Short stories

The horrors of Christmas are not limited to just the credit card bills and the fruit cake. Try these spooky English tales from such talents as Arthur Conan Doyle and Rudyard Kipling.

This collection contains stories by nineteen writers including Ray Bradbury, Ursula Le Guin, John Cheever, and Jorge Luis Borges. From serious to mysterious, from humorous to romantic, here is a variety of stories for a variety of readers.

The creator of A Christmas Story shares more of growing up in the Midwest--this time during his teenaged years:
"...a universal (and achingly funny) orchestration of Midwestern puberty rites, from the gut-wrenching playground antics of one Delbert Bumpus, to the supernal glow surrounding unapproachable high school beauty Daphne Bigelow, to the memorable disaster that was Shepherd's (and everyone else's) junior prom."
Stories include:
The grandstand passion play of Delbert and the Bumpus hounds --County fair! -- Scut Farkas and the murderous Mariah -- Ollie Hopnoodle's haven of bliss -- The star-crossed romance of Josephine Cosnowski --Daphne Bigelow and the spine-chilling saga of the snail-encrusted tinfoil noose - - The return of the smiling Wimpy doll -- Wanda Hickey's night of golden memories.

A collection by an award-winning author includes ten short tales, eighteen poems, and the title story in which a child survives a plane crash and enters a Dream Time of primitive myths and an all-knowing coyote. The included werewolf tale is from the wolves' point of view.

In this special collector's edition, a selection of Charles Dickens's most captivating stories are gathered together, richly illustrated with handwritten manuscript pages, rare family photographs, and a splendid array of prints and drawings from the special collections of The New York Public Library.

"The Masque of the Red Death." "Cask of Amontillado." "The Tell-Tale Heart." Poe mastered the art of spine-tingling storytelling in the 19th century, and few have come close to rivaling his mastery since. Read these in front of the fire with one candle lit for the full effect.

"There's nothing like a good ghost story. And, in Victorian Ghost Stories, Michael Cox and R.A. Gilbert bring together thirty-five well-wrought tales of haunted houses, vengeful spirits, spectral warnings, invisible antagonists, and motiveless malignity from beyond the grave.
"The Victorians excelled at the ghost story, it was as much a part of their literary culture as the realistic novel, and it was practiced by almost all the great writers of the age. Cox and Gilbert here provide samples from Charles Dickens, Robert Louis Stevenson, Rudyard Kipling, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, Henry James, and Wilkie Collins, as well as such classic ghost-story specialists as M.R. James and J.S. Le Fanu (whose "Account of Some Strange Disturbances in Aungier Street," considered one of the best haunted-house story ever written...), plus one or two genuine rarities for the supernatural fiction enthusiast to savor."