Publisher Description
This is a bibliophile lover’s collection of wide-ranging and masterful short stories, embracing the subtle and the macabre, the whimsical and the downright frightful. Here are fifty captivating short stories that will keep listeners glued to their headsets.
- ‘The Snow’ by Hugh Walpole
- ‘The Bet’ by Anton Chekhov
- ‘A Dream of Wild Bees’ by Olive Schreiner
- ‘The Tree of Death’ by Barry Pain
- ‘The House of Cobwebs’ by George Gissing
- ‘The Hoop’ by Fedor Sologub
- ‘Lost Treasure’ by Caradoc Evans
- ‘The Deserter’ by Stacy Aumonier
- ‘The Lovely Lady’ by D. H. Lawrence
- ‘A Considerable Murder’ by Barry Pain
- ‘A Thread of Scarlet’ by J. J. Bell
- ‘The Staircase’ by Hugh Walpole
- ‘The Cop and the Anthem’ by O. Henry
- ‘Pigs is Pigs’ by Ellis Parker Butler
- ‘The Cloak’ by Nikolai Gogol
- ‘The Clock’ by W. F. Harvey
- ‘The Silver Mask’ by Hugh Walpole
- ‘The Cactus’ by O. Henry
- ‘Miss Bracegirdle does her Duty’ by Stacy Aumonier
- ‘Mademoiselle Fifi’ by Guy de Maupassant
- ‘A Long-ago Affair’ by John Galsworthy
- ‘A Dill Pickle’ by Katherine Mansfield
- ‘The Mysterious Card and The Card Unveiled’ by Cleveland Moffett
- ‘Double Demon’ by W. F. Harvey
- ‘The Whistle’ by Hugh Walpole
- ‘The Rocking Horse Winner’ by D. H. Lawrence
- ‘The End of a Show’ by Barry Pain
- ‘A Very Black Business’ by Ernest Bramah
- ‘The Clarion Call’ by O. Henry
- ‘Rose Rose’ by Barry Pain
Plus twenty more skillfully written tales.
Download and start listening now!
About the Authors
Hans Christian Andersen (1805–1875) was born in Odense, Denmark, the son of a poor shoemaker and a washerwoman. As a young teenager, he became quite well known in Odense as a reciter of drama and as a singer. When he was fourteen, he set off for the capital, Copenhagen, determined to become a national success on the stage. He failed miserably, but made some influential friends in the capital who got him into school to remedy his lack of proper education. In 1829 his first book was published. After that, books came out at regular intervals. His stories began to be translated into English as early as 1846. Since then, numerous editions, and more recently Hollywood songs and Disney cartoons, have helped to ensure the continuing popularity of the stories in the English-speaking world.
Anton Chekhov (1860–1904), the author of hundreds of short stories and several plays, is regarded by many as both the greatest Russian storyteller and the father of modern drama. He described the Russian life of his time using a deceptively simple technique devoid of obtrusive literary devices, thereby becoming the prominent representative of the late nineteenth-century Russian realist school. His early stream-of-consciousness style strongly influenced the literary world, including writers such as James Joyce.
D. H. Lawrence (1885–1930) was a British writer of novels, poems, essays, short stories, and plays. Some of the books he wrote in the early 1900s became controversial because they contained direct descriptions of sexual relations. His best-known books are Sons and Lovers, The Rainbow, Women in Love, and Lady Chatterley’s Lover.