Short Classics

Anton Chekhov is widely considered one of the best short-story writers of all time. Having influenced such writers as Ernest Hemingway, Raymond Carver, and James Joyce, Chekhov’s stories are often noted for their stream-of-consciousness style and their vast number. Raymond Carver once said, “It is not only the immense number of stories he wrote - for few, if any, writers have ever done more - it is the awesome frequency with which he produced masterpieces, stories that shrive us as well as delight and move us, that lay bare our emotions in ways only true art can accomplish.”

Introducing Science Fiction Short Stories Vol. 10, a collection of thrilling tales that will transport you to other worlds and challenge your imagination. From the minds of The Shadowplay Collective, these stories will take you on a journey through the vast expanse of space and beyond. Whether you're a die-hard sci-fi fan or just dipping your toes into the genre, this collection is sure to captivate and entertain. In this collection, you'll find stories set in distant galaxies, on alien planets, and in futuristic societies. The Shadowplay Collective has crafted each tale with care, weaving ...

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."

Bachelor John Marcher is haunted by the premonition that something terrible lies in store for him, like a "beast in the jungle" lying in wait. So he spends his life in idleness, unable to carry out his dreams or desires, while his friend May Bartram, curious to see how this spectacular fate will manifest, helps watch out for the arrival of the beast.

In these seven stories of People from Bloomington, our peculiar narrators find themselves in the most peculiar of circumstances and encounter the most peculiar of people. Set in Bloomington, Indiana, where the author lived as a graduate student in the 1970s, this is far from the idyllic portrait of small-town America.

This original compilation from Skyboat Media features the most inventive and poetic of Alexander Pushkin’s short fiction. Exposed to French culture at a young age, Pushkin’s work reflects these sensibilities, and he combines this with stories of his Russian ancestors that his grandmother would relate to him and his siblings during their summers near Moscow.

Madame Mathilde Loisel is sure she was meant to be an aristocrat, but she was born into a middle-class family and married off to a middle-class clerk. When her husband procures them invitations to a high-society party, Loisel goes all out to impress. She borrows a diamond necklace from a wealthy acquaintance and has the time of her life - until the necklace goes missing. In “The Necklace”, de Maupassant showcases his signature twists of fate and social commentary in a story that will leave you speechless.

After the success of This Side of Paradise, it was F. Scott Fitzgerald’s popular short fiction that helped maintain the luxury and celebrity to which he and his wife, Zelda, had grown accustomed. Reflections of that blithe and glittering lifestyle, these eleven stories reveal a man both beguiled by and critical of the American postwar generation he defined. Fitzgerald’s tales capture the inauguration of the age in all its hysteria, revelry, and tragedy - the same world he would later revisit in his renowned The Great Gatsby.

Enjoy the great detectives of the Golden Age of classic mysteries in this unique collection of audio whodunits. Newly recorded for this original anthology, the crimes, criminals, and sleuths depicted here set the standard for decades to come, and remain as entertaining today as they were when first published. Fantastic narrators including Simon Prebble, Kate Fenton, Bill Wallace, and Robert Fass breathe new life into these stories.

Edgar Allan Poe was a writer, poet, editor and literary critic. Poe is best known for his poetry and short stories, particularly his tales of mystery and the macabre, and is widely regarded as a central figure of Romanticism in the United States and of American literature. Poe was one of the country's earliest practitioners of the short story and considered to be the inventor of the detective fiction genre, as well as a significant contributor to the emerging genre of science fiction.

Flamboyant, theatrical and ambitious, Margaret Cavendish was one of the 17th century's most striking figures: a woman who ventured into the male spheres of politics, science, philosophy and literature. The Blazing World is a highly original work: part Utopian fiction, part feminist text, it tells of a lady shipwrecked on the Blazing World where she is made empress and uses her power to ensure that it is free of war, religious division and unfair sexual discrimination. This volume also includes 'The Contract' and 'Assaulted and Pursued Chastity'.

Welcome to Doug Bradley's Spinechillers, Volume Four, part of what is on the way of becoming the world's largest collection of high quality, classic horror short-story audiobooks. We start with Doug Bradley's well-researched introduction to the authors and stories featured in this volume. Launching us into "Lost Hearts", M. R. James' creepy tale of ghostly children seeking revenge and peace from the man who caused their untimely demise.

The Greatest Female Crime Writers of All Time is a collection of 17 classic detective novels and stories, read by three award-winning narrators. Included here are stories by some of the greatest female crime writers of the 20th century: Agatha Christie; Dorothy L. Sayers; and Josephine Tey.

Having doubted the existence of the others, at the same time, to their shock and terror, a Ghost, a Time Traveler, and an Extraterrestrial appear to a man, who’s not surprised at all.

Twenty-three great Sherlock Holmes mysteries as published in Strand Magazine. These stories have won over readers in the thousands and have helped make Sherlock Holmes the most popular and most famous detective of all times. Arthur Conan Doyle, was born in Scotland in 1859. He was educated in Jesuit schools in England and Austria. In 1881 he finished a medical degree and signed on as a surgeon aboard a whaling vessel in the Arctic. After an unsuccessful medical practice, Doyle started writing. Sherlock Holmes was an instant success.

The Union army may be full of bastards, but there's only one who thinks he can save the day singlehanded when the Gurkish come calling: the incomparable Colonel Sand dan Glokta. Curnden Craw and his dozen are out to recover a mysterious item from beyond the Crinna. Only one small problem: no one seems to know what the item is. Shevedieh, the self-styled best thief in Styria, lurches from disaster to catastrophe alongside her best friend and greatest enemy, Javre, Lioness of Hoskopp.

O. Henry, the pseudonym of the American writer William Sydney Porter (1862-1910), is best known for writing stories full of wit, wordplay, and warm characterizations, and particularly for their clever twist endings. This volume contains 20 of O. Henry's best and best-loved stories. They are marked by coincidence and surprise endings as well as the compassion and high humor that have made O. Henry's stories popular for the last century.

In Désirée’s Baby, the adopted daughter of a wealthy prewar French Creole couple is courted by the son of another wealthy, respected French Creole family. After they marry, their child is born with dark skin and believed to have African ancestry, a problem for a prewar white family. Accused of dishonesty by her husband, the mother, Désirée, and her child walk off into the bayou, never to be seen again. But when the father finds a letter from his mother to his father which reveals an explosive fact about his own ancestry, he learns a sobering truth.

Guy de Maupassant is widely regarded as the father of the modern short story. As his 13 volumes of short stories attest, he was a prolific writer of this form. He had a simple, efficient style of writing and, like Anton Chekhov, found inspiration for his stories in the day-to-day lives of characters, in which their hidden natures are often revealed. Many of his works also centerd on the Franco-Prussian War, in which he served.

A collection of horror/thriller stories with surprise endings to chill you and thrill you to the bone. The creepers include: JIMMY SAID IT WAS THE BOOGEYMAN: His mother and older brother have been brutally murdered, and Jimmy says the boogeyman did it. CREATURE FEATURE: Bruce has always dreamed of becoming an actor, but his nose is too big for leading roles. He agrees to have plastic surgery to become the star of a monster movie. VESPA: Kurt marries a beautiful woman who prefers to dress as a goth and live in a house suitable for the Munsters and The Addams Family. THE AMATEUR: A mild-...