Showing results by publisher "Spoken Realms" in Anthologies

Three disparate and suspenseful looks at ourselves in three very different worlds. These engaging short stories by three of the masters of American science fiction literature, Isaac Asimov, Kurt Vonnegut, Jr., and Philip K. Dick, open windows into our psyches, our souls, and our surroundings that presage the world we find ourselves in today. Like episodes of The Twilight Zone, cinematic in their language and characters, the stories connect with our times in surprising ways.

In The Humour of America, 88 short stories, poems, anecdotes, and essays from the 18th and 19th century will keep you smiling and chuckling!

Guy de Maupassant, French master of the short story, had a simple, efficient style of writing and, like Anton Chekhov, found inspiration for his stories in the daily lives of humans, which often reveal our darker nature. Many of his works also centered on the Franco-Prussian War, in which he served. Volume VIII of his Complete Original Short Stories contains the following:

Round the Fire was the title of a series of 12 mystery and suspense short stories by Arthur Conan Doyle, published monthly in The Strand Magazine between June 1898 and May 1899. The series was popular with contemporary readers, and while some of the individual stories, such as "The Brown Hand", have been regularly anthologised for many years and are well-known, there are some overlooked gems here, too.

An award-winning audiobook narrator and producer reads Anton Chekhov's "The Beggar", a moral tale in which the arrogant and self-righteous lawyer thinks he has "saved" the beggar by teaching him how to work for a living. In fact, he would have never continued the original task (or even begun it) if it weren't for the example of the lawyer's compassionate cook, who quietly chopped the wood for him without expecting anything in return. It was Olga's example of self-sacrifice, not Skvortsoff's example of "do-goodism" that inspired the man to change his life.

Raconteurs Audio and Spoken Realms team up once again to bring this second collection of short stories by H. G. Wells to audio. Written between 1894 and 1902, this anthology of 13 stories delves into botany, flying machines, travel, distant lands and customs, virology, magic, taxidermy, journalism - and there’s even a ghost story.

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.

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 French master of the short story with the twist ending, Guy de Maupassant (1850-1893), here lets his main character, an unerring knife-thrower in a carnival act with his wife, tell the tale of his maddening situation. An anonymous English translation.

Mary Shelley had an abiding interest in the mysterious and the supernatural. In this atmospheric tale, she describes the nocturnal wanderings of an enigmatic figure in the woods, and the expectations and conclusions those who have witnessed its activities.

Thought by many to be the greatest Christmas story ever written. Award-winning narrator Mike Vendetti takes us to a shabby apartment where love rules. This is a Christmas story but worth a listen any time of the year.

An anthology of chilling, classic horror stories, including "The Tale-Tell Heart", "The Pit and the Pendulum", and "The Fall of the House of Usher" by Edgar Allan Poe; "The Legend of Sleepy Hollow" by Washington Irving; "The Hand", "Was it a Dream?", and "The Horla" by Guy de Maupassant; "The Red Room" by H.G. Wells; "Moon-Face" by Jack London; "The Yellow Wallpaper" by Charlotte Perkins Gilman.

France's master of the short story was prolific, producing 13 volumes of tales of everyday life.

Count Dracula, the centuries-old legendary vampire and former soldier-nobleman, wishes to extend his horrific cult of Undead followers to England. Innocent British realtor Jonathan Harker visits the Count with the intention of transacting the purchase of a house in London.

New York-born John Kendrick Bangs was associate editor and then editor of Life and Harper magazines, eventually finding his way into the Humour department. Here, he began to write his own satire and humour. Ghosts I Have Met and Some Others is a delightful humorous collection of short tales relating encounters with ghosts, including "The Mystery of My Grandmother's Hair Sofa", "The Exorcism That Failed", and more.

The first four stories were first published as a collection in 1891. The final story, "The Portrait of Mr W. H.", originally published separately in 1889, was later added to an expanded collection. All the stories deal with personal relationships and their inevitable influence on the course of a person's life.

In this unnerving Edgar Allen Poe tale, our narrator insists on his sanity after carefully calculating and committing the brutal murder of an old man because of his monstrous eye. He argues that it is quite sane to cut the body into pieces and hide it under the floorboards. Will our narrator's guilt be his undoing? To what extent will he go to defend his sanity?

How easily does love turn to hate? In what is arguably one of Edgar Allen Poe's most disturbing tales, we join our narrator as he cruelly injures and betrays his once beloved cat. Our deeply disturbed narrator shows a malicious streak and lack of conscience that is painful to witness. The narrative forces us to question to what extent we can escape our conscience. As we realize all is not as it seems.

Ranked second only to Charles Dickens in Victorian era popularity, William Makepeace Thackeray may be a novelist worth rediscoving. This is a great introductory story of the key figure in the brilliant novel Henry Esmond. Classic literature - classic writer - classic story. Narrated by Glenn Hascall.

A woman dies and discovers that the afterlife allows her to choose a soul mate for eternity if she felt she was denied one in life. After complaining that her husband never understood her and had many habits that annoyed her, she is introduced to another soul who seems to be her perfect match. Who will she choose? This story touches on ideas of different types of love and how our wants and our needs may be two very different things.