Showing results by publisher "Blackstone Audio, Inc." in Anthologies & Short Stories

Lonnie is tired. He's tired of his job, the monotony of it, and tired of the predictability ofhis home life now that he's a father. It's a day like every other day, and hecan't face the inevitability of it all. So he lies. It's a small lie, but heknows small lies become big ones. He knows it as soon as he says his daughteris in the hospital. But he can't stop himself, and he can't stop the lie fromtaking on a life of its own.

A divorcée disturbed by her upcoming thirty-fifth birthday decides to get a Botox treatment. But then she develops a crush on the plastic surgeon, whose secretary looks like a walking advertisement for the whole industry. When he spurns her advances, she's thrown further into a crisis of self-image, wanting only to see herself in a new light, as something better.

One of F. Scott Fitzgerald's earliest short stories, "The Ice Palace" is about Sally Carrol Happer, a young Southern woman who is bored with her conventional life. She's engaged to Harry Bellamy, a young man from the North. Despite concern from her family and friends, Sally travels to Harry's hometown to meet his family. Hoping for an exciting adventure, she instead finds herself in a cold, unfamiliar place. There, in the dead of winter, she begins to question everything.

The most enduring work by the Renaissance humanist Giovanni Boccaccio, The Decameron is a collection of one hundred stories about ten young noblemen and noblewomen who escape the plague by moving to a country villa outside the Italian city of Florence. Highly influential, numerous writers have borrowed from Boccaccio's tales, including Edgar Allen Poe, John Keats, and George Eliot.

Kate Chopin is a widely considered a forerunner to the feminist authors of the twentieth century. Focusing on themes of race andgender, her short stories largely center on life in rural Louisiana. In "A Pair of Silk Stockings," a young woman unexpected finds herself with fifteen dollars.Inspired by her newfound wealth, she ignores her natural impulses and indulgesin a day of luxurious abandon. A wistful rumination on loss and the illusion ofcontrol, "A Pair of Silk Stockings" is Chopin at her absolute best.

A lesson on the power of vanity, "The Necklace" tells the story of Madame Mathilde Loisel and her husband. Mathilde always imagined herself as a socialite with beautiful gowns and wonderful jewels. Her husband, however, is a lowly clerk and the two have little money. Desperate to attend an important party, she borrows a friend's diamond necklace to match the dress her husband bought for her. But when Mathilde loses the expensive jewels, she nearly destroys her life in an effort to pay back the debt.

Known as one of the foremost modernist novelists of the twentieth century, Virginia Woolf also wrote several shorter works. In "A Society," one of her earlier short stories, a young woman receives asubstantial inheritance from her father, on the condition that she reads all ofthe books in London Library. Distressed by the unsatisfactory quality of theliterature itself, she shares her woes with a group of female friends. Thewomen decide that they all must seek out knowledge for themselves, visitingsome of England's most iconic landmarks.

Before Louisa May Alcott achieved national fame with Little Women, she received success and recognition for Hospital Sketches, which was published in 1863. The book is based on her experience as a Civil War nurse at a Union hospital in Georgetown. In "The Death of a Soldier," an excerpt from the fourth chapter, she recounts the final days of a young Virginian blacksmith named John. Told through his nurse, Periwinkle, who stands by his side until his death, John never wavers in his desire to return to his post as a soldier and fulfill his duty.

"Eveline" is a short story from James Joyce's classic Dubliners. Nineteen-year-old Eveline has decided to leave home, but her future journey may not be all that she hopes. Like other stories in Dubliners,"Eveline" offers a penetrating analysis of Dublin society, especially its stagnation and paralysis. Each story incorporates epiphanies, by which Joyce meant to convey a sudden consciousness of the "soul" of a thing. Proceeds from sale of this title go to Reach Out and Read, an innovative literacy advocacy organization.

Sherwood Anderson's most enduring work, Winesburg, Ohio, is considered one of earliest works of modernistliterature. The sequence of short stories centers on the life of George Willardand those who live in the rural, pre-industrial town. "Adventure," a shortstory within the novel, tells the tale of Alice Hindman, a twenty-somethinggirl, and her continued devotion to her former lover Ned Currie, who left her toseek his fortune in Chicago.

In "The Pit and the Pendulum," one of his most famous short works, a condemned man is judged guilty by the Spanish Inquisition and sentenced to die. Locked away in a pitch-black cell, he soon discovers a pit in the center of the room, a watery grave at its base. Above him hangs a large, razor-sharp pendulum. As the man is slowly tortured, he must face either the pit or the pendulum.

Eve's Diary," is the comic tale of Eve, the first woman in the Judeo-Christian creation story. Written in diary form, Eve offers a first-person account of her relationship with Adam, life in Eden, and their experiences after the Fall. "Eve's Diary" is one of many in a series of stories that Twain wrote, all revolving around Adam and Eve. Proceeds from sale of this title go to Reach Out and Read, an innovative literacy advocacy organization.

Set during the American Civil War, "An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge" is the classic short story of Peyton Farquhar, a Confederate sympathizer condemned to death by hanging from Owl Creek Bridge. Flashing between the present and the past - from Peyton's thoughts as he stands on the bridge to his memories as a major Confederate supporter in the South - he creates parallel realities in which truth and fantasy become indistinguishable.

Robert W. Chanbers' The King in Yellow, a collection of short stories, is considered one of the most important works of American supernatural fiction. Within the collection is "The Prophets' Paradise," a dream-like narrative of prose and poetry. Featuring personifications of Love and Truth, the story's structure has a palindrome-like quality with internal repetition. Romantic in tone and ambiguous in theme, "The Prophets' Paradise" is one of Chambers' more experimental pieces.

Angelle's father is a drunk, and Angelle and her little sister, Lisette, know it. Their mother has told them as much. But their mother has abandoned them and gone back to France, leaving only the empty promise to return behind. Now Angelle is the key witness in a case that may decide whether she and Lisette are taken away from their father. Angelle must choose between the truth that could hurt them all and the "necessary truth" her father's lawyer wants her to tell.

Back in the 1950s at the dawn of science fiction, writers were turning out wildly imaginative stories for the pulp magazines. Robert Silverberg, writing as David Osborne, estimates he wrote over a million words in one year. Here are three more exciting stories from those heady days from the pioneers of science fiction: "Aliens from Space" by David Osborne, "The Man with Three Eyes" by E. L. Arch, and "Conquest of Earth" by Manly.

This collection of classic science-fiction stories from the 1950s and 1960s features three imaginative novellas from some of the pioneers of the genre.

This collection includes five of the greatest stories of American classic horror. The richest of language is used to create extraordinary atmosphere - gloom, darkness, solitude, despair - and the relentless feeling of impending doom. Includes: "The Oval Portrait", by Edgar Allan Poe; "Ethan Brand", by Nathaniel Hawthorne; "The Yellow Sign", by Robert W. Chambers; "The Upper Berth", by F. Marion Crawford; and "An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge", by Ambrose Bierce.

In this classic Sherlock Holmes tale of treachery, murder, and theft, "The Crooked Man", a long-lost love returns horribly changed, revealing an awful treachery that has been kept secret for decades.

Termed the Uncle Tom's Cabin of the southwestern Indians and the first protest novel of California, Ramona is the story of 3 cultures - Indian, Mexican, and Anglo - locked in combat. The upheaval and injustice are humanized through the romance of a beautiful half-Indian orphan who grow up as the ward of Señora Moreno in privileged surroundings, then falls in love with an Indian and joins him in a life of poverty and tragedy. The Ramona Pageant in Hemet, California, based on this romance, has played each year since 1923, reenacting the transition period between Mexican traditions and the new U.S. and state governments.