Short Stories

A terrifying, thrilling collection of must-listen horror stories chock-full of nightmarish supernatural beings and the murderously disturbed that are sure to keep you up all night long.

Andre Monroe is ready to move on from heartbreak, and the first step is bringing home his rescue pup. He’d bonded instantly with the playful Zeus and was already planning their first adventures. But one thing he definitely hadn’t daydreamed about was Zeus accidentally being promised to someone else - or that he might go home empty-handed and brokenhearted all over again.

First contact with a mysterious race of aliens reveals an unusual request; a family's pet dog comes to grips with the newly bestowed gift of human-like intelligence; a poet, in danger and alone on a distant world, makes unlikely allies; hundreds of years in the future, a famous hermit lives in the sea above the now-underwater Harvard University; former friends navigate unsteady peace between human refugees and the technologically superior race that saved them; in a future where human life can be infinitely extended through cybertronic rebirth, one woman declines immortality.

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.

29 Brand-New Sci-Fi Horror Stories. The future is now, and it's not what we were promised. The optimistic science fiction of old was wrong. Progress is not linear, technology creates as many problems as it solves, and the concept of a better tomorrow has become an abstraction that is in no way guaranteed. When looking at the future now, we no longer ask what is possible, we wonder how we'll cope. Contained within this anthology are 29 never-before-published works by supremely talented authors.

Here in one recording is every Sherlock Holmes story ever written by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. Originally appearing in serial form, these famous stories are here presented in the order in which they were first published beginning in 1887. Included in this definitive, award-winning collection are four novels and 56 short stories, a total of 60 titles. The 56 short stories are aggregated into five named collections, just as they were originally published in book form.

This exciting collection presents two previously unpublished stories by SF legend Octavia E. Butler. A Necessary Being precedes the events of Survivor, Butler's third (famously disowned) installment in her Patternist series, and includes characters from it, focusing exclusively on the Kohn, aliens who build their social hierarchies on the blueness of their fur. In Childfinder, a black woman with the gift of identifying children with latent psychic ability refuses to share her skill with an organization of white telepaths.

Edgar Award winner Otto Penzler returns with a new anthology of exhilarating mysteries, assembling Victorian society's lords and ladies and most miserable miscreants. Behind the velvet curtains of horse-drawn carriages and amid the soft glow of the gaslights are the detectives and bobbies sniffing out the safecrackers and petty purloiners who plague everything from the soot-covered side streets of London to the opulent manors of the countryside. Brush off your dinner jackets and straighten out your ball gowns for these exciting, glitzy mysteries.

Her Best Friend’s Dad: It was her 21st birthday, and her friend, Julie, suggested to Amanda that her own father should be the one to give her a birthday spanking. Amanda agrees, but she is shocked when she finds herself being spanked over her little nylon panties. Weeks later, she gets a second spanking. It is when Amanda arrives for a third time, conveniently, when Julie wasn’t home, that Mr. Rogers works out the real reason for her visit. He follows through with his earlier threat of a bare bottom spanking. Later on, Amanda gets revenge on Julie. She buys her the tiniest pair of nylon...

Amor Towles selects the best mystery short stories of the year, including tales by Andrew Child, Jeffrey Deaver, and T. C. Boyle. Under the auspices of New York City's legendary mystery fiction specialty bookstore, The Mysterious Bookshop, and aided by Edgar Award-winning anthologist Otto Penzler, New York Times bestseller Amor Towles has selected the twenty most puzzling, most thrilling, and most mysterious short stories from the past year, collected now in one entertaining volume.

The Bookworm Box is proud to present Two More Days, our second anthology installment. Much like the first installment, Two More Days is an exciting and unique listening experience with contributions from several of our charity's featured authors. Each author was given the same first sentence. Where they took that sentence was completely up to them.

Sherlock Holmes and Lucy James have become a formidable family crime-fighting team. But one murderous woman has evaded their grasp. And when they’re called to London’s Olympia Theatre to investigate the strange death of a circus clown, they quickly discover their cunning foe has struck again. Tracking the enigmatic killer through London Zoo, a fancy-dress ball, and a sinister occult organization, the erudite duo stays hot on her heels. Each time they close in, a powerful criminal mastermind intervenes, and she slips through their fingers.

Chesterton's talent as a mystery writer is displayed in this collection of detective stories, The Man Who Knew Too Much. In each story, the star detective, Horne Fisher, deals with another strange mystery: the vanishing of a priceless coin, the framing of an Irish "prince" freedom fighter, an eccentric rich man dies during an obsessive fishing trip, another vanishing during an ice skate, a statue crushing his own uncle, and a few more.

In the first of six witty short stories, 60s-something English barrister, Horace Rumpole, takes on the younger generation both at home and in the hallowed courtroom—while offending his esteemed colleagues and his draconian wife, Hilda.

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.

There have been few masters of the short story as popular as W. S. Maugham. His dry wit, worldweary loftiness, pungent cynicism, and penetrating powers of observation have contributed to the creation of some of the greatest short stories ever written.

When Mrs. Sorensen's husband dies, she rekindles a long-dormant love with an unsuitable mate in "Mrs. Sorensen and the Sasquatch". In "Open the Door and the Light Pours Through", a young man wrestles with grief and his sexuality in an exchange of letters with his faraway beloved. "Dreadful Young Ladies" demonstrates the strength and power - known and unknown - of the imagination. The World Fantasy Award-winning novella The Unlicensed Magician introduces the secret, magical life of an invisible girl once left for dead.

Every novella by Ursula K. Le Guin, an icon in American literature, collected for the first time - and introduced by the legendary author - in one breathtaking volume. Ursula K. Le Guin has won multiple prizes and accolades, from the Medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters to the Newbery Honor, Nebula, Hugo, World Fantasy, and PEN/Malamud awards. She has had her work collected over the years but never as a complete retrospective of her longer works.

Twelve stories by science-fiction master Stanislaw Lem, nine of them never before published in English.

Welcome to Briarcliff House—a haunted hotel nestled deep in the woods outside Salem, Massachusetts, where time folds, mirrors whisper, and every room holds a secret. In this chilling collection of 20 short stories, guests encounter ghostly apparitions, cursed objects, and supernatural forces that feed on memory, identity, and fear itself. From possessed rooms and vanishing children to looping timelines and evil reflections, Haunted Hotel is a gripping horror anthology that will drag you screaming down haunted hallways you’ll never forget. Perfect for fans of The Sleep Experiment, The ...