Classic Literature Anthology

Raymond Carver called Anton Chekhov "the greatest short story writer who has ever lived". This unequivocal verdict on Chekhov's genius has been echoed many times by writers as diverse as Katherine Mansfield, Somerset Maugham, John Cheever, and Tobias Wolf. While his popularity as a playwright has sometimes overshadowed his achievements in prose, the importance of Chekhov's stories is now recognized by readers as well as by fellow authors. Their themes - alienation, the absurdity and tragedy of human existence - have as much relevance today as when they were written.

Set on the outskirts of a small Southern town, The Grass Harp tells the story of three endearing misfits - an orphaned boy and two whimsical old ladies - who one day take up residence in a tree house. As they pass sweet yet hazardous hours in a china tree, The Grass Harp manages to convey all the pleasures and responsibilities of freedom. But most of all it teaches us about the sacredness of love, “that love is a chain of love, as nature is a chain of life.”

A collection of classic works by Edgar Allan Poe, American author, poet, editor, and literary critic. Best known for his tales of mystery and the macabre, Poe was one of the earliest American practitioners of the short story and is considered the inventor of the detective fiction genre. He is further credited with contributing to the emerging genre of science fiction. He was the first well-known American writer to try to earn a living through writing alone, resulting in a financially difficult life and career.

Marcovaldo is an unskilled worker in a drab industrial city in northern Italy. He is an irrepressible dreamer and an inveterate schemer. Much to the puzzlement of his wife, his children, his boss, and his neighbors, he chases his dreams - but the results are never the expected ones.

Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes tales are rightly ranked among the seminal works of mystery and detective fiction. Included in this collection are all four full-length Holmes novels and more than forty short masterpieces - from the inaugural adventure A Study in Scarlet to timeless favorites like “The Speckled Band” and more. At the center of each stands the iconic figure of Holmes - brilliant, eccentric, and capable of amazing feats of deductive reasoning.

Including the stories "Lispeth", "Beyond the Pale", and "In the Pride of His Youth", this collection tells of soldiers, wise children, exiles, forbidden romances, and divided identities, creating a rich portrait of Anglo-Indian society. Originally published for a newspaper in Lahore when Kipling was a journalist, the tales were later revised by him to re-create as vividly as possible the sights and smells of India for readers at home.

From best-selling authors Ilona Andrews, Yasmine Galenorn, Allyson James, and Jeanne C. Stein comes an anthology of four all-new novellas featuring powerful women who know how to handle a hex or two. In "Double Hexed" from Allyson James, a novella of the Stormwalker series, Janet and her friends find themselves locked in her hotel, victims of a hex cast by a very powerful sorcerer.

Published in chronological order, with extensive story and bibliographic notes, this series not only provides access to stories that have been out of print for years, but gives them a historical and social context. Series editors Scott Conners and Ronald S. Hilger excavated the still-existing manuscripts, letters and various published versions of the stories, creating a definitive "preferred text" for Smith's entire body of work. This second volume of the series brings together 20 of his fantasy stories.

More than 60 stories, poems, and essays are included in this wide-ranging collection by the extravagantly versatile Raymond Carver. Two of the stories - later revised for What We Talk About When We Talk About Love - are particularly notable in that between the first and the final versions, we see clearly the astounding process of Carver's literary development.

Call If You Need Me includes all of the prose previously collected in No Heroics, Please, four essays from Fires, and those five marvelous stories that range over the period of Carver's mature writing and give his devoted fans a final glimpse of the great writer at work. The pure pleasure of Carver's writing is everywhere in his work, here no less than in those stories that have already entered the canon of modern literature.

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.

A collection of horror/thriller stories with surprise endings to chill you and thrill you to the bone on Halloween. Selections are from previously published anthologies, Black As Night, Shivers & Other Nightmares, Don't Look Behind You, Scary Stories-Vols. 1-5, Scare Factory, Midnight Snacks, & Creepers- Vols 4. The nightmares include: SOMETHING IN THE ATTIC: Norma went to the attic to get her costume for Halloween. After reading from an old book that belonged to a grandma who was burned at the stake during the Salem witch trials, she lapsed into unconsciousness. Scary Stories 1 THE PARTY: ...

"In The Falling World", Jade, sister queen of the Indigo Cloud Court, has traveled with Chime and Balm to another Raksuran court. When she fails to return, her consort, Moon, along with Stone and a party of warriors and hunters, must track them down. Finding them turns out to be the easy part; freeing them from an ancient trap hidden in the depths of the Reaches is much more difficult. "The Tale of Indigo and Cloud" explores the history of the Indigo Cloud Court, long before Moon was born.

Sexy, contemporary, standalone novels full of tropes and sexy fun. Books from early in Carly’s career, brought back for your listening enjoyment.

The 30 Nightmares: The CONDOM IN THE COFFIN: A wife finds a condom in the lining of her husband's coffin which triggers suspicions someone at the mortuary is a necrophiliac. THE LOOKER: Kidnappers abduct an unusually beautiful woman to harvest her organs for half a million dollars. THE BEAST OF SPOOKY HOLLOW: A freelance writer goes to his college reunion and decides a legendary beast devouring the locals there may be his ticket to a Pulitzer. THE ALIEN: A man struck by lightning while having an MRI is the only one who can see aliens invading the Big Apple. THE INTRUDER: Mary calls 9-1-1 ...

The Ultimate Horror Collection is a fully-indexed collection of over 60 classic horror stories, read by four Audie-winning narrators. Included here are stories by H.P. Lovecraft; Edgar Allan Poe; M.R. James; Oscar Wilde; Joseph Le Fanu; Bram Stoker; Mary Shelley; Robert Louis Stevenson; and Henry James.

The Great Stone Face and Other Tales presents four haunting, unforgettable pieces, all set in the White Mountains of New Hampshire. One of the giants of American literature, Hawthorne lived in Salem, Massachusetts, and spent his spare time roaming the crooked streets, immersing himself in the legends and superstitions that he learned from other people. Weaving these tales into his own literary style, Hawthorne wrote many remarkable short stories and essays that focused on his favorite themes of spiritual insight, guilt, and the consequences of sin.

Jack London's stories about man's relationship with nature and its creatures remain some of the most beloved American literature ever published. This collection gathers 8 of his greatest short stories: "To the Man on Trail," "Diablé - a Dog," "To Build a Fire," "The Law of Life," "An Odyssey of the North," "Moonface," "The One Thousand Dozen," and "All Gold Canyon."

"The Crystal Cup" reveals the struggle a young artist faces when he is taken from his family and forced to work for the king. He is promised freedom in return for his hard work making a perfect crystal vase. But the story takes a tragic twist when he dies immediately following his completion of the vase. The king jeopardizes his reign after displaying the artist's remains alongside the vase during a feast at the castle.

In Difficult Loves, Italy's master storyteller weaves tales in which cherished deceptions and illusions of love-including self-love-are swept away in magical instants of recognition. A soldier is reduced to quivering fear by the presence of a full-figured woman in his train compartment; a young clerk leaves a lady's bed at dawn; a young woman is isolated from bathers on a beach by the loss of her bikini bottom. Each of them discovers hidden truths beneath the surface of everyday life.