Short Stories

Strange Jest

by Agatha Christie

Miss Marple is accosted at a party by a pair of lovebirds who think that a lately deceased uncle has buried their inheritance. The naïve pair expects Miss Marple to instantaneously summon forth where the buried...

Lucky Girls

by Nell Freudenberger

These five stories follow young women living far from home, coping with new and often unfamiliar rules, as they confront the compelling circumstances of adult love. The rich, unforgettable tales in this collection,...

Unfinished Tales

by J. R. R. Tolkien

A fascinating collection of stories, which continue the tales of The Lord of the Rings and The Silmarillion and contains an alternative version of The Children of Hurin.

Unfinished Tales is a collection of...

Aloysha the Pot

by Leo Tolstoy

A short story from the Classic Shorts collection: Family Happiness by Leo Tolstoy

Selections from Fragile Things, Volume One: 4 Short Fictions and Wonders

by Neil Gaiman

The marvelous creations found in Fragile Things showcase the unparalleled invention and storytelling brilliance—as well as the terrifyingly dark and entertaining sense of humor—of the incomparable Neil Gaiman....

Twist

by William D. Hicks

As a boy growing up in 1953, Kevin Hull enjoyed playing games with his group of boyhood friends, like the game of "ledge." After one such game with his friend Billy Hawkins, the two find themselves involved...

The Obsession

by Jacquelynn Luben

A young man enters a luxury flat from the window - with one objective - to steal what he can from the unknown occupant. But Andrew is not a conventional small-time criminal, and as he prepares to leave, he sees...

The Complete Stories of Evelyn Waugh

by Evelyn Waugh

Evelyn Waugh's short fiction reveals in miniaturized perfection the elements that made him the greatest satirist of the twentieth century. The stories collected here range from delightfully barbed portraits...

Say You're One of Them

by Uwem Akpan

Uwem Akpan's stunning stories humanize the perils of poverty and violence so piercingly that few readers will feel they've ever encountered Africa so immediately. The eight-year-old narrator of "An Ex-Mas Feast"...

Brief Interviews with Hideous Men: Stories

by David Foster Wallace

David Foster Wallace made an art of taking readers into places no other writer even gets near. The series of stories from which this exuberantly acclaimed book takes its title is a sequence of imagined interviews...

The First Book of Short Stories

by Lyn Funnell

A collection of easy reading short stories that cover a variety of situations, places and characters. Another Fine Mess, Dining Out, If Britain became the new Venice, My Best Friend Jake and more will keep you...

Tales of Thubway Tham

by Johnston McCulley & John Betancourt

Thubway Tham is a small, short-tempered gnome of a man, a professional pickpocket with an annoying lisp. But he is no mere thief . . . he is the king of his chosen profession, a master "dip" who works only in...

Walks With Men: Fiction

by Ann Beattie

Ann Beattie arrived in New York young, observant and celebrated (as The New Yorker’s young fiction star) in one of the most compelling and creative eras of recent times. So does the protagonist of her intense...

The Country Ahead of Us, The Country Behind

by David Guterson

Like his novel, Snow Falling On Cedars, for which he received the PEN/Faulkner Award, Guterson's beautifully observed and emotionally piercing short stories are set largely in the Pacific Northwest. In these...

Mother of Sorrows

by Richard Mccann

With the breadth and cumulative force of a novel, Mother of Sorrows presents ten interwoven stories of an American family starting out in the post—World War II suburbs of Washington, D.C., a world of identical...

A Week in Summer: A Short Story

by Maeve Binchy

After many happy years of marriage and raising a family, Brian and Kathleen suddenly find themselves a bit lost in life. Midwesterners who’ve never traveled, Kathleen decides that what she and Brian need is...

Kick in the Head: Stories

by Steven Rinehart

   In stories that are as diverting as they are disconcerting, Steven Rinehart plumbs the psyche of that most perplexing beast: the American male. Set against a stark Midwestern landscape dotted with trailers,...

Indelible Acts: Stories

by A. L. Kennedy

The love story (as well as the story of love lost, obsessed over, or longed for) gets a complete and thrilling renovation at the hands of the most virtuosic literary stylist to appear in the British Isles since...

Original Bliss

by A. L. Kennedy

"Kennedy is a world class writer."--The New York Times Book Review

A brilliant American debut from one of Scotland's most acclaimed writers, named by Granta as one of the Twenty Best Young British Novelists.

Emotionally...

Nice Big American Baby

by Judy Budnitz

A blazingly original, profoundly moving new work of fiction by a writer whose world–and imagination–knows no boundaries. “I don’t know what planet Judy Budnitz comes from,” said Newsweek on the publication...