Short Stories

Fourteen-year-old Jessica is stuck spending her first weekend at Dad’s after the divorce. Creaky Trees feels wrong from the start—a strange, haunted town with even stranger residents. At the park, she meets a group of local kids. To impress the cute skater boy with the perfect smile, she takes the dare every kid whispers about: Break into the crumbling cabin deep in the woods. The lair of the blind old witch—the town’s living urban legend who haunts every kid’s dreams—and steal her glass eyes.

In the collection’s first story, a Japanese woman finds healing in a secret life as a sex advice columnist after being fetishized by her white husband for decades, while in the fourth story, Ronald Reagan is reincarnated as a puppy and must cope with being squeezed, dropped, and controlled by his young, queer owner. And in “Thank You No Thank You” a young woman who grew up in a cloistered religious community and escaped to a liberal law school grapples with the rules she learned in childhood, the rules of her new life, and her actual desires as she vacations with her long-term boyfriend.

Former model Astrid Lane lives a quiet life as a caterer, far from her days as rock star Callum Blake's famous wife. When a retrospective about the 1970s music scene sparks renewed interest in that era, Astrid's estranged daughter Zara reaches out about a podcast discussing her father's career—and a long-buried tragedy that changed their family forever.

This cheering book of best loved short tales, extracts and poems will calm and restore an anxious mind before sleep. A good night's sleep is essential for our well-being and our health, but in our busy lives sleep is often poor and overlooked. Now is the time to stop a while and find consolation and wonder in other worlds where all is well and sleep just a minute or two away.

“A diverse and glorious selection . . . a gift of imagination, wit, and wonder. The collection is filled with miniature masterpieces. . . . This must-have anthology is a treasure trove not to be missed.” —Library Journal (starred review) The prestigious annual story anthology, featuring...

Collected for the first time anywhere, the nine tales in The Egg and Other Stories highlight Andy Weir's trademark wit and unexpected twists. For the few who have yet to experience The Martian, it's a perfect appetizer. For passionate Weir fans, it's a delicious dessert.

Selected from the best of the world's short fiction, 50 Great Short Stories brings together writings by great masters of the genre. Carefully picked for their timeless quality, listeners are sure to be delighted by the inclusion of such favourites as 'The Gift of the Magi', 'The Lady with the Dog', 'The Curious Case of Benjamin Button', 'Rain' and 'Mrs Packletide's Tiger', to name but a few.

Meet Harlow Torrent, part-time journalist and full-time Slip Witch and her crazy witch family in this ten-book cozy mystery box set.

When acclaimed mystery writer Dorothy L. Sayers first began compiling anthologies of the best crime stories in the 1920s and ’30s, the genre was in the flush of its first golden age. While it is hard to imagine today - after every possible mystery plot has been told, retold, subverted, and played straight again by hundreds of writers over nearly a century - in Sayers’s day there were still twists that had never been seen, and machinations of crime that would shock even jaded Jazz Age fans.

A glittering collection of some of the world's finest short stories.

This edition encompasses the best short fiction ever written for children. The beloved, enchanting fairy tales, such as of Cinderella and the Sleeping Beauty, thrilling stories packed with the adventures of Sindbad and Aladdin, excerpts from iconic works such as Oliver Twist and Gulliver’s Travels—all this and many more stories that inform, educate, entertain, and enthral children and fill them with wonder and fire up their imagination, have been included in this covetable collection.

Winner of the 2020 Audio Publishers Association Lifetime Achievement Award Includes the story “Premium Harmony”—set in the fictional town of Castle Rock, Maine The masterful #1 New York Times bestselling story collection from O. Henry Prize winner Stephen King that includes twenty-one...

In "Best of Friends", a woman finally gets it on with the friend she's wanted for years, while "Eating Out" sees a man finally giving into temptation with one of his friends. "F*ck Date" is a raw story about a man having a no-strings fling, and "Gone Skiing" shows that it's easy to bring spice into a long-term relationship if you make an effort. Finally, in "Wet", a married couple get caught in the rain and decide to keep each other warm.

Earth is dying, and humanity is scrambling to set up colonies in other star systems. But the search process for habitable planets is not perfect, as the crew of the Ouroboros discover on arrival at their new home.

There will never be another Western writer like Louis L’Amour. A legendary author and indisputably the greatest storyteller in his genre of all time, L’Amour captivated millions of readers and has sold well over three hundred million copies of his works, which includes nearly ninety novels and countless short stories. Mistakes Can Kill You highlights an essential selection featuring nine of L’Amour’s earlier short stories, sometimes written under the pen name Jim Mayo, that exemplify the rugged morality of the best Western writing.

Much of Richard Matheson's work has found its way into pop culture: The title story became a memorable episode of television's The Twilight Zone, and more recently, Will Smith starred in the blockbuster movie I Am Legend. Stephen King has declared Matheson to be one of his favorite writers. Find out why as you listen to the classic horror story of a man who peers out of his airplane window to see a gremlin destroying the wing.

Dr. Margaret Richter has it all. She’s rich, thanks to her best-selling self-help books. She has a beautiful home in Cape Cod overlooking the beach. And she has a monthly book club that everyone is dying to get invited to. Literally. Because behind the crystal wine glasses, the fine linens and the catered hors d'oeuvres lies a tangled web of secrets, of deceit, of murder. No member of the book club is innocent—and many are guilty. And the person with the most to hide is Margaret Richter herself.

The monster that is Haunted Reels has returned, and now no one is safe. Featuring twenty-four brand-new, never-before-published stories by a mix of Hollywood legends and rising film-industry stars, Haunted Reels 2 continues the menace its brooding predecessor started, only this time it has a grudge. Beware the murderous vandals, maniacal crackpots, and diabolically possessed contained within this book, for once you let them loose, there’s no telling what they’ll do next.

After a bad breakup, Nola wants nothing to do with Christmas, especially in her quaint hometown of Bright Harbor, Maine. Infuriatingly charming and cheery, Nola’s surroundings only worsen her sour mood. To make matters worse, Caleb, the boy who broke her heart years ago, is all grown up and still living in town. While doing her best to avoid him, Nola bumps into the local mailman, who gives her a mysterious letter. And when she finds that the writer is a fellow Scrooge, she can’t help but feel her spirit lifting.

Charles Dickens was a major contributor to the romantic revival of Christmas traditions that occurred in the Victorian era. With their heart, humor and good morals, Dickens' Christmas stories have made the author's name synonymous with the season. Here we present four charming novellas to complete his series that began with "A Christmas Carol", with echoes of sleigh bells throughout. The stories include "The Chimes", "The Cricket on the Hearth", "The Battle of Life", and "The Haunted Man" - the perfect companion for the yearly celebrations.