Showing titles in Short Stories

This sublime collection dips into the wit and wisdom of the man behind The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, uncovering his unique comic musings on everything from his school-trousers to malt whisky and from the letter Y through to his own nose, via atheism, hangovers and fried eggs. These hilarious collected writings reveal the warmth, enthusiasm and ferocious intelligence behind this most English of comic writers; a man who was virtually an unofficial member of the Monty Python team.

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.

At the age of 12, Joel Knox is summoned to meet the father who abandoned him at birth. But when Joel arrives at the decaying mansion in Skully's Landing, his father is nowhere in sight. What he finds instead is a sullen stepmother who delights in killing birds; an uncle with the face - and heart - of a debauched child; and a fearsome little girl named Idabel who may offer him the closest thing he has ever known to love.

This magisterial collection of short works by Nobel Prize-winning author William Faulkner reminds listeners of his ability to compress his epic vision into narratives as hard and wounding as bullets. Among the 42 selections in this audiobook are such classics as "A Bear Hunt", "A Rose for Emily", "Two Soldiers", and "The Brooch".

Off Duty is a collection of short stories. It includes the following: Tickets to the Gun Show, When the Road Rises Up, Little Stoics, and Off Duty.

Every novella by Ursula K. Le Guin, an icon in American literature, collected for the first time - and introduced by the legendary author - in one breathtaking volume. Ursula K. Le Guin has won multiple prizes and accolades, from the Medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters to the Newbery Honor, Nebula, Hugo, World Fantasy, and PEN/Malamud awards. She has had her work collected over the years but never as a complete retrospective of her longer works.

Two husbands secretly agree to a night of passion - with each other's wives; a slighted old man takes an elaborate and chilling revenge on his tormentor; a sculpture comes between a scheming wife and her put-upon husband.... Lust highlights a domestic familiarity always on the edge of something much, much darker.

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.

A dancer discovers she can never have children–a revelation that pales in comparison to the other ways her body has betrayed her. Two elderly sisters who’ve been inseparable throughout life make a momentous decision. A wet nurse at Coney Island’s infamous ‘Incubator Babies’ sideshow is haunted by the ghost of her own stillborn daughter. A young woman worries about the lack of male role models in her little niece’s life… For the women in Wait Here, who can’t, don’t or won’t have children, childlessness is a hard-won prize, a freedom, a stain, a joy, a battle. It is nothing. It is everything.

In the four decades since his first book appeared in print, Terry Pratchett has become one of the world’s best-selling and best-loved authors. Here for the first time are his short stories and other short form fiction collected into one volume. A Blink of the Screen charts the course of Pratchett’s long writing career: from his schooldays through to his first writing job on the Bucks Free Press, and the origins of his debut novel, The Carpet People; and on again to the dizzy mastery of the Discworld series.

A dismembered body in the park.... Grand Rapids Detective Bill DeYoung is an old-timer riding it out until retirement. A ravaged body in the park and a drunken witness are about to change his plans; so is the end of the world. The events happen concurrently with the first novel, End Time, but it can be heard at any point in the series to get exciting additional content on the origin of a main character.

Jennifer Egan's spellbinding audiobook circles the lives of Bennie Salazar, an ageing former punk rocker and record executive, and Sasha, the passionate, troubled young woman he employs. Although Bennie and Sasha never discover each other's pasts, the listener does, in intimate detail, along with the secret lives of a host of other characters whose paths intersect with theirs over many years, in locales as varied as New York, San Francisco, Naples and Africa.

Bram Stoker Award-winning author Laird Barron returns to the dark and dreadful with his fifth horror collection, which weaves sixteen weird tales into a mosaic of the bloody and the macabre.

Welcome to the Monkey House is a collection of Kurt Vonnegut's shorter works. Originally printed in publications as diverse as The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction and The Atlantic Monthly, what these superb stories share is Vonnegut's audacious sense of humor and extraordinary range of creative vision.

Journey across the stars of the Imperial Radch universe. Listen to the words of the Old Gods that ruled The Raven Tower. Learn the secrets of the mysterious Lake of Souls. And so much more, in this masterfully wide-ranging and immersive short fiction collection from award-winning author Ann Leckie.

Raymond Carver called Anton Chekhov "the greatest short story writer who has ever lived". This unequivocal verdict on Chekhov's genius has been echoed many times by writers as diverse as Katherine Mansfield, Somerset Maugham, John Cheever, and Tobias Wolf. While his popularity as a playwright has sometimes overshadowed his achievements in prose, the importance of Chekhov's stories is now recognized by readers as well as by fellow authors. Their themes - alienation, the absurdity and tragedy of human existence - have as much relevance today as when they were written.

A collection of 98 enthralling and pulse-quickening stories, spanning five decades, venerates the remarkable imagination of J. G. Ballard. With a body of work unparalleled in twentieth-century literature, J. G. Ballard is recognized as one of the greatest and most prophetic writers in the world. With the much-hailed release of The Complete Stories of J. G. Ballard, readers now have a means to celebrate the unmatched range and mesmerizing cadences of a literary genius.

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.

The Last Kingdom is one of the most successful historical fiction series of our time, telling the epic story of the birth of England, and introducing one of the greatest ever fictional heroes: the iconic Uhtred of Bebbanburg. Saxon-born, Norse-raised, warrior and rebel. The final Last Kingdom book was published in 2020, but for the author the story felt unfinished: there were some Uhtred tales he still wanted to tell, and over the course of writing the books he'd become fascinated by some elements of the Anglo-Saxon world that it wasn't possible to fully explore in the novels.

From prize - winning short - story writer Cate Kennedy comes a new collection to rival her highly acclaimed Dark Roots. In Like a House on Fire, Kennedy once again takes ordinary lives and dissects their ironies, injustices and pleasures with her humane eye and wry sense of humour. In Laminex and Mirrors, a young woman working as a cleaner in a hospital helps an elderly patient defy doctor's orders. In Cross - Country, a jilted lover manages to misinterpret her ex's new life.