Short Classics

Welcome to Volume Five of one of the world's largest collections of high quality, classic horror short-story audiobooks. If you're at home, then get some logs ready and put on your most comfortable slippers, as we kick things off with Doug Bradley's well-researched introduction to the authors and stories featured in this volume....

During the hectic Christmas season, slow down with these heartwarming stories from some of literature’s most beloved writers. In this collection, listeners will discover lesser-known but tender stories and poems from classic authors they know and love. Each selection celebrates the beauty, mystery, and joy found in the season that commemorates Christ’s birth. A Vintage Christmas includes stories from Louisa May Alcott, Charles Dickens, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Harriet Beecher Stowe, Mark Twain, and many more great writers....

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.

In the eight years since his first full-length novel, Gridlinked, was published by Pan Macmillan, Neal Asher has firmly established himself as one of the leading British writers of science fiction, and his novels are now translated in many languages. Most of his stories are set in a galactic future-scape called The Polity, and with this collection of marvellously inventive and action-packed short stories, he takes us further into the manifold diversities of that amazing universe.

Hot on the heels of Gardner Dozois's acclaimed anthology The Book of Swords comes this companion volume devoted to magic. How could it be otherwise? For every Frodo, there is a Gandalf... and a Saruman. For every Dorothy, a Glinda... and a Wicked Witch of the West. What would Harry Potter be without Albus Dumbledore... and Severus Snape? Figures of wisdom and power, possessing arcane, often forbidden knowledge, wizards and sorcerers are shaped - or misshaped - by the potent magic they seek to wield.

First published in 1927, Men Without Women represents some of Hemingway's most important and compelling early writing. In these 14 stories, Hemingway begins to examine the themes that would occupy his later works: the casualties of war, the often uneasy relationship between men and women, sport and sportsmanship.

What made Sherlock Holmes a household name and cultural icon? This very first collection of stories featuring the astute sleuth and his loyal assistant, Dr. Watson. In these twelve ingenious mysteries, Holmes is embroiled in betrayal, abduction, thievery, deception, and murder. Relying on logic, driven by instinct, and employing his uncanny powers of observation, Holmes cracks the cases that elude Scotland Yard. This Baker Street dozen by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle is all the evidence listeners will need to understand why Sherlock Holmes is an enduring legend in detective fiction.

Jack London's tales of man's struggle against the forces of nature are universally popular. Best known for his novels The Call of the Wild and White Fang, London was also a prolific writer of short stories. This collection brings together four of his finest, all depicting the harshness of life in the frozen arctic wastes.

Perhaps no Christmas novel is more beloved than Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol, and no holiday poem more well-known than Clement Clarke Moore’s “’Twas the Night Before Christmas”. Together, these classic literary masterpieces warm our hearts and remind us of the joy and love to be discovered anew each Christmas morning. A Classic Christmas features both of these traditional works, as well as other vintage poems and stories that celebrate the timeless truths of the holiday season.

My Man Jeeves, first published in 1919, introduced the world to affable, indolent Bertie Wooster and his precise, capable valet, Jeeves. Some of the finest examples of humorous writing found in English literature are woven around the relationship between these two men of very different classes and temperaments. Where Bertie is impetuous and feeble, Jeeves is coolheaded and poised.

Bons dias reúne crônicas narrativas do escritor Machado de Assis, considerado um dos autores mais importantes da literatura brasileira. Os textos, publicados entre 1888 e 1889, carregam um tom irônico e realista de uma época do Brasil em que a monarquia e a escravidão chegavam ao fim. As crônicas apresentam diversos personagens, entre eles, o próprio autor, que usa um pseudônimo de “Boas Noites”. Esta obra de Machado de Assis trata de variados assuntos no campo politico, cultural e social e aborda temas como os neologismos, a medicina popular e o espiritismo.

What is the terrible secret at the heart of The King in Yellow? The forbidden play’s second act is said to drive all those who read it mad. And the sinister text casts its shadow of dread over Robert W. Chambers’s collection of weird, supernatural stories of the same name. Threaded with elements of fantasy, science fiction, the supernatural, and gothic horror, this cult classic continues to inspire the imagination of artists - from H. P. Lovecraft to the writers of HBO’s True Detective - and delight connoisseurs of the macabre.

Darcy desires to claim his bride. Elizabeth’s heart agrees, but not her mind. Will personal disaster, and Caroline’s machinations, keep them apart? A spark. A knowing. Master of Pemberley, entirely used to having his own way, wealthy Fitzwilliam Darcy yearns for a wife who will love him first, and his fortune second. He finds that wife in Elizabeth Bennet, a woman he has come to esteem from afar. However, Lizzy proves difficult, resisting courtship even though circumstances force them into a hasty engagement. Darcy struggles with patience and to rein in his passion, for the harder he ...

Aesop's Fables are stories based on allegories and caricatures featuring mostly animals. These stories got the collective name Aesop’s Fables from the person who collected the stories. Aesop, popularly believed to have been a Phrygian slave, collected his fables sometime around the sixth century BC. Whatever his real story may be, the fables he collected feature valuable lessons.

This is Raymond Carver's third collection of stories, a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize, including the canonical titular story about blindness and learning to enter the very different world of another. The 12 stories in Cathedral mark a turning point in Carver's work.

Winesburg, Ohio is a little-known masterpiece that forever changed the course of American storytelling. At the center of this collection of stories stands George Willard, an earnest young reporter for the Winesburg Eagle who sets out to gather the town’s daily news. He ends up discovering the town’s deepest secrets as one by one, the townsfolk confide their hopes, dreams, and fears to the reporter. In their recollections of first loves and last rites, of sprawling farms and winding country roads, the town rises vividly - and poignantly - to life.

"Chekhov is probably better known in Britain for his plays than for his prose. For many, however, it is his short stories that mark the high water of his genius. It might at first glance be hard for those not used to his style of narrative to see what the fuss is about - and fuss there is: for most authors and lovers of literature Chekhov is incomparably the greatest short story writer there ever was."

The Irish are arguably the most literate people in the world. The number of famous Irish authors, from Joyce to Trevor and from Goldsmith to O'Brien, is a clear testimony to that. In this rich selection, we have concentrated on some of the early Irish writers who were particularly adept at the difficult art of writing good short stories.

In his second collection, including the iconic and much-referenced title story featured in the Academy Award-winning film Birdman, Raymond Carver establishes his reputation as one of the most celebrated short-story writers in American literature. What We Talk About When We Talk About Love is a haunting meditation on love, loss, and companionship, and finding one's way through the dark.

Almustafa, the chosen and beloved, must leave the port of Orphalese upon the ship he has waited upon for 12 years. As he descends to the waterfront, the people of Orphalese gather to question him and hear his wisdom on important topics of their daily lives. Kahlil Gibran's masterpiece is a series of enlightening, philosophical answers to those questions. The inspirational and spiritual words of The Prophet, written in an almost Biblical, poetic style, reveal deep insights into each of the subjects in question.