The stunning collection of short fiction that established Nathaniel Hawthorne as one of the most powerful and provocative artists in nineteenth-century America   Dr. Heidegger invites four friends to witness an experiment. As the impoverished merchant Mr. Medbourne, the gout-ridden sinner Colonel Killigrew, the ruined politician Mr. Gascoigne, and the aged widow Wycherly watch, Heidegger places an old rose in a vase filled with water drawn from the...

An Occurrence At Owl Creek Bridge' is a short story by American author Ambrose Bierce. It is one of the best classic tales filled with detail and vision. This story inspires the imagination, then provides one of the best twists ever invented. The story is set in the time of the Civil War. It is famous for its irregular time sequence and twisted end. Bierce's abandonment of strict linear narration in favor of the internal mind of the protagonist is,...

Anton Chekhov (1860-1904) was a master of the short story. The son of a former serf in southern Russia, he attended Moscow University to study medicine, writing short stories for periodicals in order to support his family. What began as a necessity became a legitimate career in 1886 when he was asked to write in St. Petersburg for the Novoye Vremya (New Times), owned by millionaire magnate Alexey Suvorin. Chekhov began paying more attention to his...

"Plain Tales From the Hills" is a classic collection of short stories by Rudyard Kipling. Contained here in this volume are the following tales: Lispeth, Three and-an Extra, Thrown Away, Miss Youghal's Sais, 'Yoked with an Unbeliever', False Dawn, The Rescue of Pluffles, Cupid's Arrows, The Three Musketeers, His Chance in Life, Watches of the Night, The Other Man, Consequences, The Conversion of Aurelian McGoggin, The Taking of Lungtungpen, A Germ-Destroyer,...

A TAPESTRY OF DUBLIN LIFE James Joyce wrote this collection of fifteen stories in 1914 when he was only twenty-five years old. His first major work, Dubliners provides a fascinating snapshot of early 20th century life in Ireland, bringing his city to the world for the first time. In these depictions of middle-class life, Joyce portrays ordinary, often defeated people where at least one character in each story has an "epiphany" – a unique moment...

Wilbur Whateley has lived in the run-down town of Dunwich for his entire miserable life. Born to a deformed outcast mother and an unknown father, Wilbur, along with the rest of his strange and dark family, is shunned by the Dunwich residents. When Wilbur attempts to gain access to the Necronomicon in Miskatonic University's library, Dr. Henry Armitage suspects he desires the powerful book of the dark arts for reasons that are not purely academic....

First published in 1925, "In Our Time" is a collection of short stories and vignettes by Ernest Hemingway written at the beginning of his literary career. Hemingway began working on some of the stories and pieces of prose that would make up the collection in 1923 and continued working on and refining his stories for the next two years. Many of the stories center around Hemingway's well-known and semi-autobiographical character, Nick Adams. Several...

Unique Elements • About the Author • About the Translator • A Literary Classic by ANTON CHEKHOV. The Horse-Stealers and Other Stories by RUSSIAN author ANTON CHEKHOV is a collection of short stories first published in 1890 in RUSSIA. The title story of this collection, "The Horse-Stealers," tells of an unfortunate hospital assistant, Yergunov, whose horse is stolen by a couple of guys he met in a tavern. Sneak Peak 'A...

The Canterville Ghost - Oscar Wilde - "The Canterville Ghost" is a humorous (Horror) short story by Oscar Wilde♥. The story is about an American family who moved to a castle haunted by the ghost of a dead English nobleman, who killed his wife and was then walled in and starved to death by his wife's brothers. It has been adapted for the stage and screen several times. ★Summary of the Canterville Ghost by Oscar Wilde★ "The Canterville Ghost"...

The Bishop and Other Stories (1919) is a collection of short stories by Russian writer, Anton Chekhov. The title story of the collection, originally published in 1902, finds the author at his most introspective. Written while Chekhov was dealing with the long term effects of tuberculosis, a period in which he began to accept the inevitability of his own death, "The Bishop" is a meditative story that follows a dedicated man who, in the face of oblivion,...