own flaws, to find a love truly worthy of her - her Mr. Darcy - all with humor and her sparkling charm.

The Complete Jane Austen Collection includes Austen's 7 novels, selected short fiction, and a selection of her letters. Read by an incredible cast including Joanne Froggatt and Fenella Woolgar, this collection is the perfect opportunity to listen beyond your favourite novel and discover Jane Austen's complete writings.

Patrick O’Brian is acclaimed as one of the greatest historical novelists of the twentieth century, celebrated throughout the world for his masterful roman fleuve, the Aubrey‒Maturin series. But he was also a prolific writer of short stories, and it is in this form that he first made his mark. Encompassing stories written in his unvarnished youth to tales told by a seasoned traveller, this is the most comprehensive collection of O’Brian’s short fiction ever published. It is a treasure chest, containing more than sixty tales, including rarities, uncollected works, and forgotten jewels.

First published in 1846, Fyodor Dostoyevsky's novella The Double is a classic doppelganger story and the second major work published by the author. It is the story of Yakov Petrovich Golyadkin, a government clerk who believes that a fellow clerk has taken over his identity and is determined to bring about his ruin. Considered the most Gogolesque of Dostoyevsky's works, the novella brilliantly depicts Golyadkin's descent into madness in a way that is hauntingly poetic. The Double illustrates Dostoyevsky's uncanny ability at capturing the complexity of human emotion.

A wonderful selection of 27 short stories about holidays by one of the world's best-loved children's authors, Enid Blyton. School's out! So go on a picnic, visit the seaside or throw coconuts at the fair in this enchanting collection of stories perfect for summer holidays.

The Works of F. Scott Fitzgerald is a collection of 45 novels and short stories by F. Scott Fitzgerald. Fitzgerald's short stories have themes that not only relate to the problems and culture of the Jazz Age, but were also about the promises and despair encountered by the young, as well as aging. Love and relationships between two mismatched or unlikely characters, such as people who are unlikely to develop a spark of romantic interest between each other, is common.

A glorious collection of some of the finest British short stories ever written. The Dog – Arnold Bennet, Not On The Passenger List – Barry Pain, The Old Man’s Tale About The Queer Client – Charles Dickens, The Half Brothers – Elizabeth Gaskell, The Veiled Portrait – James McGovan, Markheim – Robert Louis Stevenson, The Bottle Imp – Robert Louis Stevenson, The Adventures Of The Kind Mr. Smith – William J. Locke, The Man Of Mystery – Barry Pain, The Brazilian Cat – Sir. Arthur Conan Doyle.

Step into the witty, unsettling, and delightfully ironic world of Saki (H.H. Munro), one of the sharpest voices in Edwardian literature. This classic collection gathers his most memorable and darkly humorous short stories, including The Music on the Hill, The Unrest-Cure, Gabriel-Ernest, and the widely loved The Open Window. Saki's tales are known for their unexpected twists, elegant prose, and subtle satire of British society, often exposing the absurdities behind genteel manners and upper-class conventions.

Call If You Need Me includes all of the prose previously collected in No Heroics, Please, four essays from Fires, and those five marvelous stories that range over the period of Carver's mature writing and give his devoted fans a final glimpse of the great writer at work. The pure pleasure of Carver's writing is everywhere in his work, here no less than in those stories that have already entered the canon of modern literature.

Collected for the first time, here are the New York stories of one of the 20th century’s definitive chroniclers of the city - the speakeasies and highballs, social climbers and cinema stars, mistresses and powerbrokers, unsparingly observed by a popular American master of realism. Spanning his four-decade career, these more than 30 refreshingly frank, sparely written stories are among John O’Hara’s finest work, exploring the materialist aspirations and sexual exploits of flawed, prodigally human characters and showcasing the snappy dialogue.

"There's no way not to suffer. But you try all kinds of ways to keep from drowning in it." The men and women in these eight short fictions grasp this truth on an elemental level, and their stories, as told by James Baldwin, detail the ingenious and often desperate ways in which they try to keep their heads above water.

The stories collected in the twelve volumes of Andrew Lang's Fairy Books of Many Colors have captivated generations of readers. In The Blue Fairy Book, the first in his legendary series, Lang compiled and edited tales from the Brothers Grimm, Madame d’Aulnoy, and French, Scandinavian, and Middle Eastern sources. He captured the folkloric traditions and dark origins of dozens of the world's best-known fairy-tale characters, including Sleeping Beauty, Little Red Riding Hood, Snow-White, Cinderella, and Rumpelstiltskin.

Enjoy the freedom of the outdoors, the beauty of the countryside and the charm of all creatures, great and small, in this bumper short-story collection. Enid Blyton loved the countryside, animals and birds, and she wrote many wonderful stories to teach children all about the natural world. Each story is perfect for young children and is the ideal length for bedtime or classroom story time.