Showing titles in Short Stories

"House" takes listeners on a spine-chilling journey through the eerie and mysterious world of a haunted house, where a malevolent force lingers, waiting to terrorize its unsuspecting inhabitants. Divorced and down on her luck, Alice, a resilient single mother, relocates with her t young children, Brandon, Robin, and Pryor to the quiet suburb of Northmoore. As they try to start afresh, they encounter strange occurrences that suggest the house is far from an ideal sanctuary. Eerie footsteps that echo through the hallway, ghostly apparitions, and unexplained phenomena begin to plague Alice.

ALEX CROSS, I’m coming for you – even from the grave if I have to. Along Came a Spider killer Gary Soneji has been dead for over ten years. Alex Cross watched him die. But today, Cross saw him gun down his partner. Is Soneji alive? A ghost? Or something even more sinister? Nothing will...

Bloomsbury presents Liberation Day by George Saunders, read by George Saunders, Tina Fey, Michael McKean, Edi Patterson, Jenny Slate, Jack McBrayer, Melora Hardin and Stephen Root. Named a book of the year 2022 by the Sunday Times, The Times, Guardian, Irish Times, New Statesman, BBC and...

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. 

In this charming and heartwarming retelling of the classic It’s a Wonderful Life, Camille Pagán introduces us to Bailey, a dutiful yet sharp-witted 30-something who finds herself on the verge of a nervous breakdown as Christmas Eve approaches. As if it wasn’t enough that Bailey’s husband just cheated on her, the family business she’s been running since her parents died, which employs most of her small town, is about to go under. But even as she’s questioning whether her life has any meaning, Bailey bumps into a handsome stranger who claims to know her.

Sleep-deprived fathers conjuring phantoms; sharp-toothed children and stolen skulls; persecuted young women drawn to self-immolation. Organized crime sits side-by-side with the occult in Buenos Aires—a place where reality and the supernatural fuse into strange, new shapes. These acclaimed gothic tales follow the wayward and downtrodden, revealing the scars of Argentina's dictatorship and the ghosts and traumas that have settled in the minds of its people. Provocative, brutal and uncanny, Things We Lost in the Fire is contemporary gothic at its darkest and best.

A collection of some of William Trevor’s most acclaimed works, as heard on BBC Radio William Trevor was an Irish literary legend. In a 40-year career, he published a multiplicity of novels, plays, and short stories, and received numerous awards and honours. He was often compared to Chekhov for...

One abandoned, one unfinished, these short works show Austen equally at home with romance (a widowed clergyman with four daughters must needs be in search of a husband or two in The Watsons) and with social change (a new, commercial seaside resort in Sanditon). Typically touching, funny, charming and sharp.

How much fear can your heart take? Your skin crawls. Something in the darkness growls. Paralyzed by fear, you can’t run, you can’t hide. All you can do is scream... Welcome to the terrifying world of Spine Chillers. This special collection brings together 15 delightfully dreadful tales of supernatural horror that are guaranteed to haunt your dreams and stalk your waking hours.

All three volumes of It’s Scary Story Time, bundled into one massive, bone-chilling collection. These 65 tales, woven in a gripping true-story style, will haunt your nights and stalk your dreams!

Golden Globe-winning actor Michael C. Hall (Six Feet Under) performs Truman Capote's masterstroke about a young writer's charmed fascination with his unorthodox neighbor, the "American geisha" Holly Golightly. Holly - a World War II-era society girl in her late teens - survives via socialization, attending parties and restaurants with men from the wealthy upper class who also provide her with money and expensive gifts. Over the course of the novella, the seemingly shallow Holly slowly opens up to the curious protagonist.

Brought to you by Penguin. Razor-sharp, glittering tales exploring marriage, fame and female friendship, from the Sunday Times and New York Times bestselling author of Romantic Comedy and American Wife. In this compulsive collection of twelve witty stories, Sittenfeld shows why she’s as...

Needle in a Timestack is Robert Silverberg at his very best - intelligent, inventive, and visionary. This collection showcases his talent for thought-provoking science fiction, ranging in themes from time travel to space travel, the media to mortality. In the titular story - under development as a feature film by Oscar-winning screenwriter John Ridley - a jealous ex-husband warps time in a vindictive attempt to destroy his former wife's new marriage. Thirty-one identical sons have a shocking surprise for their mother in "There Was an Old Woman".

Brought to you by Penguin. This Penguin Classic is performed by Eleanor Matsuura, known for AMC's The Walking Dead and Spooks. This definitive recording includes an Introduction by Paul Murray. In this collection of classic ghost stories from Japan, beautiful princesses turn out to be frogs...

For Lily, falling in love with her childhood friend Walker was the easiest thing to do back in high school. His sudden rejection was unforgettably crushing. Seven years later, their families have conspired to bring them back together at a cabin in the Rockies when a sudden snowstorm traps them overnight with no power. Thanks to a cozy fire, a prowling bear, and a little forced time in an open-air gondola, they confront their unresolved feelings—and a past more complicated than Lily knows.

Brought to you by Penguin. Step into the unsettling world of Shirley Jackson this autumn with a collection of her finest, darkest short stories, revealing the queen of American gothic at her mesmerising best. There's something nasty in suburbia. In these deliciously dark tales, the daily commute...

Benedict Cumberbatch reads five stories featuring the famous vegetarian railway detective, Thorpe Hazell, as heard on BBC Radio 4. In The Affair of the German Dispatch-Box, Hazell hatches a daring plan to retrieve a highly sensitive government document before it reaches the German Ambassador. In...

Sands of Time features two intriguing stories that pick up the fortunes of characters from Whispers in the Sand, Barbara Erskine's captivating Egyptian novel. Still haunted by ancient mysteries, and the subject of dark intentions, Anna and Louisa must once more do battle with the past in order to survive the present. Alongside these are a host of other tales, all with a touch of the unexpected.

The relationship between sleep and storytelling is an ancient one. For centuries sleep has provided writers with a magical ingredient, a passage of time during which great changes miraculously occur, an Orpheus-like voyage through the subconscious daubed with the fantastic. But over the last 10 years, our scientific understanding of sleep has been revolutionised. No longer is sleep viewed as a time of simple rest and recuperation. Instead it is proving to be an intensely dynamic period of brain activity.

Rumer Godden is well known for her acclaimed novels for adults and children. She wrote over 60 works in her lifetime, nine of which were made into films. Included here are dramatisations of three of her classic tales, as well as a fascinating interview with the renowned author.