Showing results by publisher "Penguin Audio" in Anthologies & Short Stories

In slightly fantastical settings, Gonzales illustrates very real guilt over small and large marital missteps, the intense desire for the reinvention of self, and the powerful urges we feel to defend and provide for the people we love. With wit and insight, these stories subvert our expectations and challenge us to look at our surroundings with fresh eyes. Brilliantly conceived, strikingly original, and told with the narrative instinct of a born storyteller, The Miniature Wife is an unforgettable debut.

Wry, compassionate and glittering with wit, Penelope Lively's stories gets beneath the everyday to the beating heart of human experience. In intimate stories of growing up and growing old, chance encounters and life-long relationships, Lively explores with keen insight the ways that individuals can become tangled in history, and small acts ripple through the generations. From new and never-before-published stories to forgotten treasures, Metamorphosis showcases the very best from a literary master.

For The Penguin Book of Murder Mysteries, writer and anthologist Michael Sims did not summon the usual suspects. He sought the unfamiliar, the unjustly forgotten, and little-known gems by writers from outside the genre. This historical tour of one of our most popular literary categories includes stories never before reprinted, features rebellious early “lady detectives," and spotlights former stars of the crime field—Austrian novelist Auguste Groner and prolific American Geraldine Bonner among them.

The unabridged, downloadable audiobook edition of Madame Rosette, a short, gripping story of life in wartime from Roald Dahl, the master of the shocking tale. Read by the actor Julian Rhind-Tutt. In Madame Rosette, Roald Dahl, one of the world’s favourite authors, tells of three fighter pilots who go in search of female company and get more than they bargained for - a lot more. Madame Rosette is taken from the short story collection Over to You.

Mega City One it's a powder keg waiting to blow on its best day. There isn't a moment when tensions aren't running high and the City isn't ready to crack. But there's something new going on something, something bad it's a block war. It's Block Mania and no one is immune, not even the Judges. But this is all prelude to invasion. The East-Meg One Sov's have infected Mega City One with Block-Mania to throw the city into massive, bloody turf wars. There are troops on the ground, bombs are dropping and the Mega City One is on fire.

From the creator of 'Cat Person' - the first short story to go viral - comes You Know You Want This, a compulsive collection about sex, dating and modern life. These are stories of women’s lives now. They also happen to be horror stories. In some, women endure the horror. In others, they inflict it. Here are women at work, at home, on dates, at the doctor’s, with their families and with their friends. Here are women grappling with desire, punishment, guilt and anger. These are stories that make you feel fascinated but repelled, scared but delighted, revolted but aroused.

This dazzling collection of short stories explores the allure and confusion of what happens when East meets West. Fantasy and realism collide as a rickshaw driver writes letters home describing his film-star career in Bombay, a mispronunciation leads to romance and an unusual courtship in '60s London, two childhood friends turned diplomats live out fantasies hatched by Star Trek and Christopher Columbus dreams of consummating his relationship with Queen Isabella.

The Dreams of Bethany Mellmoth depicts the random encounters that bring the past bubbling to the surface, the impulsive decisions that irrevocably shape a life and the endless hesitations and loss of nerve that wickedly complicate it. These funny, surprising and strangely moving stories are a resounding confirmation of Boyd's powers as one of our most original and compelling storytellers.

The unabridged, downloadable audiobook edition of “Dip in the Pool”, a short, sharp story from Roald Dahl, the master of the shocking tale. Read by the actor Adrian Scarborough. In “Dip in the Pool”, Roald Dahl, one of the world’s favourite authors, tells an unsettling story of human folly. Here, a man acts rashly and life-threateningly to ensure he wins a prize.

Flamboyant, theatrical and ambitious, Margaret Cavendish was one of the 17th century's most striking figures: a woman who ventured into the male spheres of politics, science, philosophy and literature. The Blazing World is a highly original work: part Utopian fiction, part feminist text, it tells of a lady shipwrecked on the Blazing World where she is made empress and uses her power to ensure that it is free of war, religious division and unfair sexual discrimination. This volume also includes 'The Contract' and 'Assaulted and Pursued Chastity'.

Twelve people on the move around planet Earth, 12 individual lives, each in turmoil, and each in some way touching the next. In this nuanced and deeply moving sequence, David Szalay's diverse protagonists circumnavigate the world in 12 plane journeys, from London to Madrid, from Dakar to Sao Paulo, to Toronto, to Delhi, to Doha, en route to see lovers and parents, children and siblings, or nobody at all.

The New York Times best seller from the author of Slaughterhouse-Five—a “gripping” posthumous collection of Kurt Vonnegut’s previously unpublished work on the subject of war and peace. A fitting tribute to a literary legend and a profoundly humane humorist, Armageddon in Retrospect is a collection of 12 previously unpublished writings. Imbued with Vonnegut's trademark rueful humor and outraged moral sense.

The unabridged, downloadable audiobook edition of Mrs Bixby and the Colonel’s Coat, a brilliant gem of a short story from Roald Dahl, the master of the sting in the tail. Read by the actress Stephanie Beacham. In Mrs Bixby and the Colonel’s Coat, Roald Dahl, one of the world’s favourite authors, tells a sinister story about the darker side of human nature. Here, a wife pawns her lover’s parting gift with unexpected consequences.

Truman Capote makes whisky-soaked fruitcake in Alabama; Laurie Lee slides across a frozen pond in Gloucestershire; and Shirley Jackson is outwitted by a wily Santa Claus at the bank. Ghosts haunt the Christmases of Muriel Spark and Elizabeth Bowen, while Dostoyevsky, Daphne du Maurier and Italo Calvino take a cynical view of the season and Selma Lagerlof and Angela Carter celebrate its miracles. Ranging from Cork to Lagos to the Wild West, and from Paris to San Paolo to outer space, this is Christmas as imagined by some of the greatest short-story writers of all time.

The Fixer-Upper Cathy’s new home is handsomely furnished - by an amorous male ghost. If only she had something she could…touch. Paradise Bossed While traveling in the Cayman Islands, Nikki loses her life in a tragic accident, but has no intention of cutting her vacation short. Driftwood A Cape Cod werewolf agonizes over the death of a woman by his own paw. Well, to be fair, he never really killed her. She’s a vampire. Witch Way For centuries their families have been embroiled in a violent, irreversible feud. Today, can a witch and a witch-hunter find common ground?

A gripping narrative from the master of the race against time thriller. Have you ever been in the wrong place at the wrong time? You are hiking in the Scottish highlands with three friends when you come across a girl. She is half-naked, has been badly beaten, and she can’t speak English. She is clearly running away from someone. Do you stop to help her? Even if it means putting your friends’ lives - and your own - in terrible danger?

The unabridged, digital audiobook edition of 'The Great Automatic Grammatizator', a short, sharp, chilling story from Roald Dahl, the master of the shocking tale, read by the writer Will Self. In 'The Great Automatic Grammatizator', Roald Dahl, one of the world's favourite authors, tells a sinister story about the darker side of human nature. Here, a powerful computer designed to help people starts to supplant them....

A new collection of Christmas adventures, starring 12 incarnations of the Doctor plus many of his friends and enemies. Inside this festive audiobook of Doctor Who stories, you'll find timey-wimey mysteries, travels in the TARDIS, monster-chasing excitement and plenty of Christmas magic. Find out what happens when the Third Doctor meets Jackie Tyler, the Seventh Doctor and Ace encounter an alien at Macy's department store, and the Ninth Doctor tries to get Rose a red bicycle for Christmas.

Showcasing the intensity and preception of a truly gifted writer, this collection of stories by the author of the number-one New York Times best-seller The Memory Keeper's Daughter transports us to exotic locations as it follows the lives of those on the fringes of society: a fire-eater, an American and his Korean war bride, a juggler and a trapeze artist, and a cleaning woman whose life is interwoven with Marie Curie's.

Interleaving 10 completely new and unpublished stories with some of her best-loved pieces from the New Yorker and elsewhere, Zadie Smith presents a dizzyingly rich and varied collection of fiction. Moving exhilaratingly across genres and perspectives, from the historic to the vividly current to the slyly dystopian, Grand Union is a sharply alert and prescient collection about time and place, identity and rebirth, the persistent legacies that haunt our present selves and the uncanny futures that rush up to meet us.