Showing results by narrator "Mark Bowen" in All Categories

This selection includes Tales and Poems: Tales. The Murders in the Rue Morgue ; The Gold-Bug ; The Black Cat ; The Pit and the Pendulum ; The Tell-Tale Heart ; The Fall of the House of Usher ; The Masque of the Red Death ; The Cask of Amontillado ; The Facts in the Case of M. Valdemar ; Hop-Frog ; Ligeia ; Morella ; The Oval Portret. Poems. The Raven ; Al Aaraaf ; Annabel Lee ; The Bells ; The City in the Sea ; The Conqueror Worm ; A Dream Within a Dream ; Eldorado ; Eulalie ; The Haunted Palace ; To Helen ; Lenore ; Tamerlane ; Ulalume.

The Beggar Boy at Christ's Christmas Tree is a Christmas-time short story written by Fyodor Dostoevsky in 1876. It was first published in A Writer's Diary, January 1876. This story is also known as "The Heavenly Christmas Tree". The author begins by telling us he has made this story up, but that even so, he thinks it must have actually happened—on Christmas Eve, in a great town, at a time of terrible frost. The boy of the title, "six years old or younger," awakens in a frigid cellar, reaches for his mother, and finds she is "as cold as the wall." He makes his way outside.

The Negro Problem is classic collection of essays, edited by Booker T. Washington and with contributions from many of post-Civil War America's other prominent African-American thinkers, sought to redefine the role of Black persons in the new Jim Crow era and beat back white supremacy through racial uplift. Seven essays include Charles Chesnutt's The Disfranchisement of the Negro, W. E. B. DuBois "The Talented Tenth", and Wilford Horace Smith's "The Negro and the Law".

The short story Sis' Becky's Pickaninny of "The Conjure Woman" now follows John as he reproaches McAdoo for all of his superstitious beliefs and how they lack foundation, commenting that these traditions are the reason why Southern Black people are destined for a life of continued acquiescence and little prosperity. This opinion stemmed from McAdoo's assertion that carrying a rabbit foot leads to good luck. John is concerned for Annie's health, since the main reason they moved to the countryside was to improve her health due to her current bouts of depression and anxiety.

The Goophered Grapevine is the first short story from The Conjure Woman, published in The Atlantic in August 1887, told to the narrator by Julius McAdoo, a former enslaved man who lives on the plantation that the narrator, John, and his wife, Annie, visit one day. Set in Patesville, North Carolina, John and Annie moved there for an improvement in his wife's health and to seek other business opportunities. Knowing that the couple wanted to purchase the property, McAdoo advises them not to do so, informing them that when Dugal McAdoo, the previous master, purchased the property, it was very rich in wine production because of its vineyards.

Charles Chesnutt's The Doll is a story of seeking truth, facing discrimination, and making bold choices for the sake of one's own livelihood. The Doll, depicts the African American barber as a human character by showing him struggle with and simply show human thoughts and emotions. The story takes place during a time of huge racial prejudice, a time in which some people did not even consider African Americans to be human

The Wife of His Youth is a short story by American author Charles W. Chesnutt, first published in July 1898. It later served as the title story of the collection The Wife of His Youth and Other Stories of the Color-Line. That book was first published in 1899, the same year Chesnutt published his short story collection The Conjure Woman. The Wife of His Youth features an upwardly mobile, light-skinned mulatto man who is a respected member of the Blue Veins Society in a Midwestern city.

A small, dark speck becomes the starting point for a cascade of thought—quiet, precise, wandering. In a room with a fire, a cigarette, and silence thick as dust, a mind drifts from memory to philosophy, from loss to structure, from trees to snails. Virginia Woolf's voice here is both still and restless, charting the motion of consciousness as it moves without hurry or warning.

Vanina Vanini is not a love story, though love passes through it. Nor is it a political tale, though conspiracies give it shape. In these brief pages, Stendhal observes — without illusion — how pride dresses as passion, and how ideals dissolve in the quiet collisions of character. Nothing is overstated; everything matters.

Step into the witty, unsettling, and delightfully ironic world of Saki (H.H. Munro), one of the sharpest voices in Edwardian literature. This classic collection gathers his most memorable and darkly humorous short stories, including The Music on the Hill, The Unrest-Cure, Gabriel-Ernest, and the widely loved The Open Window. Saki's tales are known for their unexpected twists, elegant prose, and subtle satire of British society, often exposing the absurdities behind genteel manners and upper-class conventions.

There are stories that stay quiet, even after you finish them. Roger Malvin's Burial is one of those. It's not about war, though it begins there. It's about what a man carries when no one's watching—what he tells no one, not even himself. Hawthorne doesn't accuse. He simply opens a door and lets us stand in the silence. This story doesn't resolve. It echoes.

There's a moment before the mountains go quiet—when words feel full of meaning, and a stranger's voice almost changes something. Almost. In this still, delicate story, ambition rises gently and vanishes just as softly. The path is steep, the dreams sincere, the end—unspoken, but known.

The Golden Honeymoon is a story about the road, a long marriage, old memories, and the kind of conversation that's been going on for fifty years — and shows no sign of stopping. There's Florida sunshine, checkerboard pride, the quiet company of shared days, an unexpected brush with the past, and more oranges than anyone really asked for. Told in the voice of a man who always has something to say — and a wife who's heard every word — this Ring Lardner classic is funny, plainspoken, and sharper than it first lets on. A story about what's left unsaid when you've already said everything else.

This collection brings together stories and reflections in which Leo Tolstoy turns inward. Stripped of grandeur, these works offer something more intimate: the inner noise of conscience, the weight of faith, the silence before death. A servant's silence, a horse's memory, a dying man's doubt—these are not performances. They are questions, waiting quietly for whoever dares to ask the same. Tolstoy isn't offering answers. He's writing toward something deeper. And the questions haven't aged a day.

Johann Peter Hebel's The Artful Hussar is a short story that showcases the wit and resourcefulness of a clever soldier. The tale follows a cunning hussar who, through his quick thinking and charm, manages to outsmart those around him. Set against the backdrop of military life, the story highlights themes of intelligence, deception, and survival. With Hebel's signature blend of humor and moral insight, The Artful Hussar offers a delightful and thought-provoking glimpse into human nature and ingenuity.

Jack Spaulding expected to close a deal—not become an alien breeding experiment. Now he’s back on Earth with a very personal problem: something is growing inside him and feeding on his orgasms. His career’s in jeopardy, his marriage is unraveling, and his body’s become a ticking alien time bomb.

In the hush between history and myth, some voices refuse to fade. One of them rises beneath the pines of Virginia—speaking not to a crowd, but to the wind. Shackled in body, unbroken in spirit. A man, not yet a symbol. A voice, not yet remembered. But already unforgettable. The Heroic Slave is Frederick Douglass at his most daring—blending fact and fiction into something fiercer than either. In Madison Washington, he shapes more than a character: he channels the rhythm of revolt, the breath of those who ran, and the silence of those who couldn't. This is not a tale polished for comfort.

The collection includes the best works of famous Russian writers:. Fyodor Dostoevsky. NOTES FROM THE UNDERGROUND. THE DREAM OF A RIDICULOUS MAN. THE BEGGAR BOY AT CHRIST'S CHRISTMAS TREE. Leo Tolstoy. THE DEATH OF IVAN ILYICH. A LETTER TO A HINDU. A CONFESSION. GOD SEES THE TRUTH, BUT WAITS. A RUSSIAN CHRISTMAS PARTY. Anton Chekhov. THE LADY WITH THE DOG. A SLANDER. THE HORSE-STEALERS. THE PETCHENYEG. A DEAD BODY. A HAPPY ENDING. THE LOOKING-GLASS. OLD AGE. DARKNESS. THE BEGGAR. IN TROUBLE. FROST. MINDS IN FERMENT. GONE ASTRAY. AN AVENGER. THE JEUNE PREMIER. A DEFENCELESS CREATURE.

The Heroic Slave, a Heartwarming Narrative of the Adventures of Madison Washington, in Pursuit of Liberty is a short piece of fiction, or novella, written by abolitionist Frederick Douglass, at the time a fugitive slave based in Boston. When the Rochester Ladies' Anti Slavery Society asked Douglass for a short story to go in their collection, Autographs for Freedom, Douglass responded with The Heroic Slave. The novella, published in 1852 by John P. Jewett and Company, was Douglass's first and only published work of fiction (though he did publish several autobiographical narratives).

A glittering evening. The rustle of silk. The gleam of chandeliers and whispered admiration following her every graceful turn. In that moment, she is everything she was born to be—adored, envied, radiant. But the night ends. And reality waits in the shadows. In a world where appearances speak louder than truths, how much is one willing to sacrifice to fit into a vision of elegance? And when the cost of illusion becomes a lifelong sentence, what remains of the dream?