Showing results by publisher "Naxos AudioBooks" in Short Stories

Five great American short story writers, dating from the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries, are represented here. Different in atmosphere and writing style, they nevertheless caught the mood and concerns of the day in a way that was distinctly American.

In the quiet world of rural English clergy, lives are full of challenges, conflicts, desires and expectations. George Eliot’s first published work of fiction (1857) comprises three separate stories and has the hallmarks of her famous later works–her gentle wit and clever satire, her psychological insight, and her keen observation of human nature and frailty. These are beautifully written and poignant tales, set in and around the fictional Midlands town of Milby.

This is a story from the Lord Arthur Savile's Crime and Other Stories collection.

Gertrude Stein’s pioneering triptych Three Lives portrays the lives of three working-class women in the fictional American town of Bridgepoint (Baltimore). A progenitor of the "stream of consciousness" technique later adopted by Joyce and Woolf, Stein takes us into the minds of three distinct women, who are each trapped in their societal positions. "The Good Anna" follows a stern but kind German immigrant, "Melanctha" the tragic life of an African-American woman of the same name, and "The Gentle Lena" a dreamy and unopinionated servant whose passiveness becomes her undoing.

After the collapse of her marriage to an illustrious German prince, Baroness Eugenia Münster arrives in America with her brother, in search of wealthy New England relatives. The duo have an immediate impact on their American cousins, the Wentworths. The Baroness captures the eye of young Clifford Wentworth, and his girlfriend's older brother Robert; meanwhile, Felix falls for his American cousin Gertrude. The Wentworths are overawed by their European cousins and their frivolous lifestyle. What unfolds is a delightful comedy of manners.

One of Katherine Mansfield's finest short stories, "Bliss" introduces us to Bertha, who experiences a sense of rapture as she reflects on her life. On her walk home one day, she is overwhelmed by a sense of bliss and contentment. However, her joy later turns to disappointment as she discovers her husband is having an affair with her new friend Pearl.

A palmist’s prediction leads to murder; an enigmatic woman’s lifestyle is a mystery to be solved; a ghost tries to frighten the new tenants of his home; a man has discovered the dedicatee of Shakespeare’s Sonnets; a millionaire wants to be painted as a pauper. Lord Arthur Savile’s Crime and Other Stories is a collection of fascinating short stories which are subversive as well as entertaining.

A vivid and haunting collection of interconnected stories, Winesburg, Ohio portrays a cast of isolated individuals in a small midwestern town at the end of the 19th century. Central to the book is George Willard, a young newspaper writer, to whom a variety of Winesburg’s residents, past and present, attempt to confide their secret desires, failures and innermost truths.

This is a story from the The Happy Prince and Other Stories collection.

This is a story from the Dubliners, Volume 2 collection.

This is a story from the Dubliners, Volume 2 collection.

This is a story from the Dubliners, Volume 2 collection.

This is a story from the Dubliners, Volume 2 collection.

This is a story from the Dubliners, Volume 2 collection.

This is a story from the Dubliners, Volume 1 collection.

This is a story from the Dubliners, Volume 1 collection.

This is a story from the Dubliners, Volume 1 collection.

This is a story from the Dubliners, Volume 1 collection.

This is a story from the Dubliners, Volume 1 collection.

This is a story from the Dubliners , Volume 1 collection.