Short Stories Century

Orochi, the king of the dragons, has ordered his brothers and sisters to destroy humanity. It falls to a young hero to assemble a team and stop the dragons' rampage. It falls to the Century Blade. This is a short story set in the world of the award-winning Mortal Techniques. It is designed to be listened to as a stand-alone story, completely independent from the full-length novels set in the same world.

A baker abandoned and overlooked due to a childhood injury, she's longing for love and acceptance. A reclusive blacksmith who prefers horses to people. Can they find a way to co-exist or, even better, forge a partnership of the romantic kind? Abandoned as a child, Georgia knows first-hand the results of chasing rainbows, searching for the proverbial pot of gold. That same lure called her father to California, leaving her to grow up in a children’s home. Even though she knows that there is little value in depending on anyone but herself, buried in her heart is the dream of her own happily ...

What defines a modern short story is much more than a question of length. Despite the efforts of early pioneers like Edgar Allan Poe, the genre was originally synonymous with the anecdote or tale and seen more as entertainment than art. However it has become far more than that, and this Very Short Introduction considers afresh the form's ongoing innovations in plot construction, capacity for psychological insight, and ability to offer intensely concentrated perceptions.

The New York Times best-selling author continues his colonial-era thriller series with eight tales of mystery, adventure, and supernatural suspense.

This fierce collection from New York Times bestselling historical fiction authors sweeps readers back in time with exhilarating short stories of unforgettable female characters. Spanning decades, these indelible women broke through barriers in disparate worlds of art, war, science, love, and injustice and paved the way for other women to follow. Strike a match and blaze a trail.

Spanning four decades in the mid-19th century, the interconnected novellas of Old New York lay out in vivid detail the complex and inscrutable codes, customs, and taboos of New York society in classic Wharton style.

"A Nightingale's Song" is a captivating novella, set in the dark depths of Nazi-occupied Paris during World War II. Against the backdrop of fear and turmoil, a forbidden love story emerges, igniting a spark of hope amidst the chaos. Thomas Müller, a German doctor burdened with the ravages of war, finds solace in his work at a Parisian hospital where he crosses paths with Sophie, an attentive and caring French nurse. Risking everything and defying the boundaries imposed by their countries, Thomas and Sophie’s love blossoms, until a heavily wounded patient arrives at the hospital, a member...

Nolan Lerner is guilty. His past is a thing choked with secrets, blood � and sunflowers. Only Nolan knows what really happened that summer in 1977, when his younger brother, an idiot savant named Morris, built a vast cardboard fort with secret doors inside, doors leading into other worlds.

From the number one New York Times best-selling author of the Man Booker Prize-winning novel Lincoln in the Bardo and the story collection Tenth of December, a 2013 National Book Award Finalist for Fiction. Talking candy bars, baby geniuses, disappointed mothers, castrated dogs, interned teenagers, and moral fables - all in this hilarious and heartbreaking collection from an author hailed as the heir to Kurt Vonnegut and Thomas Pynchon.

Written some 40 years after Moby Dick, Melville's Billy Budd is a moving tale of good versus evil. Set aboard a British navy ship at the end of the eighteenth century, a young, innocent sailor's charm and good nature put the men around him at ease. Ship life agreed with Billy. He made friends quickly and was well liked, which infuriated John Claggart, the ship's cold-blooded superior officer.

A Selection of Short Stories by Leo Tolstoy read by Bart Wolffe.

A collection of six new ghost stories woven from the fabric of England’s dark dreaming. The Orangery Wooed by a Georgian gentleman of taste, a young bride-to-be finds that all is not as it appears at her fiancé’s elegant Gaddesbury estate. There is a whiff of corruption at its heart which, for all his acid wit and fashionable acquaintance, grows ever stronger, until . . . Her Master’s Call Temesforde. Such a peaceful Shropshire parish. And yet, what a pity about the vicar. What did he know? How could he have known? The Reverend Ruth More knows nothing of it when she arrives to start ...

Four ghost stories from England’s historic shires present a heady brew of the Gothic, folk horror, historical fiction and satire. The Ghost of Scarside Beck A newly-wed Cumbrian vicar and his wife experience a night like none they could ever have foreseen. He may have answered his calling, but who, or what, is calling her? At Fall of Night A ghostly excursion into the Victorian Gothic; a tale of obsession, terror, and vengeance. Welcome to Wiltshire in the autumn of 1843. Monsieur Benoit Lavarnier, toast of the Parisian art world and a man of cultured accomplishments, finds himself ...

Herbert George Wells was one of the most prolific and visionary British writers of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. H. G. Wells is now best remembered for his science fiction novels, although he wrote across many genres, including nonfiction. His fiction embraces history, science fiction, horror, satire, fantasy, and social commentary. Wells was also a futurist, foreseeing air travel, tanks (as in “The Land Ironclads” - part of this anthology) space travel, nuclear weapons, and even satellite television.

Beloved author Mary Stewart's long-lost novella, now available again for the first time in 40 years. In 1879 a wealthy young woman elopes with an impoverished fisherman, leaving her family, who live on the volcanic island of Lanzarote, distraught. In 1968, 23-year-old Perdita West, secretary to the famous author Cora Gresham, visits Lanzarote, the strangest and wildest of the Canary Isles, on a research trip. They meet Cora's estranged son, Mike, and fall in love with the unusual, beautiful little island.

In June 1917, W. S. Maugham was asked by the British Secret Intelligence Service, to undertake a special mission in Russia to support Kerensky's government. The mission failed, and two and a half months later, the Bolsheviks took control. Maugham subsequently said that if he had been able to get there six months earlier, he might have succeeded. Quiet and observant, Maugham had a good temperament for intelligence work. The writer used his spying experiences as the basis for his collection of short stories called Ashenden: Or the British Agent. They became the prototype for the modern espionage novel.

All you need to know about this great collection of the best mystery stories from the past century are the names of the great authors inside: Robert Bernard, Robert Bloch, Lawrence Block, Anthony Boucher, Frederic Brown, James M. Cain, Max Allan Collins, Jeffery Deaver, Stanley Ellin, Harlan Ellison, Erle Stanley Gardner, Ed Gorman, Anna Katharine Green, Jeremiah Healy, Patricia Highsmith, Reginald Hill, Tony Hillerman, Evan Hunter, Stephen King, and more.

In the 12 unforgettable tales of Lesser Known Monsters of the 21st Century, the strange is made familiar and the familiar strange, such that a girl growing wings on her legs feels like an ordinary rite of passage, while a bug-infested house becomes an impossible Kafkaesque nightmare. Each story builds a new world all its own: A group of children steal a haunted doll; a runaway bride encounters a sea monster; a vendor sells toy boxes that seemingly control the passage of time; an insomniac is seduced by the Sandman.

A perilous voyage by sea, the difficulties of life in a new country, new friends, and one terrible event, challenge Mette Jensen as she leaves her home in Haderslev, Schleswig determined to start a new life beyond the reach of Prussian Soldiers. With Denmark still reeling from the effects of war over the ownership of Schleswig, two Danish sisters make the difficult decision to leave their homeland. The men of Schleswig, on the border between Denmark and Germany, have already left in droves to avoid being drafted into the Prussian army, and a recruiter from New Zealand has been traveling ...

Imogene is young and beautiful. She kisses like a movie star and knows everything about every film ever made. She's also dead and waiting in the Rosebud Theater for Alec Sheldon one afternoon in 1945. . . .