Short Classics

First published in an 1843 edition of the Saturday Evening Post, "The Black Cat" tells the story of a man and his increasingly antagonistic relationship with his cat. Akin to "The Tell-Tale Heart" and "The Cask of Amontillado", "The Black Cat" investigates the psychological effects of guilt as well as the potentially destructive and violent consequences of alcoholism.

A bestselling and award-winning debut collection from one of South Korea's most prominent young writers. In crisp, unembellished prose, Eun-young Choi paints intimate portraits of the lives of young women in South Korea, balancing the personal with the political. In the title story, a fraught...

A full-frontal confrontation of the ways we perform desire and shame—from the downright bizarre to the frighteningly relatable—by the award-winning author of A Sharp Endless Need An employee at a hunting ground where people pay to act out hate crimes prepares to meet their girlfriend’s...

A thoroughly engaging collection of classic short stories from some of the greatest writers who lived.

Throughout Proust's life, nine of his short stories remained unseen - the writer never spoke of them. Why did he choose not to publish them along with the others? One possible answer is that he was developing his themes in preparation for his masterpiece, In Search of Lost Time; another is that the stories were too audacious - too near to life - for the censorious society of the time. In these stories, published here for the first time, we find an intimate picture of a young author full of darkness and melancholy, longing to reveal his true self to the world.

This is the unabridged audio recording of M R James' excellent ghost story "Mr Humphreys and his Inheritance". Read by David Collings, this is sure to scare and delight in equal measure.

Young, impressionable Aubrey is fascinated by the enigmatic Lord Ruthven, and accompanies him on a tour to Europe. But Aubrey develops a growing distaste for Lord Ruthven’s sinister and grotesque conduct - especially as it concerns human blood. This novella, penned during that tempestuous night in Switzerland amongst such notables as Percy Shelley, Lord Byron, and Mary Shelley, served as the great inspiration for Bram Stoker to create Dracula.

The golden age of the short story was in Victorian and Edwardian times, when authors made a living by contributing to literary magazines and journals. These popular journals threw up such literary greats as Dickens, Conan Doyle, Rider Haggard, and Jerome K. Jerome. Many of the great writers are undeservedly neglected by modern audience...but what a pleasure it is to rediscover the literary treasures that delighted our great grandparents!

A man treks through the frigid Yukon with his dog. When night falls, the temperature drops to negative 75, and they struggle to keep warm.

Mr Fortune Explains is HC Bailey's sixth collection of eight golden-age mysteries for the eclectic surgeon-detective Mr Reginald Fortune. Including a child kidnapped from a picnic; a milliner's assistant vanishing from home without a word to her friends; a strange visit, followed by a violent attack on Mr Fortune himself; a raid on a jeweler's shop, and the theft of a photograph; an ill-situated rock garden, and a haunted man; a rigidly saintly clergyman suspected of a trivial theft; a dead policeman and a broken bicycle lamp; and a curiously disturbing picture in the Paris salon.

An officer accused of being a traitor says he "never wants to hear of the United States again". His wish is granted - and ends up being a terrible punishment.

A terrific addition to your Henty audiobook collection! This collection of short stories contains narratives that continue the Henty tradition of heroes both brave and modest. These stories are sometimes sentimental and melancholy, unlike many of Henty's other writings. Henty was primarily known for his full-length novels for young people, but he regularly contributed short stories such as these to weekly boys' magazines such as the Boys' Own Paper and the Union Jack.

Short stories have always been a sort of instant access into an author’s brain, their soul and heart. In this series we try to offer up tried and trusted ‘Top Tens’ across many different themes and authors. But any anthology will immediately throw up the questions – Why that story? Why that author? Ambrose Bierce is an author whose words take us one way and then send us another. These miniature masterpieces all have a central truth and plausibility that seems to vanish in an ending that can be anything from wry, to shocking to hallucinatory.

Author, poet, screenwriter, and outstanding member of the legendary Algonquin Round Table, Dorothy Parker was known for her quick wit, keen observations, and remarkable insight into the human condition. Regarded as brilliant, but known to be an alcoholic and often depressed, Parker’s work pushes all buttons at once: humor, anger, love, pity, and everything in between...she pulled no punches, writing with pure, unadulterated passion; her work is timeless and as pertinent to today’s society as it was to that of the time she wrote.

Best remembered for his ghost stories, this is a collection of M. R. James' finest.

A man who sleeps for 20 years in the Catskill Mountains wakes to a much-changed world. This is an American classic!

The best collection of Russian short stories includes: Fyodor Dostoevsky: Notes from the Underground, The Dream of a Ridiculous Man, The Beggar Boy at Christ's Christmas Tree. Leo Tolstoy: The Death of Ivan Ilyich, Kholstomer, the Story of a Horse, Alyosha the Pot, A Letter to a Hindu, A Confession, God Sees the Truth, but Waits, A Russian Christmas Party. Anton Chekhov: Kashtanka, Gusev, The Darling, The Lady with the Dog, A Slander, The Horse-Stealers, The Petchenyeg, A Dead Body, A Happy Ending, The Looking-GlassOld Age, Darkness, The Beggar, In Trouble, Frost, Minds in Ferment, Gone Astray.

The first thing every listener will want to know is whether Anne Shirley appears in these stories of Avonlea and Spencervale. She certainly does. As a matter of fact, page one starts off in this manner: "Anne Shirley was curled up on the window seat of Theodora Dix's sitting room one Saturday evening, looking dreamily afar at some fair starland beyond the hills of sunset. Anne was visiting for a fortnight of her vacation."

The recently rediscovered short story 'The Lost One', perfect for fans of Daphne du Maurier, Santa Montefiore and Anya Seton. First published in Woman's Journal in 1960, and set against the backdrop of unfenced country and dark winding valleys at night, the aptly named 'The Lost One' features The Wind off the Small Isles heroine Perdita West, who brings her characteristic pluck and courage to this classic Mary Stewart tale of suspense and intrigue....

"The Great Wall of China" is a short story by Franz Kafka. While written in 1917, it was not published until 1930, seven years after his death. Its first publication occurred in Der Morgen, a German literary magazine. A year later, Max Brod included it in Beim Bau der Chinesischen Mauer, the first posthumous collection of short stories by Franz Kafka. Contained within the story is a parable that was separately published as "A Message from the Emperor" ("Eine kaiserliche Botschaft") in 1919 in the collection Ein Landarzt (A Country Doctor).