Audio Books

House With The Mezzanine And Other Stories

Anton Chekhov
Six short stories and a novella by the Russian master. (david wales)

Mystery Of Choice

Robert W. Chambers
The Mystery of Choice is a collection of short horror stories written by Robert W. Chambers. The stories, set in France, are known for their heavy use of nature imagery.

A. E. Coppard
Coppard was renowned for his influence on the English short story and here we present a collection, first published in 1923, featuring 18 of his best known works, including Simple Simon, the Wife of Ted Wickham and The Devil in the Churchyard.

Once A Week (Version 2)

A. A. Milne
Once A Week is a collection of short stories and slightly longer vignettes which were written for Milne's solid British Audience, including regular readers of Punch -- between1903, when he graduated from Cambridge and 1906, when he began also to edit Punch, on and through to 1909. They are humorous verses, essays and stories with what he deemed a peculiarly British flavor, focusing on the antics and adventures of a small recurring group of friends and acquaintances. The breadth of Milne's oeuvre is illustrated by his publication, in the mean time, of 18 plays, 3 novels, collections of children's poems, screen plays for popular British films, and a (pretty good) detective story. -- among other things.

Schoolmaster and Other Stories

Anton Chekhov
Anton Chekhov, 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.

Tales of Three Hemispheres

Lord Dunsany
Tales of Three Hemispheres is a collection of fantasy short stories by Lord Dunsany. The first edition was published in Boston by John W. Luce & Co. in November, 1919; the first British edition was published in London by T. Fisher Unwin in June, 1920.

The book collects 14 short pieces by Dunsany; the last three, under the general heading "Beyond the Fields We Know," are related tales, as explained in the publisher's note preceding the first, "Idle Days on the Yann," which was previously published in the author's earlier collection A Dreamer's Tales, but reprinted in the current one owing to the relationship.

Tolstoi for the Young: Selected tales from Tolstoi

Leo Tolstoy
Seven stories by Leo Tolstoy selected for inclusion into a school curriculum. Some of the stories are well known and others more obscure; some are long and others quite short but all are of course from the pen of the great graf Leo Tolstoy and faithfully translated by Mrs. R. S. Townsend.

Faith of Men

Jack London
A collection of short stories by author Jack London.

Orientations

W. Somerset Maugham
This is a collection showing W. Somerset Maugham's early attempt in the short story genre, which he comes to master as one of 20th century's best teller of tales.

Red Inn

Honoré de Balzac
Staying at the red inn. Two army surgeons get caught up in a murder, intrigue and execution.

Slav Soul and Other Stories

Aleksandr Kuprin
Novelist and short story writer Alexandr Ivanovich Kuprin (1870-1938) was one of the most widely read authors of his time. Nabokov called him the Russian Kipling for his stories about people who are often "neurotic and vulnerable". Many films and radio programs based on his works have been produced. These 15 short stories, typically “artful studies of abnormal states of mind”, were selected from various sources.The collection includes “Easter Day” (a chance meeting); “The Picture” (intense envy); “Hamlet” (a fading actor); “The Last Word” (a psychotic confession); “Dogs' Happiness” (strays in jeopardy); “A Clump of Lilacs” (a wife’s ingenuity); “Anathema” (a curse); and “Tempting Providence” (homeward bound). “The White Poodle" and "The Elephant”, appropriate for all readers, were intended by the author to be read aloud to children. ( Lee Smalley)

Gigolo

Edna Ferber
Gigolo is a collection of short stories by Edna Ferber, best known for her novels Show Boat and So Big (for which she won the Pulitzer Prize).

Like most of her works, these stories take place in the heart of the country – the Midwest, from Illinois to Oklahoma. Her protagonists range from a twenty-something auto mechanic to a woman who finds herself “suddenly sixty.” In these stories we meet many strong women facing – and generally conquering – difficult circumstances. (“Having made the worst of it, you made the best of it,” she writes in The Sudden Sixties, one of the stories in this collection.) But she write also of men’s struggles with the rapidly changing social politics of the early 1900’s, showing how various characters resist, but ultimately move with a time in which women are gaining unprecedented power and influence of women from the home to the workplace.

Her stories are about real people; her characters are familiar to the reader, even a century after she created them. Her writing is clear, crisp, emotionally evocative, and always humorous.

Tales Of The Trail; Short Stories Of Western Life

Henry Inman
This 1898 collection of thirteen previously published articles exhibits the acute perception of one of the most popular writers of the late 19th-early 20th centuries. “These "Tales of the Trail" are based upon actual facts which came under the personal observation of the author… and will form another interesting series of stories of that era of great adventures, when the country west of the Missouri was unknown except to the trappers, hunters, and army officers.” Henry Inman (1837 – 1899) was an American soldier, frontiersman, and author. He served in the military during the Indian campaigns and the American Civil War, having earned distinction for gallantry on the battlefield. He was commissioned lieutenant general during the Indian wars. He settled in Kansas and worked as a journalist and author of short stories and books of the plains and western frontier.

House of Cobwebs and Other Stories

George Gissing
George Gissing was a prolific English writer of novels and short stories. Among his best known novels is The Odd Women, which was influenced by George Eliot, whose work he greatly admired. Another of his famous works, New Grub Street, entails a blunt critique of the working class life he knew by experience, especially during a number of the years he spent in the United States.

This collection of stories ranges from the humorous to the tragic. Throughout, Gissing pokes mild fun at his characters' human frailties: egotism, self-satisfaction, and pomposity, among others.

Three Elephant Power and Other Stories

Andrew Barton Paterson
From Banjo Paterson, bush poet and favorite son of Australia, here is a collection of colorful stories from Australia that offer a window into the past and the culture of the region.

Pipefuls

Christopher Morley
A delightful collection of 48 essays on various topics of the human condition that caught his fancy. Witty, insightful and funny of course and on occasion thought provoking and even disturbing. From the preface "These sketches gave me pain to write; they will give the judicious patron pain to read; therefore we are quits. I think, as I look over their slattern paragraphs, of that most tragic hour—it falls about 4 p. m. in the office of an evening newspaper—when the unhappy compiler tries to round up the broodings of the day and still get home in time for supper. And yet perhaps the will-to-live is in them, for are they not a naked exhibit of the antics a man will commit in order to earn a living? In extenuation it may be pleaded that none of them are so long that they may not be mitigated by an accompanying pipe of tobacco."

Heptameron of the Tales of Margaret, Queen of Navarre, Vol. 3

Marguerite of Navarre
THE HEPTAMERON (here Volume 3 of 5), first published posthumously in 1558, is divided into seven complete days containing 10 stories each, and an eighth day containing only 2 stories. The stories, many of which deal with love and infidelity, resulted in "accusations of looseness" by critics of the day. The author, Margaret of Navarre (also known as Margaret of Angoulême) became an influential woman in the intellectual and cultural circles of the French Renaissance.

From an 1892 essay by the translator George Saintsbury: "In so large a number of stories with so great a variety of subjects, it naturally cannot but be the case that there is a considerable diversity of tone. But that peculiarity at which we have glanced more than once, the combination of voluptuous passion with passionate regret and a mystical devotion, is seldom absent for long together...The question, What is the special virtue of the Heptameron? I have myself little hesitation in answering. There is no book, in prose and of so early a date, which shows to me the characteristic of the time as it influenced the two great literary nations of Europe so distinctly as this book of Margaret of Angoulême…"

Light Invisible

Robert Hugh Benson
Fifteen short ghost stories by the Anglican then Roman Catholic priest, Robert Hugh Benson (1871-1914). The form of the book is of an old English Roman Catholic priest telling stories to his young friend. Benson wrote prolifically in many genres. His horror and ghost fiction are collected in The Light Invisible (1903) and A Mirror of Shalott (1907) - David Wales

Revenge!

Robert Barr
A collection of 20 short stories of the crime, detective, and thriller variety, sharing a common theme of .... you guessed it, revenge, and often with surprise conclusions. Elements of the style of Alfred Hitchcock may be found among many of the tales. Turn down the lights, let the imagination wander as it will, and perpare to expect the unexpected. (Roger Melin)

Sunny Side (Version 2)

A. A. Milne
A. A. Milne is best known for his creation of the perennially popular Winnie the Pooh, though he was and is highly acclaimed for hundreds of gently humorous essays and poems published in, among other famous venues, Punch Magazine, most of which have been collected and published as books.The Sunny Side is his last collection of articles and verses because, as he wrote in the American Introduction to the volume, “this sort of writing depends largely upon the irresponsibility and high spirits of youth for its success, and I want to stop before …the high spirits become mechanical …”He called this assortment “scrappy, because, “…Odd Verses have crept in on the unanswerable plea that, if they didn't do it now, they never would; War Sketches protested that I shouldn't have a book at all if I left them out; an Early Article, omitted from three previous volumes, paraded for the fourth time with such a pathetic 'I suppose you don't want me' in its eye that it could not decently be rejected.” He concludes: “So here they all are."Summary by Kirsten Wever

Man Without A Country And Other Tales

Edward Everett Hale
Edward Everett Hale was an American author, historian and Unitarian clergyman. Hale first came to notice as a writer in 1859, when he contributed the short story "My Double and How He Undid Me" to the Atlantic Monthly. He soon published other stories in the same periodical. His best known work was "The Man Without a Country", published in the Atlantic in 1863 and intended to strengthen support in the Civil War for the Union cause in the North. Though the story is set in the early 19th century, it is an allegory about the upheaval of the American Civil War. As in some of his other non-romantic tales, he employed a minute realism which led his readers to suppose the narrative a record of fact. These two stories and such others as "The Skeleton in the Closet", gave him a prominent position among short-story writers of 19th century America. Each story in this collection has an introduction.

Around The Yule Log

Willis Boyd Allen
Eleven yule-tide stories by a popular writer of the late 19th – early 20th centuries. -

Christmas Eve and Christmas Day

Edward Everett Hale
This is a collection of ten Christmas Stories, some of which have been published before. I have added a little essay, written on the occasion of the first Christmas celebrated by the King of Italy in Rome.

Just Sixteen

Susan Coolidge
A collection of short stories from the author of the What Katy Did series, for an audience ranging from younger to older children - and enjoyable for adults too! They vary in style - fairy tales, humorous sketches, stories of everyday life, romances, children's scrapes and practical advice - and include the Christmas story "The Pink Sweetmeat".

Youth and the Bright Medusa, and The Troll Garden

Willa Sibert Cather
Youth And The Bright Medusa comprises eight short stories published in 1920. Four of them (The Sculptor’s Funeral; A Death In The Desert; A Wagner Matinee; Paul’s Case) are re-worked from an earlier collection, The Troll Garden, published in 1905. This LibriVox recording contains in addition the three stories (Flavia And Her Artists; The Garden Lodge; The Marriage Of Phaedra) from that earlier work omitted in the later book. In other words, all the stories in both books are recorded here.

Grim Smile Of The Five Towns

Arnold Bennett
The Grim Smile of the Five Towns (1907) is the second major collection of stories written by Arnold Bennett. (The first is Tales Of The Five Towns, 1905, available at Librivox.).The five towns of the title are the conurbation of Stoke-on-Trent in which much of the writer's best work is set. Later [than initial] critics have been kinder to the collection's key story, with Margaret Drabble calling "Simon Fuge"... one of the greatest short stories in the English language", and John Wain remarking that... "it says as much as a novel, it says easily as much as a novel of a hundred thousand words could say on this theme" and naming it... "the best thing that Arnold Bennett ever did." The stories exhibit Bennett's usual dry wit and belie the word "grim" in the title.

Heir

Vita Sackville-West
This collection’s title is taken from its first story, a novella, which is followed by four shorter tales, all expertly and sensitively drawn.
Story 1, “The Heir,” concerns an inheritance as told from the point of view of the heir, an unmarried middle-aged man. Its subtitle, “A Love Story,” is not a reference to another person but to the inheritance.
Story 2, “The Christmas Party,” tells of a longtime family alienation and separation followed by a shocking reunion.
Story 3, “Patience,” is a touching tale of an apparently “comfortable” marriage, but where the husband tends to lapse into his secret memories of a long-past love. The title is the name both of a version of Solitaire that his wife often plays and of her coping with her husband’s curious mental absences.
Story 4, “Her Son,” is the poignant story of an aging mother eagerly planning for the future with her long-absent son, now returning but with his own private ideas.
Story 5, “The Parrot,” is a short allegory about the unremitting need for freedom.
( Lee Smalley)

Human Boy And The War

Eden Phillpotts
Published in 1916, this is the third collection of thirteen humorous short stories about English school boys in a boarding school in the fictitious village Merivale. This book, of course, has World War I as a backdrop. Each story is told in the voice of a different boy at the school. The author wrote two other books in this series: The Human Boy (1900) and The Human Boy Again (1908). Eden Phillpotts was popular with the reading public and wrote prolifically novels, short stories, poetry, plays, and nonfiction. (David Wales)

Wounds In The Rain; War Stories

Stephen Crane
Eleven stories of war by the author of The Red Badge of Courage. Stephen Crane was an American author. He is recognized by modern critics as one of the most innovative writers of his generation. Crane's writing is characterized by vivid intensity, distinctive dialects, and irony. Common themes involve fear, spiritual crises and social isolation. His writing made a deep impression on 20th-century writers, most prominent among them Ernest Hemingway, and is thought to have inspired the Modernists and the Imagists.

At a Winter's Fire

Bernard Capes
This is a book of stories by Bernard Capes to entertain you if you should find yourself in a cozy chair by the fireplace during the short dark days of winter.

Holiday Round

A. A. Milne
Alan Alexander Milne, popularly known as A. A. Milne, is best known – perhaps to most people only known – for his children’s book, Winnie the Pooh. Yet he was an incredibly prolific author. He published dozens of successful plays, myriad humorous articles written for internationally prominent journals, a wide range of social, political, and other nonfiction works, and even a murder mystery.

This collection is humorous throughout, but humorous in a particularly Milnesque way: he consciously and quite openly rejected the bitterness of satire in favor of a peculiarly gentle, often self-deprecating humor. Included here are dozens of short essays showing, among other things, Milne’s extraordinary capacity to understand – and be understood by – children, and his special affinity for women, as friends and as lovers.

Noughts and Crosses: Stories, Studies and Sketches

Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
This is a collection of well-written engaging short stories written by "Q", the pen name of the prolific and eccentric Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch.

Water Ghost and Others

John Kendrick Bangs
Eight ghost stories by a master story teller and humorist of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.

Christmas Eve At Swamp's End

Norman Duncan
Four selected chapters from The Measure Of A Man; A Tale of the Big Woods, by Norman Duncan. What could be more Christmasy than: Babies, especially a homeless one; a woman who loves; a man who protects; a cold night; glittering stars; poor working-men witnesses; gifts. ( Title page and david wales)

Human Boy Again

Eden Phillpotts
Published in 1908, this is a further collection of twelve humorous short stories about English school boys. The author wrote two other books in this series: The Human Boy (1900) and The Human Boy And The War (1916). Eden Phillpotts was popular with the reading public and wrote prolifically novels, short stories, poetry, plays, and nonfiction.

Dozen Ways of Love

Lily Dougall
This is a collection of (each in their own way) romantic short stories by Lily Dougall.

Peasant Tales of Russia

Vasily Nemirovich-Danchenko
Collection of Russian peasant tales:
"The Deserted Mine" - The key to saving the trapped miners is held by a man who hasn't spoken a word in 10 years.
"Mahmoud's Family" - Escaping prisoners of war should be shot, but Mahmoud has a family.
"A Misunderstanding" - A young woman seeks escape from her past, in a convent.
"The Luck of Ivan the Forgetful" - An incorrigible criminal escapes from a sentence of hard labor to find freedom and perhaps a kind of redemption in the forest.

Short Stories for Colored People Both Old and Young

Silas X. Floyd
Several short stories relating to young African Americans

Human Boy

Eden Phillpotts
This collection of eleven short stories, both humorous and touching, about English school boys was published in 1900. The book was quite popular in its time. The author wrote two follow-up books: The Human Boy Again (1908) and The Human Boy And The War (1916). Eden Phillpotts was popular with the reading public and wrote prolifically novels, short stories, poetry, plays, and nonfiction. Clarification of the term fag: In an English public school a junior boy who performs menial tasks for a senior.

White Wolf and Other Fireside Tales

Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
This lively collection of stories by Q, aka the imaginative and prolific man of letters Arthur Quiller-Couch, includes tales of mystery, horror, and adventure. Beware. There will be ghosts, pirates, scholars, death, taxes, at least one princess, and a ship named the White Wolf.

Four Science Fiction Stories by G.L.Vandenburg

G. L. Vandenburg
G.L.Vandenburg wrote quirky and funny Science Fiction stories for Amazing Science Fiction Stories, and similar magazines in the 1950's. These four are a selection that give a good taste of his offbeat approach, strange sense of humor and relaxed narrative style that brought joy and excitement to those of us who bought these magazines and saw his name on the cover. In the first, Martian V.F.W., some strange visitors join a parade; in the second, Jubilation, U.S.A, our first visitors from outer space encounter a One-Armed Bandit and don't exactly hit the jackpot; in the third, Moon Glow, the first Americans on the Moon receive an unwelcomed surprise; and in the last, The Observers, a sinister plot involving bald men is thwarted by a dumb secretary ... well kinda. Enjoy!

Wongo And The Wise Old Crow

Grace Moon
Stories of an Indian boy and his friends told by a children’s author of yesteryear, published 1923.

English Audio Books

The most popular500

Children400

Fiction750

Fantasy350

Horror/Ghost stories700

Dictionary 180,000

Fiction364

Action & Adventure315

Animals & Nature275

Myths, Legends & Fairy Tales222

Family117

General102

Historical43

Poetry48

Religion37

School33

Short works52

Non-fiction76

Reference5

Religion19

Science21

History14

Biography23

General113

Comedy76

Satire26

Tragedy & Drama101

Romance10

General694

Action & Adventure603

Classics (Greek & Antiquity)94

Crime & Mystery195

Detective322

Culture & Heritage127

Dramatic Readings151

Epistolary Fiction47

Erotica12

Travel Fiction42

Family Life123

Biographies & Memoirs73

Historical Fiction433

Humorous Fiction387

Literary227

Nature & Animal63

Nautical & Marine97

Religious Fiction109

Romance477

Sagas16

Satire127

Sports Fiction9

Suspense & Espionage79

War & Military Fiction89

Westerns98

Fantastic Fiction103

Myths, Legends & Fairy Tales178

Horror & Supernatural Fiction150

Gothic Fiction25

Science Fiction490

Fantasy Fiction83

Short Stories260

Anthologies37

Single Author Collections142

Published before 180020

Published 1800-1900207

Published 1900 onward207

General483

Anthologies44

Single author156

Ballads & Epics43

Narratives13

Multi-version601

Non-Fiction427

War & Military170

Animals62

Art, Design & Architecture43

Biography & Autobiography360

Memoirs187

Business & Economics31

Crafts & Hobbies15