Short Classics

I have been many years training in the way of strategy, called Ni Ten Ichi Ryu, and now, I think I will explain it for the first time. It is now during the first 10 days of the 10th month in the 20th year of Kanei (1645). I have climbed mountain Iwato of Higo in Kyushu to pay homage to heaven, pray to Kwannon, and kneel before Buddha. I am a warrior of Harima province, Shinmen Musashi No Kami Fujiwara No Geshin, age 60 years. With the virtue of strategy, I practice many arts and abilities - all things with no teacher.

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.

From the author of such classics as Breakfast of Champions and Cat's Cradle comes this collection of unabridged short fiction originally published in some of America's most popular magazines of the 1950s and 60s. Vonnegut himself selected his best early works for this collection, and he reads the preface and afterword to boot!

A rich and varied collection of classic short stories by British writers: 'Quality' by John Galsworthy, 'The Mark on the Wall' by Virginia Woolf, 'The Horse Dealer’s Daughter' by D. H. Lawrence, 'The Ticking of the Clock' by Louisa Baldwin, 'The Fiddler of the Reels' by Thomas Hardy, 'The Return' by R. Murray Gilchrist, 'Kew Gardens' by Virginia Woolf, 'Seashore Macabre' by Hugh Walpole, 'Satan’s Circus' by Eleanor Smith, 'The Coffin Merchant' by Richard Middleton....

Charlotte Perkins Gilman's Herland, first published in 1915, is a feminist utopian novel that describes an isolated society composed entirely of women---a progressive, environmentally conscious land where peace and rationality reign and poverty is unknown.

Critically acclaimed audiobook reader Barnaby Edwards (Doctor Who, The Voyage of the Beagle, Space Danger) performs 11 tales of ghostly gothic spookiness. From tales of vampyres and spirits to devil’s deals and ethereal coachmen. Short but oh so sweet, these 11 stories from some of the most lauded authors of the Gothic period prove that you need only a few pages to tell a truly terrifying tale.

Tadeusz Borowski’s concentration camp stories were based on his own experiences surviving Auschwitz and Dachau. In spare, brutal prose he describes a world where where the will to survive overrides compassion, and prisoners eat, work, and sleep a few yards from where others are murdered; where the difference between human beings is reduced to a second bowl of soup, an extra blanket, or the luxury of a pair of shoes with thick soles; and where the line between normality and abnormality vanishes.

"The Dream of a Ridiculous Man" is a short story by Fyodor Dostoyevsky written in 1877. It chronicles the experiences of a man who decides that there is nothing of any value in the world. Slipping into nihilism with the "terrible anguish", he is determined to commit suicide. A chance encounter with a young girl, however, begins the man on a journey that re-instills a love for his fellow man.

Stalky & Co. is a book published in 1899 (following serialization in the Windsor Magazine) by Rudyard Kipling, about adolescent boys at a British boarding school. It is a collection of linked short stories in format, with some information about the charismatic Stalky character in later life. The character Beetle, one of the main trio, is partly based on Kipling himself. Stalky is based on Lionel Dunsterville, M'Turk is based on George Charles Beresford, and Mr. King is based on William Carr Crofts.

Algernon Blackwood, a journalist and broadcast narrator, was one of the most prolific writers of ghost stories in the history of the genre. The title story, "The Touch of Pan", explores the lingering presence of myth in everyday life. In "The Glamour of the Snow", Blackwood winds a tale about a man's infatuation with a supernatural winter beauty. In "The Attic", the ghost of an usurer haunts the old Chateaux and, on the anniversary of a young boy's death, the boy's cat brings the family together. "The Willows" follows two campers who are on a canoe trip down the Danube.

Bawdy and exotic, Tales from the Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night features the wily, seductive Scheherazade, who saves her own life by telling tales of magical transformation, genies and wishes, flying carpets and fantastical journeys, terror and passion to entertain and appease the brutal King Shahryar.

"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.

In seinem modernen Klassiker der Science-Fiction-Literatur Die Zeitmaschine wagt H.G. Wells einen Blick in die ferne Zukunft unserer Welt, und was sein Protagonist erlebt, ist nicht nur erfreulich, aber auch nicht hoffnungslos. Seit vielen Jahren zählt Woyzeck von Georg Büchner zu den meistgespielten Theaterstücken auf deutschsprachigen Bühnen, ebenso vielfach verfilmt und multimedial adaptiert – kein Wunder: Das Drama um einen von gesellschaftlichen Erniedrigungen gequälten einfachen Mann ist so zeitlos wie das Leben selbst.

This fantastic work of fiction that is based on a found manuscipt at a renowned univerity, follows the Great Detective, Sherlock Holmes during a previously unrevealed part of his life...

El detective Sherlock Holmes es un genio de la observación, la deducción lógica y la ciencia forense. Posee un profundo conocimiento de la química y, sobre todo, un sentido común único. Cualquier detalle que parece indiferente, cobra ante sus ojos pleno sentido. Y así, de detalle en detalle, Holmes va encontrando a los culpables de los crímenes que analiza.

Doug Bradley's Spinechillers takes you into the world of classic short horror stories read by Hollywood horror icons. We get underway with H. P. Lovecraft, who explores dark deception in "The Terrible Old Man". An unearthed, long-forgotten artifact, is protected by powers intent on punishing those who would remove it, in M. R. James' "A Warning to the Curious".

Spanning four decades in the mid-19th century, the interconnected novellas of Old New York lay out in vivid detail the complex and inscrutable codes, customs, and taboos of New York society in classic Wharton style.

This collection comprises stories by and inspired by the originators of weird fiction. From Allen's "The Arctic Death", through to Poe's "The Tell-Tale Heart", Stoker's "Dracula's Guest", and beyond. Time immemorial; worlds unimaginable.

A thriller writer is embroiled in a real-life whodunit when a friend drops dead with her hatpin impaled in his back. The violation of a sealed West Bank tomb, its rock walls intact, provides a Thebes investigator with a mystifying conundrum. Two sisters take shelter in a shuttered old house at the end of a country road . . . only to discover they're not alone. And the author's most beloved characters, Amelia Peabody and Radcliff Emerson, make an appearance in a newly uncovered tale with a witty nod to Sherlock Holmes.

Five tales which range from the jungles of India to the frozen emptiness of the North... In all of them, Kipling's extraordinary powers of description and ability to identify with human aspiration and animal survival are vividly shown. Rikki-Tikki-Tavi must battle with Nag, the cobra, in his territory; Toomai has a unique glimpse of the elephant world, Kotick, the White Seal, searches for sanctuary, while Kotuko has to find food for his starving Eskimo village. Above all, Kipling's love of life in all its variety shines through.