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

The ancient Roman empire was the supreme arena, where emperors had no choice but to fight, to thrill, to dazzle. To rule as a Caesar was to stand as an actor upon the great stage of the world. No biography invites us into the lives of the Caesars more vividly or intimately than that by Gaius Suetonius Tranquillus, written from the centre of Rome and power, in AD 121. Placing each Caesar in the context of the generations that had gone before, and connecting personality with policy, Suetonius injected flesh and blood into their stories.

Penguin Sleep Tales are 10 specially designed descriptive audio tales to help you wind down and relax before you drift off. Developed with The Sleep Council, each track will transport you to a different location, encouraging you to visualise calming settings and landscapes to ease away the day's anxiety or worry and get you in the right frame of mind for sleep.

The millions of listeners of Amor Towles are in for a treat as he shares some of his shorter fiction: six stories set in New York City and a novella in Los Angeles. The New York stories, most of which are set around the turn of the millennium, take up everything from the death-defying acrobatics of the male ego, to the fateful consequences of brief encounters, and the delicate mechanics of comprise which operate at the heart of modern marriages.

These three short works show Austen experimenting with a variety of different literary styles, from melodrama to satire, and exploring a range of social classes and settings. The early epistolary novel Lady Susan depicts an unscrupulous coquette toying with the affections of several men. In contrast, The Watsons is a delightful fragment whose spirited heroine, Emma Watson, finds her marriage opportunities limited by poverty and pride....

In this dark and gritty collection - featuring short stories from Jim Butcher, Seanan McGuire, Kevin J. Anderson, and Rob Thurman - nothing is as simple as black and white, light and dark, good and evil.... Unfortunately, that's exactly what makes it so easy to cross the line.

An exclusive collection of twenty early short stories by one of the world's best loved authors, these are rediscovered tales that Pratchett wrote under a pseudonym for newspapers during the 1970s and 1980s. Whilst none of the stories are set in the Discworld, they hint towards the world he would go on to create in his award-winning and globally bestselling series, containing all of his trademark wit, satirical wisdom and fantastic imagination. These are tales which entertain, enlighten and, most importantly, make you laugh.

Joyce's first major work, written when he was only 25, brought his city to the world for the first time. His stories are rooted in the rich detail of Dublin life, portraying ordinary, often defeated lives with unflinching realism. He writes of social decline, sexual desire and exploitation, corruption and personal failure, yet creates a brilliantly compelling, unique vision of the world and of human experience.

When Kurt Wallander first appeared in Faceless Killers back in 1990, he was a senior police officer, just turned 40, with his life in a mess. His wife had left him, his father barely acknowledged him; he ate badly and drank alone at night. The Pyramid chronicles the events that led him to such a place. We see him in the early years, doing hours on the beat whilst trying to solve a murder off-duty; witness the beginnings of his fragile relationship with Mona, the woman he has his heart set on marrying.

On May 25, 1983, Star Wars cemented its legacy as the greatest movie franchise of all time with the release of Return of the Jedi. In honor of the fortieth anniversary, forty storytellers re-create an iconic scene from Return of the Jedi through the eyes of a supporting character, from heroes and villains, to droids and creatures. From a Certain Point of View features contributions by bestselling authors and trendsetting artists.

There's a whole world of Dahl still to discover in a newly collected audiobook of his deliciously dark tales for adults.... How underhand could you be to get what you want? In these 10 tales of dark and twisted trickery Roald Dahl reveals that we are at our smartest and most cunning when we set out to deceive others - and, sometimes, even ourselves.

Jack Reacher, ex-military drifter of no fixed abode, is stalked and tracked down by an FBI agent. She tells him that in a house raid in Sydney, Australian law enforcement found a list. There were four people on it, including him. The other three are dead. Hours later, Reacher is in the air, on his way to Sydney. What was the evil buried 25 years ago that has now resurfaced? Will Reacher be able to find the killers before they find him?

Celebrate a decade of Critical Role with this anthology featuring the perspectives of ten characters who fought alongside – and against – Vox Machina, with a foreword by cast member Liam O’Brien. In these ten stories, see the legendary adventuring party anew through the eyes of some of the most memorable characters whose lives were touched by Vox Machina.

Here are twenty meticulously plotted, intimate portraits of humanity at its best and worst, featuring assassins, CIA agents, gangsters, and more. A drug-dealing hit man unburdens his fears to a stranger. A rookie cop is assigned to the department’s file room. A ruthless killer only kills bad guys. A methodical bodyguard quits his job when he’s outsmarted. A military mission is planned to perfection. Each story is entirely distinct. And with their economical prose and unexpected twists, each could only have been written by the creator of Jack Reacher.

In the first of the four cases in Trouble is My Business, Los Angeles PI Philip Marlowe is offered a job that leaves a bad taste in the mouth: smearing a girl who's 'got her hooks into a rich man's pup'. Before too long Marlowe's up to his neck in corpses and cops and he's taken pity on the girl. There's nothing like making trouble out of your business.

In this beautiful book of classic fairy tales, award-winning author Philip Pullman has chosen his 50 favourite stories from the Brothers Grimm and presents them in a 'clear as water' retelling, in his unique and brilliant voice.

This outstanding collection of short stories showcases all the writing skill that has made Jo Nesbo the undisputed 'king of all crime writers' (Daily Express) and a repeat Sunday Times number-one best-selling author. Filled with dark intrigue, twists and unforgettable characters, this audiobook will have you listening late into the night.

From the dragon-filled Temeraire series and the magical gothic halls of the Scholomance trilogy to the fairy tale worlds of Spinning Silver and Uprooted, this stunning collection takes us from fairy tale to fantasy, myth to history, and mystery to science fiction as we travel through Naomi Novik's most beloved worlds. Within this anthology, we move from ancient Greece and Rome, through the Middle Ages and the Black Death, and into the modern era.

Jack 'No Middle Name' Reacher, lone wolf, knight errant, ex-military cop, lover of women, scourge of the wicked and righter of wrongs, is the most iconic hero for our age. This is the first time all Lee Child's shorter fiction featuring Jack Reacher has been collected into one volume. A brand-new novella, Too Much Time, is included, as are those previously published only in ebook form: Second Son, James Penney's New Identity, Guy Walks into a Bar, and Deep Down.

Thomas Ligotti’s debut collection, Songs of a Dead Dreamer, and his second, Grimscribe, permanently inscribed a new name in the pantheon of horror fiction. Influenced by the strange terrors of Lovecraft and Poe and by the brutal absurdity of Kafka, Ligotti eschews cheap, gory thrills for his own brand of horror, which shocks at the deepest, existential, levels.

In ‘Lost But Not Forgotten,’ Sittenfeld gives listeners of her novel Prep a chance to see how our beloved character Lee Fiora is doing twenty years later, when she returns for a school reunion and grapples with memories of an incident that happened while she was a student. In ‘Pretzels are for Biting,’ a woman looks up two best friends that she moved away from after her divorce. In ‘Creative Differences,’ a photographer from the mid-west quickly realizes that the ‘documentary’ she stars in is actually a commercial for a multi-national corporation.