Showing results for "Mike, Mike" in Short Stories

This collection of five stories and four essays showcases the work of Mike Heppner, the writer whom Entertainment Weekly calls, "A fearsome cultural critic disguised in a novelist's clothing," and whose funny and biting fiction has been praised in Esquire, The Washington Post, and The Millions. Most of these pieces have not been published before. Featured performers include: A deluded Lothario, a man obsessed with corn, Charlie Watts, the dude from Def Leppard, and a sweet old lady who meets her untimely end at a Boston Market.

Reuben thought he’d spend the rest of his life with Beth, until she broke his heart six months ago. He’s not even remotely over her, so he’s devastated to hear she’s getting married—this weekend. Now he’s faced with the ultimate question: what should he do on the day of the wedding? Grieve? Disrupt the ceremony? Or do everything in his power to pretend it’s not happening? Enlisting the help of his friends, Reuben is all set to mark the occasion with distraction on a grand scale: Ferraris, champagne, and a VIP box at the races.

Welcome to The Problem Club, where logic takes a holiday and wit is the law of the land. In this delightful collection of early 20th-century comic tales by Barry Pain, twelve eccentric gentlemen gather regularly in an upscale London club to tackle bizarre, imaginative challenges—each one a “problem” designed to confound, amuse, and showcase their cleverness.

A grisly spirit turns travelling companion for the unwitting passenger of a London bus; a repulsive neighbour returns from the grave, rejected by the very earth; an innocuous back garden becomes the stage for a nightmare encounter with druidic sacrifice. From deep in the British Library vaults emerges a new selection of E.F. Benson's most innovative, spine-tingling and satisfyingly dark 'spook stories'. Complete with an introduction exploring the fascinating story of Benson's life, and including the never-before-republished story 'Billy Comes Through'.

A third collection of full-length adventures for R. Austen Freeman's great forensic detective, Dr John Thorndyke.

In "The Caretaker," an original short story from bestselling author Paul Doiron, Maine Game Warden Mike Bowditch tracks down a sinister prowler turning a couple's dream vacation home into a nightmare. New owners of a dream cottage on a remote Maine lake find themselves taunted, then menaced by...

From the creator of Dalziel and Pascoe comes a fantastic collection of crime stories complete with a foreword by Mick Herron.

Step into a world where innocence meets the infinite, and the everyday collides with the supernatural. The Mysterious Stranger and Other Stories represents Mark Twain at his most philosophical, daring, and haunting. Far removed from his lighthearted tales of riverboats and boyhood adventures, Twain here explores the mysteries of existence, morality, and the fragile nature of human belief.

The definitive Paul Bowles reader—a summing up of a brilliant and diverse literary career, featuring an introduction by Joyce Carol Oates. ""Bowles is one of the most important writers of our times."" –Madison Smartt Bell, Chicago Tribune Too Far From Home brings together a dozen of Paul...

The second Spoken Ink collection of superb short stories by H. G. Wells, who was a master of the form. Humour and wit abound in his writing, as does sharp social observation. Among the 17 stories in this collection, The Plattner Story tells of a chemistry teacher who analyses a most unusual powder one of the boys brings to class, in The Cone a woman married to a bullying industrialist is having an affair with his young friend.

This audiobook is a collection of stories by Jack London featuring the fictional characters of Christopher "Smoke" Bellew and his partner Shorty as they share adventures in the Yukon during the gold rush of the late 1880s. Jack London published this collection in 1912. London's main character, Smoke, is widely considered to be somewhat autobiographical in nature, perhaps an idealized version of how Jack London envisioned his own real-life exploits when he traveled to the Yukon at the height of the gold rush in 1897.

Weihnachten im winterlichen Nirgendwo. Tief im verschneiten Wald, weit weg von anderen Menschen. Allein und ungestört, ohne Feiertagstrubel und Stress. Genau so stelle ich mir meinen längst überfälligen Urlaub vor. Dass mein Auto im Schnee liegenbleibt, war nicht vorgesehen. Dass die luxuriöse Blockhütte sich als Bruchbude erweist, auch nicht. Durch einen Blizzard stolpernd, finde ich im letzten Moment eine Zuflucht. Doch die gehört drei furchteinflößenden Kerlen! Drei kernige Holzfäller, kein Gepäck und kein Ausweg.

Today we have ghosts that haunted our ancestors, as well as our own modern revenants, and there appears to be no earthly use trying to banish or exorcise them by such a simple strategy as refusing to believe in them. Since man knows that whether or not he has seen a ghost, presently he will become one, and thus he has become fascinated with the subject. Therefore he creates ghosts, not merely in his own image, but according to his dreams of power.

The Seven Conundrums is seven different short stories. A mysterious man employs three desperate entertainers who have financial problems. The three accept his work proposal, not knowing if they are on the side of good or evil. As they work for the mystery man, they don't know if he is a thief, police, or both, making them spies, guardians, protagonists, and victims of curious adventures. After all, conundrums do not necessarily have a right or reasonable solution by their nature. In the end, however, all becomes known to the trio.

Described by Virginia Woolf as "a little masterpiece", in Seven Men, Beerbohm tells the stories of six men from the world of the 1890s - Beerbohm himself is the seventh man - with such an air of realism and so much circumstantial detail as to blur the boundary between fact and fiction, so that the listener is lulled almost into acceptance of the fantastic events that he describes.

These stories are a unique, early study of celebrity and the vast emotional and social divisions of class and power that still exist today. Each story introduces a woman of power and the men who struggle to define them and thus themselves.

Spend your next 30 minutes traveling to a future where first adopters have the most advanced robot butlers or where everyone has a superpower - except the young man you just met. Or perhaps you prefer a good hard-boiled detective story or one about a hardscrabble life in the Australian outback.

Ivan Turgenev was an outstanding writer of the 19th century, a corresponding member of the Imperial Academy of Sciences in the category of Russian language and literature. He was the author of philosophical and psychological poems, short stories, short novels, and novellas. Throughout his work, he delves into the themes of Russian intelligentsia and peasant life, showcasing mastery in creating psychological portraits.

"Nightshade" by Dashiell Hammett is a short story appearing in "Mystery League Magazine, October 1933" featuring Jack Bye, who encounters a young woman, Helen Warner, stranded near Piney Falls bridge. Helen urgently asks for a ride into town, escaping from two men, Tony Forrest and Fred Barnes, who seem wary of Jack. Jack helps Helen and drives her into town, where they stop at a speakeasy for drinks. Their interaction is lighthearted but tinged with tension.

A collection of 31 tales of mystery and murder from the career of the great scientific detective, Dr John Thorndyke. Including every story from John Thorndyke's Cases (1909), The Adventures of Dr Thorndyke (1912), Percival Bland's Proxy (1913), The Missing Mortgagee (1914), Dr Thorndyke's Case-book (1923), and The Puzzle Lock and Other Stories (1925)