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Short stories

  • Author:
    Kipling, Rudyard
    Summary:

    The Second Jungle Book is the sequel to Rudyard Kipling's acclaimed collection of stories about the Indian jungle. These new stories were published a year after the original, and mostly focus on the same characters including Mowgli, Baloo, and Beeghera. Similar to his first collection of fables, this sequel also contains a poem at the end of every story, showcasing Rudyard's knowledge of the politics of the time, as well as his passion for the Indian Jungle.

  • Author:
    Weinbaum, Stanley G., Campbell, John W., Del Rey, Lester, Heinlein, Robert A., Sturgeon, Theodore, Asimov, Isaac, Padgett, Lewis, Simak, Clifford D., Brown, Fredric, Leinster, Murray, Merril, Judith, Smith, Cordwainer, Bradbury, Ray, Kornbluth, C. M., Van Vogt, A. E., Matheson, Richard, Leiber, Fritz, Boucher, Anthony, Blish, James, Clarke, Arthur C., Bixby, Jerome, Godwin, Tom, Bester, Alfred, Knight, Damon, Keyes, Daniel, Zelazny, Roger
    Summary:

    A collection of the best science fiction stories published between 1929 and 1964 as selected by Science Fiction Writers of America.

  • Author:
    Summary:

    Published in 1973 to honor stories that had appeared before the institution of the Nebula Awards, this anthology introduced tens of thousands of young readers to the wonders of science fiction and was a favorite of libraries across the country. This last volume in the definitive collection of the best science fiction novellas published between 1929 and 1964 contains eleven classics.

  • Author:
    Chekhov, Anton Pavlovich
    Summary:

    Anton Checkhov, perhaps better known as a world famous classical playwright for works such as "Uncle Vanya" and "The Cherry Orchard" was also a prolific short story writer. "The Schoolmaster and Other Stories" is one of several of his collections. It's a compilation of 30 short stories. Some bizarre, some comical but all very interesting.

  • Author:
    Shah, Aparna Kaji
    Summary:

    The Scent of Mogra and Other Stories is a collection of four short stories about strong female characters dealing with difficult life-changing situations. The turmoil that they face is, often, the result of a social structure that discriminates against women. Through these powerful women characters, the stories reflect attitudes and ways of life in a village in India, and in modern day Mumbai; they highlight the values of an older generation, and the dreams of a new one. Beneath all their differences, The Scent of Mogra and Other Stories illuminate the quality of women's lives, exposing the pain, the injustices, as well as the triumphs that make up their existence.

  • Author:
    Läckberg, Camilla
    Summary:

    The Scent of Almonds and Other Stories is a collection of short stories from the number-one international best-seller Camilla Lackberg. Perfect for fans of Stieg Larsson and Jo Nesbo. The Scent of Almonds - It's less than a week until Christmas, and policeman Martin Mohlin is begrudgingly accompanying his girlfriend to a family reunion on the tiny island of Valön outside of Fjällbacka. The connection to the mainland is cut off by a snowstorm, and when the domineering patriarch, Ruben, collapses during Christmas dinner, Martin is forced to intervene. He soon establishes that Ruben was murdered, and since they are completely isolated on the island, one of the family members must be the murderer.... A charming novella in the style of Agatha Christie, closely linked to the Fjällbacka series.

  • Author:
    Lipszyc, Carol
    Summary:

    This collection presents an arc of historical experience of Jewish child and teen life during the Shoah. Across Central and Eastern Europe, the young and hunted in these stories hide in forests; survive in ghettoes and camps; and assume new identities. The stories in this collection depict children as creative, resilient, aged-before their time, as they adapt to their unconscionable reality. The historical experience in this collection provides a wide spectrum of what a race of children endured; the few that attested to that experience in this collection lend voice, detail and insight to a massive, unfathomable crime.

  • Author:
    Mendis, Michael, Allfrey, Ellah Wakatama
    Summary:

    Honouring strong new voices from around the world, the 2014 Commonwealth Short Story Prize is a global award, open to unpublished as well as published writers, with a truly international judging panel. This global anthology presents the winner of the 2014 Short Story Prize, Jennifer Nansubuga Makumbi’s “Let’s Tell This Story Properly,” alongside some of the most promising and original stories entered for the prize during the past three years by emerging writers across the literary landscape of the world. Gathered from over ten thousand entries, the selected stories are provocative, rich in flair and ambition, and push the boundaries of fiction into fresh territory. The Sarong-Man in the Old House, and an Incubus for a Rainy Night is by Sri Lanka’s Michael Mendis.

  • Author:
    Van Booy, Simon
    Summary:

    An exquisite new collection of short stories from award-winning author Simon Van Booy. Over the past decade, Simon Van Booy has been listening to people's stories. With these personal accounts as a starting point, he has crafted a powerful collection of short fiction that takes readers into the innermost lives of everyday people. From a family saved from ruin by a mysterious benefactor, to a downtrodden boxer who shows unexpected kindness to a mugger, these masterfully written tales reveal not only the precarious balance maintained between grief and happiness in our lives, but also how the echoes of personal tragedy can shape us for the better. "Van Booy's stories are somehow like paintings the characters walk out of, and keep walking." 'Los Angeles Times "Simon Van Booy knows a great deal about the complex longings of the human heart."'Robert Olen Butler, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of A Good Scent from a Strange Mountain Audiobook Table of Contents: A Sacrifice, read by Alana Kerr Collins The Green Blanket, read by James Fouhey Playing with Dolls, read by Simon van Booy The Pigeon, read by Giordan Diaz The Hitchhiker, read by Alana Kerr Collins Not Dying, read by Darren Burrows The Saddest Case of True Love, read by Simon van Booy The Doorman, read by James Fouhey.

  • Author:
    Chakraborty, S. A.
    Summary:

    These stories of Daevabad enrich a world already teeming with magic and wonder. Explore this magical kingdom, hidden from human eyes. A place where djinn live and thrive, fight and love. A world where princes question their power, and powerful demons can help you, or destroy you.

  • Author:
    Summary:

    This collection of seventeen classic mystery stories, dating from 1837 to 1914, traces the earliest history of popular detective fiction.

  • Author:
    Whitton, David
    Summary:

    Keen, intense, darkly comic, and accident-prone, the short fictions of David Whitton are full of sullen underdogs: his characters clean up real nice, but can’t help but unravel back to their original fallen and fascinating selves. Their mistakes and misdeeds, temptations and transgressions trample through these stories, twisting out intricate surprises at each turn.

  • Author:
    Whitton, David
    Summary:

    Keen, intense, darkly comic, and accident-prone, the short fictions of David Whitton are full of sullen underdogs: his characters clean up real nice, but can't help but unravel back to their original fallen and fascinating selves. Their mistakes and misdeeds, temptations and transgressions trample through these stories, twisting out intricate surprises at each turn.Whitton navigates contemporary and future, real life and fantasy worlds, continually setting up, if only to send up, modern romantic scenarios. Ultimately, if the boy does get the girl'or vise versa'whether they meet online or on acid, at a wedding or in battle, the object of affection always topples from the pedestal in radical and delightfully refreshing ways.

  • Author:
    Barratt, Amanda
    Summary:

    Romance is a delicate dance bound by rules and expectations in Regency England...Seven couples must navigate society's gauntlet to secure the hand of true love... Charity and Luke are strangers who were forced to marry three years ago. Adelaide and Walter share a love of music and disdain for elitism. Caroline and Henry are thrown together by three orphans. Helen and Isaac harbor his unlikely secret. Esther is empowered to choose between two men. Sophia is determined not to choose a man like Nash. Jamie and William face a daunting London season together. Will their faith grow and love prevail in a time when both were considered luxuries the elite could not afford'

  • Author:
    Christie, Agatha
    Summary:

    In this inviting collection, Agatha Christie enlists the services of her finest--Hercule Poirot, Miss Marple, and Parker Pyne--and puts them each to the test in the most challenging cases of their careers.

  • Author:
    Barnes, Mike
    Summary:

    In the world of'The Reasonable Ogre, magic is nothing if not paradoxical. Ogres can indeed be reasonable, prisons may prove porous, gifts often come disguised as curses, and springs gone dry are only waiting to resurface. At once comic and moving, troubling and restorative, Mike Barnes's original stories are here to remind us that fairy tales aren't about the happily-ever-after: they're about the strange detours we take trying to get there. With seventy drawings from the striking brush of Segbingway."

  • Author:
    Scott, Barbara
    Summary:

    A woman trapped in a plastic suit sprays poisons onto schoolyards in the deserted small hours of morning. Another aims her rage over the loss of her daughter to cancer at a small group of children on Christmas Eve. A teenage boy sees an apparition that may or may not be his estranged father. When the seemingly stable surfaces of their lives rupture, the characters in Scott's award-winning collection discover in their efforts to cope an intimacy on which they hadn't bargained: a disturbing intimacy with the self. Yet they also find strange moments of grace in things as small as a butter tart, as fragile as a coloured egg.

  • Author:
    Lively, Penelope
    Summary:

    A glimmering collection of new short fiction from the Booker Prize winner and national bestselling author of How It All Began In such acclaimed novels as The Photograph, Family Album, and How It All Began, Penelope Lively has captivated readers with her singular blend of wisdom, elegance, and humor. Now, in her first story collection in decades, Lively takes up themes of history, family, and relationships across varied and vividly rendered settings. In the title story, a Mediterranean purple swamp hen chronicles the secrets and scandals of Quintus Pompeius's villa, culminating with his narrow escape from the lava and ash of Vesuvius. "Abroad" captures the low point of an artist couple's tumultuous European road trip, trapped in a remote Spanish farmhouse and forced to paint a family mural and pitch in with chores to pay for repairs to their broken-down car. Other stories reveal friends and lovers in fateful moments of indiscretion, discovery, and even retribution-as in "The Third Wife," when a woman learns her husband to be a serial con artist and turns a house hunting trip into an elaborately staged revenge trap. Each of these delightful stories is elevated by Lively's signature graceful prose and eye for the subtle yet powerfully evocative detail. Wry, charming, and keenly insightful, The Purple Swamp Hen and Other Stories is a masterful achievement from one of our most beloved writers.

  • Author:
    Blakey, Barbara Tifft
    Summary:

    Nine historical romances revive the brief era of the Pony Express. Join the race from Missouri, across the plains and mountains to California and back again as brave Pony Express riders and their supporters along the route work to get mail across country in just ten days. It is an outstanding task in the years 1860 to 1861, and only a few are up to the job. Faced with challenges of terrain, weather, hostile natives, sickness, and more, can these adventurous pioneers hold fast, and can they also find lasting love in the midst of daily trials'A Place to Belong by Barbara Tifft Blakey An Express rider promises to help fulfill Abigail's dream to return to her childhood home. Jacob doesn't trust him, but what other option does she have' An Unlikely Hero by Mary Davis BethAnn along with her little sister are running from a mistake and find security at a Pony Express station and love in the quiet affection of a shy Pony Express rider. The Gambler's Daughter by Darlene Franklin Gambling debts drive Caroline Adams's estranged father away from the Chelan Swing Station before her arrival. Can his replacement conquer the temptations goading them both to prove himself worthy of Caroline's love' Her Lonely Heart by Cynthia Hickey Widow Sadie Mathewson wants to find love again. But when an injured pony express rider shows up at her station, love finds her in an unexpected way. My Dear Adora by Maureen Lang Chip Nolan must dispatch the letters his brother can't after being left for dead on the Pony Express trail. One letter stands out, addressed to "My Dear Adora"-stirring Chip's heart before he even meets its recipient. Ride into My Heart by Debby Lee Kimimela works at a Pony Express station where she struggles to cope with the death of her sister. When she's kidnapped by gun smugglers, can her friend, Pony Express rider Gabe, rescue her in time' Echoes of the Heart by Donna Schlachter A mail order bride. A crippled stationmaster. No way out for either of them-except with each other. Can they surrender their hearts and find true love' Abundance of the Heart by Connie Stevens Unfulfilled goals haunt Fletcher and Mercy at a remote Nebraska outpost, but unexpected circumstances may offer a last-chance opportunity to pursue the dream of riding for the Pony Express. Embattled Hearts by Pegg Thomas Alannah Fagan escaped from a battle she wouldn't survive. Stewart McCann left behind a battle he couldn't face. Thrown together at Horseshoe Station, can they find something worth fighting for'

  • Author:
    Richards, Harriet
    Summary:

    Few writers have Harriet Richards’ understanding of childhood, and fewer still can evoke the never-lost child at the heart of our adult experience. Like her previous, critically-acclaimed books, this new collection is deft, comic, and poignant, but there is malice and tragedy at work in these stories — their gaiety and cool observation counterbalance the troubled lives they explore. In the brilliantly imagined title story two young girls become guardian angels to an emaciated drifter with a very dark secret. Their innocence is an armour against the danger that simmers, below adult knowledge, around a northern lake. Innocence, both tough and vulnerable, is at play in many of these stories: Ava, in “A Great Wrong” carries the guilt of a childhood betrayal and revenge; Olivia’s role as confidante, in “Bagatelle”, channels the absurdities and fragility of clumsy, hopeful lives. “In the Direction of the Three Sisters” is a sad, ironic protest at life’s unfairness. Trust is the most perilous adventure in Richards’ stories, but every one of her characters takes that risk. Their candour in the face of what follows is the book’s enduring delight. Praise for Waiting for the Piano Tuner to Die: “Richards, at her best when she enters psychological terrain, maps psychic contours with chilling accuracy and eerie pulchritude.”  — Judith Fitzgerald, Globe & Mail “While lyrical and affecting, there is nothing precious, nothing sentimental in this collection.” — David Lloyd, Planet, The Welsh Internationalist

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