Classic Literature Short Stories

Can You Forgive Her? is the first of the six Palliser novels. Here Trollope examines parliamentary election and marriage, politics and privacy. As he dissects the Victorian upper class, issues and people shed their pretenses under his patient, ironic probe.

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.

This book won a World Fantasy Award. It's remarkable: The stories are rich, fascinating stuff - creepy and unsettling and phantasmic. Imagine what Tolkien's Lord of the Rings would have been like if Tolkien had tried to tell that story sympathetically from the point of view of the human denizens of Mordor and you'll have the slightest sense of what you're about to wade into... but only just a sense.

Horror and the supernatural are the background of Bierce's short stories. His style is marked by vivid description, grim situations, and sardonic twists of fate. In terms of technique, he was far ahead of his time and his short stories are among the very best in American literature.

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.

They soar through the night, unearthly creatures of legends and lore. Three masters of urban fantasy and paranormal romance explore the rapture of the heavens above, and the darkness below in three all-new stories of angels and guardians, and good and evil. Bestselling author Nalini Singh returns to her Guild Hunter universe to tell the story of vampire Noel, and Sharon Shinn returns to her Samaria series to tell the story of a blind angel and the woman helps him---even though she hates and fears angels.

Experience the exciting breadth of #1 New York Times bestselling author James Rollins's wild imagination and adventurous spirit in this anthology of his short masterworks, including a new full-length novella featuring Captain Tucker Wayne and his military war dog, Kane, as well as nine previously published short stories, gathered together for the first time.

1945: Russian troops have entered Berlin, and are engaged in a violent orgy of robbery, rape, and revenge! Wehrmacht officer Hasso Pemsel, a career soldier on the losing end of the greatest war in history, flees from a sniper's bullet, finding himself hurled into a mysterious, fantastic world of wizards, dragons, and unicorns!

It was the eye. The dull, sightless, vulture's eye that shredded his final nerve. But the murder was done so carefully, so perfectly, that only one thing could reveal the whereabouts of the body. B. J. Harrison gives a masterful reading of the famous murder that wouldn't keep quiet. This audiobook was the #3 best-selling audiobook in 2008 at the iTunes Music Store!

In this extraordinary fourth volume, Anne McCaffrey returns to her world of romance and adventure to tell the story of a Runner of Pern. Raymond E. Feist's Riftwar Saga is the setting for the revenge of The Wood Boy. And George R. R. Martin sets his adventure of The Hedge Knight in the generation before his epic A Song of Ice and Fire. The Legends series spans four audio volumes and includes short novels from the greatest living writers in all fantasy.

A collection of twenty-eight horror/thriller stories with surprise endings to thrill you and chill you. 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 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-mannered commuter suddenly has the overpowering desire to kill people and seeks help from a...

Young Prince Zaphir, son of King Mago, was a kind young man much beloved by his people and all the animals around the kingdom. He is also quite taken with a young princess, the Princess Bluebell, who feels the same way for him. When a giant descends on the land and the army and other brave men who volunteer to fight him are defeated, Zaphir decides to face the Giant one on one, before more men risk their lives.

This is a story from the Murders in the Rue Morgue (The Dupin Stories) collection. Auguste Dupin, investigator extraordinaire, was the remarkable creation of Edgar Allan Poe. Written in the 1840s, Poe presented the acutely observant, shrewd but idiosyncratic character who, with his chronicler, provided the inspiration for the more famous Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson.

Listening to The Satires by Juvenal is to come face to face with the corruption, the debauchery, the waste, the sloth, and the mean-spirited greed of ancient Rome...or is it more like modern times? Indeed, these masterpieces of biting social commentary could easily have been written today about any number of metropolitan areas we are all familiar with.

Charlotte Perkins Gilman's Herland, first published in 1915, is a feminist utopian novel that describes an isolated society composed entirely of women---a progressive, environmentally conscious land where peace and rationality reign and poverty is unknown.

Agatha Christie was an English writer known for her 66 detective novels and 14 short story collections, particularly those revolving around fictional detectives Hercule Poirot and Miss Marple. Guinness World Records lists Christie as the best-selling fiction writer of all time, her novels having sold more than two billion copies. Most of Christie's books and short stories have been adapted for television, radio, video games, and graphic novels. More than 30 feature films are based on her work.

If you have an appetite for the occult, consider this a feast. All of the authors in this collection have penned tales that deal with the supernatural and the supernormal. These include two novellas, "The Great God Pan" by Arthur Machen and "The Willows" by Algernon Blackwood and 10 short stories.

Hans Christian Andersen was the profoundly imaginative writer and storyteller who revolutionized literature for children. He gave us the now standard versions of some traditional fairy tales—with an anarchic twist—but many of his most famous tales sprang directly from his imagination. The 30 stories here range from exuberant early works such as "The Tinderbox" and "The Emperor's New Clothes" through poignant masterpieces such as "The Little Mermaid" and "The Ugly Duckling", to more subversive later tales such as "The Ice Maiden" and "The Wood Nymph".

In this series we look at short stories from many of our most accomplished writers. Miniature masterpieces with a lot to say. In this volume we examine some of the short stories of Virginia Woolf. Adeline Virginia Woolf was born in 1882 and was to become a founder of modernist writing. Her background is filled with elements of tragedy that she somehow overcame to become a revered writer. Her mother died when she was 13, her half sister Stella two years later and with that came her first of several nervous breakdowns.

Tales of human frailty and obsession, and of romance gone tragically awry, the thirteen stories in The Doll showcase an exciting budding talent before she went on to write one of the most beloved novels of all time. In these pages, a waterlogged notebook washes ashore revealing a dark story of jealousy and obsession, a vicar coaches a young couple divided by class issues, and an older man falls perilously in love with a much younger woman - with each tale demonstrating du Maurier’s extraordinary storytelling gifts and her deep understanding of human nature.