Short Stories

Tar City chews people up and spits them out. Sometimes, it swallows. But Jax? He owns it. The bar. The streets. The magic he swore he’d never use again. Until tonight. Because tonight, Sisk isn’t playing fair. She walks into his bar—later than promised—and he’s more than furious. He’s hungry. And when she dares him… he remembers why she’s the reason he stays.

In this exclusive collection, Audible presents six of his most-celebrated short stories, chosen and performed by Richard Armitage. Richard, whose interest in the work of Chekhov was sparked by his appearance as Astrov in a stage production of Uncle Vanya, also introduces the collection with a brief overview of each of the stories and his thoughts on why Chekhov’s short stories are not to be missed.

Known as ‘The Father of Science Fiction’, Herbert George Wells’ writing career spanned over 60 years. He was a writer of novels, short stories, nonfiction books and articles. As a young man, Wells won a scholarship to the Normal School of Science in London, sparking his infamous vocation as a science fiction writer. Introduced by film director and H. G. Wells fanboy Eli Roth, this collection features unabridged recordings of the novels performed by Hugh Bonneville, Jason Isaacs, Sophie Okonedo, David Tennant and Alexander Vlahos.

Fifty of the world's greatest classic short stories: 1.The Necklace by Guy de Maupassant 2.The One Million Pound Banknote by Mark Twain 3.The Phantom Rickshaw by Rudyard Kipling 4.The Fly by Katherine Mansfield 5.The Black Cat by Edgar Allan Poe 6.My Favorite Murder by Ambrose Bierce 7.The Fall of the House of Usher by Edgar Allan Poe 8.One Thousand Dollars by O. Henry 9.Regret by Kate Chopin 10.The Nose by Nikolai Gogol 11.The Mezzotint by M. R. James 12.The Gift of the Magi by O. Henry

A big, brilliant, spooky collection of classic and contemporary ghost stories that will make you hesitate before turning off that light.

Lee Child selects the 20 best mystery short stories of the year, including tales by Stephen King, Sara Paretsky, and many more. Under the auspices of New York City's legendary mystery fiction specialty bookstore, The Mysterious Bookshop, and aided by Edgar Award-winning anthologist Otto Penzler, international best seller Lee Child has selected the 20 most suspenseful, most confounding, and most mysterious short stories from the past year, collected now in one entertaining volume.

This edition encompasses the best short fiction ever written for children. The beloved, enchanting fairy tales, such as of Cinderella and the Sleeping Beauty, thrilling stories packed with the adventures of Sindbad and Aladdin, excerpts from iconic works such as Oliver Twist and Gulliver’s Travels—all this and many more stories that inform, educate, entertain, and enthral children and fill them with wonder and fire up their imagination, have been included in this covetable collection.

The best science fiction scrutinizes our culture and politics, examines the limits of the human condition, and zooms across galaxies at faster-than-light speeds, moving from the very near future to the far-flung worlds of tomorrow in the space of a single sentence. Neil Clarke has selected the short science fiction (and only science fiction) best representing the previous year's writing, showcasing the talent, variety, and awesome "sensawunda" that the genre has to offer.

Brighten your day and dive into Flat Spell Tales! The author, Tony Martello, transforms ordinary events in our lives into fiction based on half-realities. Drop in and surf stories about romance, revenge, treasure hunts, and humor. He invites you along with him on a variety of adventures that take you into extreme nature, complex human relationships, and animal allegories.

This book contains 101 bite-sized horror stories that are intended to scare and unsettle you. These are real peoples' accounts of the creepy and the occult - of their near-misses with madmen and paranormal entities. Each chapter is a short, stand alone campfire tale, a retelling of a frightening or gruesome incident that has stuck with the teller, something that gives them pause to this day when they find themselves alone in the dark. These stories have been collected with the knowledge that real life is scarier than fiction.

Paige Barrett was living her dream as a journalist in New York City, racking up bylines as a staff writer at The Razor, a cutting-edge online magazine. But when she’s suddenly fired from her job and dumped by her boyfriend, she finds herself back home in the quaint seaside town of Shoreham, Florida, waiting tables and living in her sister’s guesthouse. Restless and itching for something meaningful to occupy her time, she decides to launch a true-crime podcast about the death of Jessica Cady, a beloved teacher who died mysteriously 20 years earlier.

I tell you, you meet some strange characters in this game.... Boasting the biggest beats in the world - some as large as France - Australia's outback police have seen it all: natural disasters, incredible acts of selflessness, unspeakable crimes and daring rescues, just to name a few. And they've met some unforgettable characters along the way: from the murderer who stuffed his victims' bodies down wombat holes to the policeman who arrested his own wife....

A man dies with his hand on a radio dial. A distinguished aristocrat finds murder at the opening night of a play. A cryptogram produces death in an English churchyard. Death on the Air and Other Stories serves as the perfect introduction to Ngaio Marsh and her creation, Inspector Roderick Alleyn, or as a nostalgic journey for her many fans.

Lucas knows the perfect night entails just three things: video games, wine, and pad thai. Peanuts are a must! Other people? Not so much. Why complicate things when he’s happy alone? Then one day the apartment board, a vexing trio of authority, rings his doorbell. And Lucas’s solitude takes a startling hike. They demand to see his frying pan. Someone left one next to the recycling room overnight, and instead of removing the errant object, as Lucas suggests, they insist on finding the guilty party. But their plan backfires. Colossally.

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.

This language learning audiobook uses engaging narratives to help beginners to intermediate learners naturally build their Spanish skills. With more than 50 bilingual stories in Spanish and English, listeners expand vocabulary and comprehension naturally through context rather than memorization. The stories progress sequentially in difficulty, starting with present-tense situations and gradually adding past and future tenses. Repeated vocabulary and sentence patterns reinforce learning, while the English translations provide quick support when needed.

Not one to let being banged up in Sick Bay stop her, Max has had a brilliant idea. But she needs Markham to execute it on her behalf. The subject of this cunning plan is Peterson, struggling with another bereavement and not doing very well. What’s needed to get him through it is sympathy, sensitivity, tact and understanding. Step forward Mr Markham, for whom sympathy, sensitivity, etc., are things that happen to other people.

Nathan Tyler is an unassuming professor at a middling American university with a rather obscure specialty in mathematics—in short, a nobody from nowhere. So why is the White House calling? Summoned to Washington, DC, for a top-secret briefing, Nathan discovers that he’s the key to a massive foreign intelligence breakthrough. Reading between the lines of a cryptic series of equations, he could open a door straight into the heart of the Kremlin and change the global balance of power forever.

Form-defining short stories. First published in 1914, James Joyce defined what the short story could be with his collection The Dubliners. A mixture of prose and poetry, each story can be listened to independently, or as a collection. From childhood to maturity, we see what life - and ultimately death - can be, via an extraordinary cast of characters, all of whom experience an epiphany. There’s Father Flynn, the priest; Evelyn, the shop girl who dreams of escape; Mrs Mooney, the butcher’s daughter, who runs a boarding house.

Yorkshire, 1943. Lily Baines, a bright young debutante increasingly ground down by an endless war, has traded in her white gloves for a set of headphones. It’s her job to intercept enemy naval communications and send them to Bletchley Park for decryption. One night, she picks up a transmission that isn’t code at all—it’s a cry for help.