This book contains 70 short stories from 10 classic, prize-winning and noteworthy authors. The stories were carefully selected by the critic August Nemo, in a collection that will please the literature lovers. For more exciting titles, be sure to check out our 7 Best Short Stories and Essential Novelists collections. This book contains: Émile Zola: Captain Burle The Miller's Daughter Jean Gourdon's Four Days The Fete At Coqueville The Flood Death of Olivier Becaille Nana Stewart Edward White: The Girl Who Got Rattled Billy's Tenderfoot The River-Boss The Saving Grace The Strange Ride of Morrowbie Jukes The Girl in Red The Fifth Way Sarah Orne Jewett: A Winter Courtship Going to Shrewsbury The White Rose Road The Town Poor A Native of Winby Looking Back on Girlhood The Passing of Sister Barsett Willa Cather A Burglar's Christmas A Wagner Matinee On the Gull's Road Paul's Case The Enchanted Bluff The Namesake The Garden Lodge George Ade The Fable of the Preacher Who Flew His Kite, But Not Because He Wished to Do So The Fable of the Two Mandolin Players and His Willing Performer The Fable of the Parents Who Tinkered with the Offspring The Fable of the Man Who Didn't Care for Storybooks The Fable of the Kid Who Shifted His Ideal The Fable of How Uncle Brewster was Too Shifty for the Tempter The Fable of Lutie, the False Alarm, and How She Finished about the Time that She Started Robert W. Chambers: The Messenger The Repairer of Reputations The Purple Emperor Passeur The Key to Grief A Matter of Interest Pompe Funèbre George Gissing The House Of Cobwebs A Capitalist Christopherson Humplebee The Scrupulous Father A Poor Gentleman Miss Rodney's Leisure Lord Dunsany: Chu-Bu and Sheemish The Hoard of the Gibbelins The Quest of the Queen's Tears How One Came, As Was Foretold, To The City Of Never The Wonderful Window The Bride Of The Man Horse The House Of The Sphinx Ruth McEnery Stuart: Sonny's Christenin' Solomon Crow's Christmas Pockets The Two Tims Old Easter Saint Idyl's Light Little Mother Quackalina Blink Bjørnstjerne Bjørnson: The Railroad and the Churchyard The Father The Bridal March One Day Mother's Hands Thrond Absalom's Hair

A hair-raising collection of adventure stories that's so big and enthralling if you open it you may never be seen again: enter at your own risk. Everyone loves adventure, and Otto Penzler has collected the best adventure stories of all time into one mammoth volume. With stories by Jack London, O. Henry, H. Rider Haggard, Alastair MacLean, Talbot Mundy, Cornell Woolrich, and many others, this wide-reaching and fascinating volume contains some of the best characters from the most thrilling adventure tales, including The Cisco Kid; Sheena, Queen of the Jungle; Bulldog Drummond; Tarzan; The Scarlet Pimpernel; Conan the Barbarian; Hopalong Cassidy; King Kong; Zorro; and The Spider. Divided into sections that embody the greatest themes of the genre—Sword & Sorcery, Megalomania Rules, Man vs. Nature, Island Paradise, Sand and Sun, Something Feels Funny, Go West Young Man, Future Shock, I Spy, Yellow Peril, In Darkest Africa—it is destined to be the greatest collection of adventure stories ever compiled. Featuring: Lawless open seas Ferocious army ants Deadeyed gunmen Exotic desert islands Feverish jungle adventures Including: The story that introduced The Cisco Kid The complete novel of Tarzan the Terrible

The incomparable John Updike selects the 55 finest short stories from America's bestselling anthology, published since 1915.

Collection of 48 science fiction stories by Isaac Asimov.

Over a thousand pages of haunted—and haunting—ghost tales: the most complete collection of uncanny, spooky, creepy tales ever published! Edited and with an introduction by Otto Penzler. Including stories by Joyce Carol Oates, Rudyanrd Kipling, Isaac Asimov, James MacCreigh, and many more! Featuring eerie vintage ghost illustrations. The ghost story is perhaps the oldest of all the supernatural literary genres and has captured the imagination of almost every writer to put pen to the page. Here, Edgar Award-winning editor Otto Penzler has followed his keen sense of the supernatural to collect the most chilling and uncanny tales in the canon. These spectral stories span more than a hundred years, from modern-day horrors by Joyce Carol Oates, Chet Williamson and Andrew Klavan, to pulp yarns from August Derleth, Greye La Spina, and M. L. Humphreys, to the atmospheric Victorian tales of Rudyard Kipling, Edith Wharton, and H. P. Lovecraft, not to mention modern works by the likes of Donald E. Westlake and Isaac Asimov that are already classics. Some of these stories have haunted the canon for a century, while others are making their first ghoulish appearance in book form. Whether you prefer possessive poltergeists, awful apparitions, or friendly phantoms, these stories are guaranteed to thrill you, tingle the spine, or tickle the funny bone, and keep you turning the pages with fearful delight. Including such classics as “The Monkey’s Paw” and “The Open Window” and eerie vintage illustrations, and also featuring haunted mansions, midnight frights, lovers from beyond the grave, rapping, tapping, wailing shades, and ghosts, ghouls, and specters galore! AlsoFeaturing haunted mansions, midnight frights, lovers from beyond the grave, rapping, tapping, wailing shades, and ghosts, ghouls, and specters galore!

The Edgar Award-winning editor collects sixty of his all-time favorite holiday crime stories—from Arthur Conan Doyle and Thomas Hardy, to Sara Paretsky and Ed McBain. • “Anyone who cares about the best mystery writing of the past century and beyond would be lucky to receive this thick volume during the holidays." —The Washington Post This collection touches on all aspects of the holiday season, and all types of mysteries. They are suspenseful, funny, frightening, and poignant. Included are puzzles by Mary Higgins Clark, Isaac Asimov, and Ngaio Marsh; uncanny tales in the tradition of A Christmas Carol by Peter Lovesey and Max Allan Collins; O. Henry-like stories by Stanley Ellin and Joseph Shearing, stories by pulp icons John D. MacDonald and Damon Runyon; comic gems from Donald E. Westlake and John Mortimer; and many, many more. Almost any kind of mystery you’re in the mood for--suspense, pure detection, humor, cozy, private eye, or police procedural—can be found in these pages. FEATURING: - Unscrupulous Santas - Crimes of Christmases Past and Present - Festive felonies - Deadly puddings - Misdemeanors under the mistletoe - Christmas cases for classic characters including Sherlock Holmes, Brother Cadfael, Miss Marple, Hercule Poirot, Ellery Queen, Rumpole of the Bailey, Inspector Morse, Inspector Ghote, A.J. Raffles, and Nero Wolfe.

Best-selling author Walter Mosley has selected the year's top fiction from voices well-known and new. Here several authors bring their stories to vivid life for a banner audio edition.