This edition includes a modern introduction and a list of suggested further reading. The contemporary short-story is unimaginable without Anton Chekhov. He stripped the story of many of the features that had seemed essential to nineteenth-century readers: plot, narrative tension, and denouement. Terms such as "slices of life" and "sketches" are used to highlight the fact that often very little happens in Chekhov's short stories. What is left unsaid...

On Beauty is a provocative collection of moments, confessions, overheard conversations, and memories, both fleeting and crystalized, revolving around the small chasms and large craters of everyday life. Situated at the crossroads of prose and poetry, these 33 vignettes explore the rhythm, textures, and micro-moments of lives in motion. Composed with a poet's eye for detail and ear for rhythm, rob mclennan's brief stories play with form and language,...

Anton Chekhov, who is often credited with inventing the modern short story, wrote many volumes worth of stories during his lifetime. Considered by many as one of the greatest short story writers of all time, Chekhov's extraordinary storytelling gift is exemplified in this volume of twenty-three of his most popular stories. "Ward No. 6 and Other Stories" includes the following stories: "The Cook's Wedding", "The Witch", "A Dead Body", "Easter Eve",...

Seeing Mona Naked defines and expands the reader's vision of contemporary life in the heart of the Great Plains. Not just a collection of stories set in the same place but a series of portraits with the power of creating a vision of that place.

"Walk in the Light and Twenty-Three Tales" is a collection of religious tales and parables by the famed Russian author Leo Tolstoy, regarded by many as one of the world's greatest authors. In addition to his most well-known novels "War and Peace" and "Anna Karenina," which are regarded as the epitomes of realist fiction, Tolstoy was also a prolific writer of short stories and non-fiction. In the middle of his life, the author underwent a profound...

After a brief military career, the illustrious Russian author Fyodor Dostoyevsky quickly turned to writing as a profession with the publication of his first novel, "Poor Folk" in 1846. This novel sparked a literary career that would eventually cement Dostoyevsky's reputation as one of the greatest novelists of the nineteenth century. Early participation in a literary political group landed the writer in exile in Siberia for nearly a decade, an experience...

This early work by William Wymark Jacobs was originally published in 1896 and we are now republishing it with a brand new introductory biography. 'Many Cargoes' is a collection of short stories that contains tales such as 'Smoked Skipper', 'A Rash Experiment' and 'The Lost Ship'. Jacobs worked as a clerk in the civil service before turning to writing in his late twenties, publishing his first short story in 1895. Most of Jacobs' work appeared before...

The Jungle Books, by Rudyard Kipling, is part of the Barnes & Noble Classics series, which offers quality editions at affordable prices to the student and the general reader, including new scholarship, thoughtful design, and pages of carefully crafted extras. Here are some of the remarkable features of Barnes & Noble Classics: • New introductions commissioned from todays top writers and scholars • Biographies of the authors • Chronologies...

Published in 1875, this generous collection of sixty-three sketches and short stories includes the classic "The Jumping Frog of Calaveras County," as well as other standouts like "To Raise Poultry," "How the Author Was Sold in Newark," and "My Bloody Massacre."

"The Body Snatcher and Other Tales" is a collection of three ghoulish tales by Robert Louis Stevenson. In the first story, "The Body Snatcher", we find Fettes and Wolfe Macfarlane engaged in the dubious business of stealing corpses for a famous unnamed professor of anatomy. In the second story, "The Bottle Imp", we learn of a magic bottle that contains a wish-granting imp. The only catch is that the bottle must be sold at a loss or its owner's soul...