Short Stories

A Place Like Home is a collection of Rosamunde Pilcher’s most enduring short stories, never before published in audiobook form. The collection contains 15 stories, which range from "The Holiday", in which a wife surprises her husband of 25 years with a holiday full of Mediterranean sunshine, red rocks, and blue seas in an effort to rekindle the romance they had before children; "The Eye of Love", which takes the listener to the bright spring sunshine and sparkling waves of a Northumbrian village where old flames meet again; and more.

In Honor Harrington’s day, the Star Kingdom of Manticore is the wealthiest star nation on a per capita basis in the entire galaxy. It is home to magnificent cities. Its planets’ oceans and seas—and skies—are open to its people, yet they have maintained the beauty and the magnificence of their natural habitats. But that was not always true. Pioneers, especially interstellar pioneers, must be tough, smart, and self-reliant, and the people who built the Star Kingdom knew that.

Ana has perfected the art of the Irish goodbye—especially when it comes to holiday office parties that send her anxiety spiraling. When she escapes the company festivities and takes refuge in her favorite bookstore, she expects to find her usual hidden reading nook empty and waiting. Instead, she discovers Kael—the store's new owner with silver-streaked hair, warm golden eyes, and a pair of very real reindeer antlers that catch the light when she smiles.

Before he was the feared black ops government assassin Orphan X, operating in the shadows and spoken about in whispers, Evan Smoak was a teenager, undergoing the most rigorous of training. At 17, Evan is sent off by his handler, ex-CIA station agent Jack Johns, to take the most intense U.S. military training course. But that is only part of the challenge before him—Evan has to get there and back, safely and quietly, maintaining operational security.

Social distancing came easily to Reagan. Maybe a little too easily. She’s always liked people better from afar. But Reagan doesn’t want her grandpa to be alone for Christmas this year - he’s already spent too much time on his own in 2020. So she heads back to her hometown with a dish of holiday Jell-O salad, hoping they can have a little normalcy. Hoping it will be safe...

More than a hundred years into the future, as the US approaches its 400th anniversary, Tomas, a young graduate student, searches for the real identity of one of the cyborgs that maintained American homes. He has been haunted for years by an audio clip of a cyborg named Felipe and is intent on writing Felipe’s biography. In the clip, Felipe can only recite that he was made in America, but Tomas must find out: Where was the Self-made Man really from?

Fay Roper is a divorced single mom and a globally famous actress. She’s also unlucky in love. Maybe because the last thing Fay wants in a man is yet another superfan. But somehow, every time she has a boyfriend who isn’t a stalker, he abruptly disappears from her life. With the help of her best friend and right-hand woman, Poppy, Fay decides to change the game and join an exclusive new dating app under a false identity. A subscriber named Oliver takes the bait. But Oliver likes to play games too. And only one of them can win.

Hector Munro, writing under the pseudonym of Saki, is justly renowned for his urbane and witty short stories. His eccentric characters, humorous dialogue and engaging domestic situations all reveal a penetrating and sometimes disturbing insight into human nature. As a quixotic tour guide, Saki leads the reader from garden party to pig sty to political convention with the ease of one who is intimately familiar with the cares and foibles of the human condition, showing us this vista of life through the well tempered lens of his gentle, British irony. In this definitive collection of stories we can browse and sightsee at our leisure, cross borders of fresh insight, admire and enjoy each whimsical tale as we journey through the imaginative landscape of a truly artful writer.

Two estranged sisters, Lillian and Adelia, struggle to come to terms after the mother they've believed to be dead for the past 15 years actually passes away. Confused and in shock, they travel together to the isolated village of their childhood to claim the farm that was passed on to them. There’s comfort in returning to this place of their birth, where a simpler, rustic life feels possible - but the sisters quickly realize that something is very wrong with the village and that their mother was hiding more than they could have ever imagined.

An exhausted mother decides to take part in a pilot program where a robot takes care of her children after school—cooking, cleaning, and helping with homework. The only problem? The robot just might be too good at her job.

Compiled in this short story collection are 20 easy-listening, compelling, and fun stories to help you expand your vocabulary and give you the tools to improve your grasp of the wonderful Italian language.

Between 1923 and 1954, Weird Tales magazine shaped the landscape of modern horror, fantasy, and science fiction. It was the crucible of cosmic terror, sword-and-sorcery, and supernatural fiction, a publication that launched the careers of some of the twentieth century’s most enduring genre writers. Weird Tales presents a carefully curated selection of standout stories from the magazine’s golden age. This anthology brings together a wide spectrum of speculative fiction, ranging from mythic fantasy and Gothic mystery to tales of metaphysical horror and existential dread.

Enter French Stories for Beginners Vol 2: You will find 10 easy-to-listen-to, engaging, and fun stories that will not only help you to dramatically expand your vocabulary but it gives you the tools to improve your grasp of the French language. Boost your comprehension, grow your vocabulary and spark your imagination with these 10 unconventional French short stories! All stories are written using vocabulary that you could easily use in your day-to-day conversations.

Sky Lacroux has finally realized her dream and opened her own tattoo shop in Provincetown, Massachusetts. The only thing missing is the one thing she longs for, and has no control over - love. Sawyer Bass, a professional boxer, plays his guitar at a local bar to escape the painful realities of his life. But when he spots a stunning brunette across the room, escaping reality goes out the window. When Sawyer walks into Sky's tattoo shop and sees the woman from the bar - Sky - the chemistry between them is instant.

Tony Black is the hottest surfer on the planet. He travels the world throughout the year and spends his summers on Cape Cod with his friends, at the Seaside cottages in Wellfleet, Massachusetts. He's got his choice of women, but Amy Maples is the one he wants. Fourteen years ago she was his for an entire summer, until a devastating accident changed everything, and what they had seemed like it had never existed - at least for her.

Welcome to Newford: to the music clubs, the waterfront, and the alleyways where ancient myths and magic spill into the modern world. Gemmins live in abandoned cars and skells traverse the tunnels below, while mermaids swim in the gray harbor waters and fill the cold night with their song. Come meet Jilly, painting wonders in the rough city streets; and Geordie, playing fiddle while he dreams of a ghost; and the Angel of Grasso Street gathering the fey and the wild and the poor and the lost.

Claire Keegan continues her outstanding work with this new collection of quietly wrenching stories of despair and desire in modern-day Ireland. A writer awarded a stay to work in Heinrich Böll's old cottage has her peace interrupted by an unwelcome intruder whose ulterior motives emerge as the night progresses. A priest waits at the altar to perform a marriage—and battles his memories of a love affair that led him to question all to which he has dedicated his life. And a man seeks solace at the bottom of a bottle as he mourns both his empty life and his lost love.

For fans of Charles Yu and Matt Haig, this short tale features a grandfather who claims not merely to have been abducted by aliens when he was a young man, but to have fallen in love in the process. His grandson (the story's narrator) is the only person who believes him. My Grandfather’s Ship is a quirky examination of how the passions (real or imagined) of our elders can inspire us.

An android who knows nothing besides his work in a factory is given one final week to explore the world before he is forced to undergo mandatory reprogramming in this bittersweet precursor to TJ Klune’s In the Lives of Puppets, now available in trade paperback! A Macmillan Audio production...

One Good Story, That One is a collection steeped in native oral tradition and shot through with Thomas King's special brand of wit and comic imagination. These highly acclaimed stories conjure up Native and Judeo-Christian myths, present-day pop culture, and literature while mixing in just the right amount of perception and experience.