Short Classics

Once, Hope Payne was a mermaid, performing at the local theme park and captivating audiences young and old. Today, she's married to a pragmatic marine biologist who has filled the pool in their backyard with flounder for a special study. Before he begins, the fish vanish - echoing a loss Hope alone can understand. She senses there's something underwater, something alive and hungry for more, but is she in too deep to ever resurface?

An enthralling collection of creepy and mysterious stories. From classic detective stories to spine-tingling horror and scary ghost stories, these tales will make your flesh crawl.... 1. 'A Ghost Story' by Mark Twain. 2. 'The Silver Mask' by Hugh Walpole. 3. 'The Cactus' by O. Henry. 4. 'Dead of Night' by W. F. Harvey. 5. 'The Terrible Old Man' by H. P. Lovecraft. 6. 'Rattle of Bones' by Robert E. Howard. 7. 'The Last Leaf' by O. Henry. 8. 'The Magnet' by Barry Pain. 9. 'Pickman’s Model' by H. P. Lovecraft.

Here are 23 terrifying tales, dark reflections of the silver screen from both sides of the camera. James Dean gets a second chance at life and death. The Wicked Witch is out of Oz, and she's made some very unlucky friends. When God decides reality needs an editor, what and who gets cut?

A northern white couple has relocated to the South to operate a vineyard on a North Carolina plantation. There, they pass their idle hours listening to the stories of one Uncle Julius, who has a deep knowledge of the land. These stories, however, are more than mere entertainments. They all have their time and place, and they offer not only a quiet commentary on the events of the day but also a deeper reckoning with the plantation’s disturbing past.

Best Classic Short Stories for Children brings together some of the most well-known and beloved stories by authors like O. Henry, Oscar Wilde, and Saki and extracts from children's classics such as The Railway Children and Little Women. With a mix of genres including science fiction, mystery, and ghost stories, and a host of popular characters such as Oliver Twist, Sherlock Holmes, Jane Eyre, and Dracula, this is the perfect introduction to a range of classic literature.

A fascinating collection of tales from some of Great Britain's finest classic authors.

An uncompromising and sensually charged collection from one of the great practitioners of the short story The debut story collection from Los Angeles writer Kate Braverman assembles a vivid patchwork of interconnected narratives set in Southern California. Through brief, often haunting snapshots...

Innovative, startlingly perceptive and aglow with colour, these 15 stories were written towards the end of Katherine Mansfield's tragically short life. Many are set in the author's native New Zealand, others in England and the French Riviera. All are revelations of the unspoken, half-understood emotions that make up everyday experience - from the blackly comic 'The Daughters of the Late Colonel' and the short, sharp sketch 'Miss Brill', in which a lonely woman's precarious sense of self is brutally destroyed, to the vivid impressionistic evocation of family life in 'At the Bay'.

A vivid love story and adventure tale, Oroonoko is a heroic slave narrative about a royal prince and his fight for freedom. The eponymous hero, Oroonoko, deemed royalty in one world and slave in another, is torn from his noble status and betrayed into slavery in Surinam, where he is reduced to chains, fetters, and shackles. But his high spirit and admirable character will not be suppressed.

Joseph Rudyard Kipling was an English journalist, short-story writer, poet, and novelist. Kipling was one of the most popular writers in the British Empire, in both prose and verse, in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. He is regarded as a major innovator in the art of the short story. This collection includes "The Man Who Would Be King", "The Mark of the Beast", "Rikki Tikki Tavi", and "Just So Stories".

A spine-tingling collection of classic ghost stories – a perfect way to pass those long winter nights! This set contains "The Tell-Tale Heart" by Edgar Allan Poe, "The Horla" by Guy de Maupassant, "Sredni Vashtar" by Saki, "The Mark of the Beast" by Rudyard Kipling, "Lost Hearts" by M.R. James and "The Furnished Room" by O. Henry.

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.

These 13 stories by the author of The Invisible Man "approach the elegance of Chekhov" ( The Washington Post) and provide "early explorations of [Ellison's] lifelong fascination with the 'complex fate' and 'beautiful absurdity' of American identity" (John Callahan).

A collection of short... stories by W W Jacobs. Serpents, skinflints, skivers, suitors and sundry sailors take the foreground in these stories about the East End of London and the mythical village of Claybury at the turn of the century.

A vintage collection of some of the greatest short stories ever written: "The Purloined Letter", by Edgar Allan Poe; "The Nose", by Nikolai Gogol; "The Story of an Hour", by Kate Chopin; "The Gift of the Magi", by O. Henry; "The Apparition of Mrs. Veal", by Daniel Defoe; "The Lifted Veil", by George Eliot; "Life of Ma Parker", by Katherine Mansfield; "The Baron", by Katherine Mansfield; "The Cask of Amontillado", by Edgar Allan Poe; "The Seventh Pullet", by Saki; and more.

The Call of Cthulhu", written in 1926, is probably Lovecraft's best-known work. Discovering notes left by a deceased relative, the narrator pieces together the whole truth and disturbing significance of the Cthulhu cult. This release also contains the shorter tales "The Festival" and "The Hound", in which gravediggers bring home more than they bargained for!

Collection of audiobooks of some of the most popular classics in world literature. Immerse yourself in the world of literature, exploring classics and contemporaries, and developing a love for reading.

Rip Van Winkle lived in a quiet colonial town, and had a habit of attending to everyone else's chores. Henpecked and poor, he goes squirrel hunting in the woods one day, only to exit twenty years later.

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.

This famous story chronicles the end of the lives of the Forty-Seven Ronin, also know as the Forty-Seven Samurai. It is described by one noted Japanese scholar as the country's "national legend". It recounts the most famous case involving the Samurai code of honor, "bushido".