Short Fiction Anthology

Arthur C Clarke is without question the world's best-known and most celebrated science-fiction writer. His career, spanning more than 60 years, is one of unequalled success. Clarke has always been celebrated for his clear prophetic vision, which is fully on display in this audiobook, but there are also many stories that show his imagination in full flight, to the distant future and to far-flung star systems.

Gathered together for the first time and featuring two brand new stories, this collection contains all of the short stories and novellas featuring Bunny McGarry, star of the million-selling Dublin Trilogy. Spanning his entire career in law enforcement and beyond, these stories give a whole new perspective on Ireland’s most truly unconventional police officer as he juggles being a force for justice and managing the world’s worst under-12s hurling team.

Maud is an irascible 88-year-old Swedish woman with no family, no friends, and...no qualms about a little murder. Ever since her darling father's untimely death when she was only 18, Maud has lived in the family's spacious apartment in downtown Gothenburg rent-free, thanks to a minor clause in a hastily negotiated contract. That was how Maud learned that good things can come from tragedy. Now in her late 80s, Maud contents herself with traveling the world and surfing the net from the comfort of her father's ancient armchair. It's a solitary existence, and she likes it that way.

Edgar Award winner Otto Penzler returns with a new anthology of exhilarating mysteries, assembling Victorian society's lords and ladies and most miserable miscreants. Behind the velvet curtains of horse-drawn carriages and amid the soft glow of the gaslights are the detectives and bobbies sniffing out the safecrackers and petty purloiners who plague everything from the soot-covered side streets of London to the opulent manors of the countryside. Brush off your dinner jackets and straighten out your ball gowns for these exciting, glitzy mysteries.

Arthur Conan Doyle was the greatest genre writer Britain has ever produced. Throughout a long writing career, he drew on his own medical background, his travels, and his increasing interest in spiritualism and the occult to produce a spectacular array of Gothic tales. Many of Doyle's writings are recognized as the very greatest tales of terror. They range from hauntings in the polar wasteland to evil surgeons and malevolent jungle landscapes. This collection brings together over 30 of Conan Doyle's best Gothic tales

When acclaimed mystery writer Dorothy L. Sayers first began compiling anthologies of the best crime stories in the 1920s and ’30s, the genre was in the flush of its first golden age. While it is hard to imagine today - after every possible mystery plot has been told, retold, subverted, and played straight again by hundreds of writers over nearly a century - in Sayers’s day there were still twists that had never been seen, and machinations of crime that would shock even jaded Jazz Age fans.

Sci-Fi: The Definitive Collection is a collection of 29 classic science fiction novels and stories, read by esteemed cast of award-winning narrators. Included here are stories by some of the most iconic science fiction writers of all time, including H.G. Wells; Jules Verne; H.P. Lovecraft; Maragret Cavendish; Yevgeny Zamyatin; and more.

Forty-eight of H.P. Lovecraft’s most important stories are brought together in this collection–available only from Audible–selected and with introductions by the award-winning, best-selling Lovecraft editor Leslie S. Klinger. Howard Philips Lovecraft was the early 20th-century genius who, almost singlehandedly, pioneered horror and scientific fiction, only to die in near-obscurity. Rediscovered by critics and scholars in the 1970s, Lovecraft’s work has influenced—by their own admission—every major horror or science-fiction writer of today.

As the days grow shorter and the temperature drops, Halloween approaches. Come, brave listener, pull up a chair, and spend some time with master storyteller Stephen Fry as he tells us some of his favourite ghost stories of all time, in truly terrifying spatial audio. From the headless horseman of Sleepy Hollow to the tortured spirits of M.R. James, from Edgar Allan Poe’s terrifying tale of a doppelganger to Charlotte Riddell’s Open Door that should definitely stay shut, join Stephen as he tells you some truly terrifying tales.

Every novella by Ursula K. Le Guin, an icon in American literature, collected for the first time - and introduced by the legendary author - in one breathtaking volume. Ursula K. Le Guin has won multiple prizes and accolades, from the Medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters to the Newbery Honor, Nebula, Hugo, World Fantasy, and PEN/Malamud awards. She has had her work collected over the years but never as a complete retrospective of her longer works.

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.

Millions of young listeners have loved the World's Worst Children tales. Now they will revel in this delightfully dreadful collection of the most gruesome grown-ups ever: The World's Worst Teachers. Think your teachers are bad? Wait till you meet this lot. These 10 tales of the world's most splendidly sinister teachers will have you running for the school gates. Dr Dread teaches science and is half man, half monster. Watch out for the ghastly Miss Seethe. She is always furious and she's on a detention rampage.

With a vision of a world free from a war, a cat and his human minions set out to change humanity. An epic tale awaits. Follow Braden, Micah, and the Golden Warrior as their adventures take them through the wasteland to the mystical south of Planet Vii.

Celtic mythology, Arthurian romance, and an intriguing interpretation of British history - these are just some of the themes embraced by the anonymous authors of the eleven tales that make up the Welsh medieval masterpiece known as The Mabinogion. They tell of Gwydion the shape-shifter, who can create a woman out of flowers; of Math the magician whose feet must lie in the lap of a virgin; of hanging a pregnant mouse and hunting a magical boar.

Outer Space, Inner Lands includes many of the best known Ursula K. Le Guin nonrealistic stories (such as "The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas," "Semley' s Necklace," and "She Unnames Them") which have shaped the way many listeners see the world. She gives voice to the voiceless, hope to the outsider, and speaks truth to power - all the time maintaining her independence and sense of humor.

Disorder and chaos ravage London when thousands are contaminated by the accidental discharge of an experimental bioweapon. The disease robs its hosts of rational thought, giving them a singular desire - find more living flesh to infect.

Ray Bradbury brings wonders alive. For this peerless American storyteller, the most bewitching force in the universe is human nature. In these 18 startling tales unfolding across a canvas of tattooed skin, living cities take their vengeance, technology awakens the most primal natural instincts, and dreams are carried aloft in junkyard rockets. Provocative and powerful, The Illustrated Man is a kaleidoscopic blending of magic, imagination, and truth.

The Complete Short Stories is a collection to be loved and cherished, from one of the finest short-story writers of the twentieth century. From the cruel irony of A member of the Family to the fateful echoes of The Go-Away Bird and the unexpectedly sinister The Girl I Left Behind Me, in settings that range from South Africa to the Portobello Road, Muriel Spark coolly probes the idiosyncrasies that lurk beneath the veneer of human respectability, displaying the acerbic wit and wisdom that are the hallmarks of her unique talent.

In the bizarre world of Franz Kafka, salesmen turn into giant bugs, apes give lectures at college academies, and nightmares probe the mysteries of modern humanity’s unhappiness. More than any other modern writer in world literature, Kafka captures the loneliness and misery that fill the lives of 20th-century humanity.

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.