The Anthologies & Short Stories category has 2,670 audiobooks on Listento.it, with an average listener rating of 4.3★ across 5,389 ratings. The most-rated is A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms.
Stephen Fry Presents a Selection of Anton Chekhov's Short Stories
Summary
"Chekhov is probably better known in Britain for his plays than for his prose. For many, however, it is his short stories that mark the high water of his genius. It might at first glance be hard for those not used to his style of narrative to see what the fuss is about - and fuss there is: for most authors and lovers of literature Chekhov is incomparably the greatest short story writer there ever was. These tales appear to be about nothing. Some seem shockingly short and disarmingly inconsequential. They often fail to provide that sting in the tail or punch in the gut that we associate with the kind of popular Roald Dahl, Somerset Maugham story. But if you let character, observation and language do their work in your mind - hope you will agree with me that no writer captured, mood, moral entanglement, familial love and the pains and joys of humanity quite as well and with quite so much painterly detail, sympathy and fellow-feeling as Anton Chekhov." written by Stephen Fry. ©2008 SamFry Limited; (P)2008 HarperCollins Publishers
©2008 SamFry Limited (P)2008 HarperCollins Publishers
The Pastures of Heaven
Summary
Today, nearly 40 years after his death, Nobel Prize winner John Steinbeck remains one of America's greatest writers and cultural figures. We have begun publishing his many works for the first time as Penguin Classics. This season we continue with the seven spectacular and influential books East of Eden, Cannery Row, In Dubious Battle, The Long Valley, The Moon Is Down, The Pastures of Heaven, and Tortilla Flat. Penguin Classics is proud to present these seminal works to a new generation of listeners and to the many who revisit them again and again.
©1960 John Steinbeck (P)2013 Penguin Audio
What We Talk About When We Talk About Love
Summary
In his second collection, including the iconic and much-referenced title story featured in the Academy Award-winning film Birdman, Raymond Carver establishes his reputation as one of the most celebrated short-story writers in American literature. What We Talk About When We Talk About Love is a haunting meditation on love, loss, and companionship, and finding one's way through the dark.
©1981 Raymond Carver (P)2017 Tantor
A Lot Like Christmas
Summary
Holiday stories and traditions enchantingly reimagined - with an insightfully satirical twist. Featuring five stories new to this collection, plus seven previously published stories, now all collected together for the first time. From the award-winning author of Crosstalk. No one could ask for a better present than a collection of Connie Willis Christmas tales. These are amazing stories, representing all the best of the Connie Willis experience: true Christmas gifts to her many fans. They are full of humor, absurdity, human foibles, tragedy, joy, and hope. They both send up and embrace many of the best Christmas traditions, such as the Christmas newsletter, Secret Santas, office parties, holiday pageants, and Christmas dinners (both elaborate and spare). There are ghosts of Christmas Past, Present, and Yet to Come; debates over which is the best Christmas movie (Connie argues for the original Miracle on 34th Street, hands down); Rockettes; modern-day Magi; and the triumph of generosity over greed.
©2017 Connie Willis (P)2017 Recorded Books
More of the Best of Science Fiction and Fantasy
Summary
Who better to narrate today's best science-fiction stories than today's favorite science-fiction stars? This exciting collection features Roger Zelazny's "Permafrost" read by Siddig El Fadil ( Star Trek: Deep Space Nine), Orson Scott Card's "Fat Farm" read by Roddy McDowall ( Planet of the Apes), and John Varley's "Options" read by Claudia Christian ( Babylon 5). Robin Curtis ( Star Trek III and Star Trek IV), Terry Farrell ( Star Trek: Deep Space Nine), Nana Visitor ( Star Trek: Deep Space Nine), and Wil Wheaton ( Star Trek: The Next Generation) also perform, reading works by Karen Joy Fowler, Lawrence Watt-Evans, Robert Silverberg, Arthur C. Clarke, Kristine Kathryn Rusch, and Joe Haldeman.
©1980 by Omni Publications International Ltd.; 1951 by Arthur C. Clarke; 1993 by Joe Haldeman; 1980 by Agberg, Ltd.; 1979 by John Varley; 1988 by Omni Publications International Ltd.; 1985 Karen Joy Fowler; 1987 by Davis Publications; 1987 by Kristine Kathryn Rusch (P)1995 by Dove Audio, Inc.
The Pit and the Pendulum
Summary
“I was sick, sick unto death with that long agony,” begins one of the most famous tales from the master of the macabre, Edgar Allan Poe. Through the tortures of the Spanish Inquisition, we follow the straying mind of the unnamed prisoner in his quest for hope in a world of darkness and despair. This episode skyrocketed The Classic Tales Podcast to number 3 on iTunes’ Top 100 Podcasts chart.
Public Domain (P)2007 B. J. Harrison
Traplines
Summary
Traplines is extraordinary fiction that presents the menacing underside of family life. In crackling prose, Eden Robinson describes homes ruled by bullies, psychopaths, and delinquents; families whose conflict resolution techniques range from grand theft to homicide; and kids who just can't get a break. Told with icy clarity in the blackest of humors, Traplines offers an unsettling look at an urban landscape where the bizarre and twisted coexist naturally with the dull and normal.
©1996 Eden Robinson, This edition published in 2014 by Open Road Integrated Media, Inc. (P)2014 Audible Inc.
Closure, Limited and Other Zombie Tales
Summary
A terrifying new collection of short stories from the master of zombie fiction, Max Brooks, best-selling author of World War Z, The Zombie Survival Guide and Recorded Attacks.
©2013 Max Brooks (P)2013 Audible Ltd
The Lawnmower Man and Other Stories From Night Shift
Summary
Playing upon our most primal fears, Stephen King draws us into his sinister world - a place where sane men and women see their lives shattered, their realities distorted and destroyed. Now, listeners can probe even deeper into the mind of the master storyteller of the macabre, with this third unabridged production of 5 classic short stories, from King's best selling collection, Night Shift. Harold Parkette disposes of his lawnmower after his neighbor's cat dies a gruesome death. But the "Lawnmower Man" he hires to do the job proves more than Harold bargained for. A police officer begins to suspect that a series of grisly industrial accidents is no coincidence in "The Mangler." At "Quitter's Inc." a smoker soon discovers that they'll truly stop at nothing to make sure their customers kick the habit. A betrayed husband goes out on "The Ledge" when he takes vengeance into his own hands. And in "Sometimes They Come Back," the concept of alumni is given new meaning when a high school teacher, haunted by the past, is assigned 3 new students who seem eerily familiar.
©1976 Stephen King (P)1995 Bantam Doubleday Dell Audio Publishing, Bantam Doubleday Dell Audio Publishing, A Division of Random House, Inc.
Haunted Nights
Summary
Here are 16 chilling, never-before-published tales that explore every aspect of our darkest holiday, Halloween, coedited by Ellen Datlow, one of the most successful and respected genre editors, and Lisa Morton, a leading authority on Halloween. In addition to stories about scheming jack-o'-lanterns, vengeful ghosts, otherworldly changelings, disturbingly realistic haunted attractions, masks that cover terrifying faces, murderous urban legends, parties gone bad, cult Halloween movies, and trick-or-treating in the future, Haunted Nights also offers terrifying and mind-bending explorations of related holidays like All Souls' Day, Día de los Muertos, and Devil's Night. "With Graveyard Weeds and Wolfbane Seeds" by Seanan McGuire "Dirtmouth" by Stephen Graham Jones "A Small Taste of the Old Country" by Jonathan Maberry "Wick's End" by Joanna Parypinski "The 17-Year Itch" by Garth Nix "A Flicker of Light on Devil's Night" by Kate Jonez "Witch-Hazel" by Jeffrey Ford "Nos Galen Gaeaf" by Kelley Armstrong "We're Never Inviting Amber Again" by S. P. Miskowski "Sisters" by Brian Evenson "All through the Night" by Elise Forier Edie "A Kingdom of Sugar Skulls and Marigolds" by Eric J. Guignard "The Turn" by Paul Kane "Jack" by Pat Cadigan "Lost in the Dark" by John Langan "The First Lunar Halloween" by John R. Little Narrated by Gabra Zackman, Erin Spencer, James Patrick Cronin, Michael Kramer, Gerard Doyle, Kevin Kenerly, Amy Landon, Carrington MacDuffie, Andrew Eiden, Tom Taylorson, Suzanne Elise Freeman, Alana Kerr Collins, Luis Moreno, Keith Szarabajka, Emily Sutton-Smith, Malcolm Hillgartner, and Hillary Huber.
©2017 Blackstone Audio, Inc. (P)2017 Blackstone Audio, Inc.
The Books of Blood: Volume 4
Summary
Few authors can claim to have marked a genre so thoroughly and personally that their words have leaked into every aspect of modern pop culture. Clive Barker is such an author, and the Books of Blood marked his debut - his coming out to the world - in brilliant, unforgettable fashion. Crossroad Press is proud to present Clive Barker's Books of Blood in audiobook format for the first time. The Books of Blood combine the ordinary with the extraordinary while radiating the eroticism that has become Barker's signature. Weaving tales of the everyday world transformed into an unrecognizable place, where reason no longer exists and logic ceases to explain the workings of the universe, Clive Barker provides the stuff of nightmares in packages too tantalizing to resist. Never one to shy away from the unimaginable or the unspeakable, Clive Barker breathes life into our deepest, darkest nightmares, creating visions that are at once terrifying, tender, and witty. The Books of Blood confirm what horror fans everywhere have known for a long time: We will be hearing from Clive Barker for many years to come.
©2013 Clive Barker, Inc. (P)2013 David N. Wilson
Grand Union
Summary
Longlisted for the Carnegie Medal! A dazzling collection of short fiction Zadie Smith has established herself as one of the most iconic, critically respected, and popular writers of her generation. In her first short story collection, she combines her power of observation and her inimitable voice to mine the fraught and complex experience of life in the modern world. Interleaving 11 completely new and unpublished stories with some of her best-loved pieces from The New Yorker and elsewhere, Smith presents a dizzyingly rich and varied collection of fiction. Moving exhilaratingly across genres and perspectives, from the historic to the vividly current to the slyly dystopian, Grand Union is a sharply alert and prescient collection about time and place, identity and rebirth, the persistent legacies that haunt our present selves and the uncanny futures that rush up to meet us. Nothing is off limits, and everything - when captured by Smith’s brilliant gaze - feels fresh and relevant. Perfectly paced and utterly original, Grand Union highlights the wonders Zadie Smith can do.
©2019 Zadie Smith (P)2019 Penguin Audio
The Snows of Kilimanjaro and Other Stories
Summary
The ideal introduction to the genius of Ernest Hemingway, The Snows of Kilimanjaro and Other Stories contains ten of Hemingway's most acclaimed and popular works of short fiction. Selected from Winner Take Nothing, Men Without Women, and The Fifth Column and the First Forty-Nine Stories, this collection includes "The Killers," the first of Hemingway's mature stories to be accepted by an American periodical; the autobiographical "Fathers and Sons," which alludes, for the first time in Hemingway's career, to his father's suicide; "The Short Happy Life of Francis Macomber," a "brilliant fusion of personal observation, hearsay and invention," wrote Hemingway's biographer, Carlos Baker; and the title story itself, of which Hemingway said: "I put all the true stuff in," with enough material, he boasted, to fill four novels. Beautiful in their simplicity, startling in their originality, and unsurpassed in their craftsmanship, the stories in this volume highlight one of America's master storytellers at the top of his form.
(P)2008 Simon and Schuster, Inc.
The Lady Most Willing...
Summary
After the success of The Lady Most Likely, New York Times best-selling authors Julia Quinn, Eloisa James, and Connie Brockway have joined together once again, but this time to ask the question, 'Who is The Lady Most Willing?' When Laird Taran Ferguson's nephews refuse to wed and secure his birthright, he takes matters into his own hands, raiding a ball and kidnapping four likely brides - a bonny lass, an heiress with a slight reputation problem, a rich English beauty, and a maiden without a name or a fortune. But which one is ready to fall in love with the Scottish lord? Add a very angry duke, a decrepit castle, and a fierce Highland storm that is holding all of Taran's "guests" captive to the mix, and listeners will find themselves transported to a world of temptation, passion, and new and unexpected love. This historical romance novel in three parts - a single story with three compelling voices - is one that will not soon be forgotten.
©2012 Connie Brockway, Julia Quinn, and Eloisa James (P)2012 HarperCollins Publishers
Oblivion
Summary
In the stories that make up Oblivion, David Foster Wallace joins the rawest, most naked humanity with the infinite involutions of self-consciousness - a combination that is dazzlingly, uniquely his. These are worlds undreamt-of by any other mind. Only David Foster Wallace could convey a father's desperate loneliness by way of his son's daydreaming through a teacher's homicidal breakdown ("The Soul Is Not a Smithy"). Or could explore the deepest and most hilarious aspects of creativity by delineating the office politics surrounding a magazine profile of an artist who produces miniature sculptures in an anatomically inconceivable way ("The Suffering Channel"). Or capture the ache of love's breakdown in the painfully polite apologies of a man who believes his wife is hallucinating the sound of his snoring ("Oblivion"). Each of these stories is a complete world, as fully imagined as most entire novels, at once preposterously surreal and painfully immediate.
©2012 David Foster Wallace (P)2012 Hachette Audio
The Stone Series
Summary
When forbidden desire becomes something deeper, the past is exposed, and the betrayal is more than either expected. Krystina Cole was scarred from a traumatic past. She knew her capacity for love was limited and that only she alone could repair the pieces of her shattered heart. But that was before meeting Alexander Stone. Now he was everywhere she turned. In her mind. In her heart. And in her soul. He was her addiction. Alexander had rules. Krystina's quick wit and firecracker attitude was the complete opposite of what he wanted in a woman. Being with someone like her was a risk. He had too many secrets. Surrendering the truth about his father’s murder would be devastating to him and to the empire he worked so hard to build. Yet, he couldn’t get Krystina out of his mind. Bound by their passion to be together, they fight to let go of the shadows that haunt them. As two shattered souls, wrapped in each other’s arms, trust becomes their ultimate bond. However, committing to each other was only the beginning. Caught up in their blazing desire, they unexpectedly find themselves facing the pain from a past that won’t set them free. When Alexander is blackmailed into revealing the secret he’s kept since childhood, it threatens everything Krystina and Alexander fought so hard to overcome. Including Alexander's very identity. Follow the journey of Alexander Stone and Krystina Cole in The Stone Series, a heart-wrenching and seductively steamy three-book series. This bundle includes Heart of Stone, Stepping Stone, and Set In Stone.
©2015, 2018 Dakota Willink (P)2018 Dakota Willink
The Dead
Summary
Often cited as the best work of short fiction ever written, Joyce's elegant story details a New Year's Eve gathering in Dublin that is so evocative and beautiful that it prompts the protagonist's wife to make a shocking revelation to her husband - closing the story with an emotionally powerful epiphany that is unsurpassed in modern literature."The Dead" is the final short story in Joyce's 1914 collection Dubliners. It is the longest story in the collection and widely considered to be one of the greatest short stories in the English language.
Public Domain (P)2013 Trout Lake Media
Space Team
Summary
A collection of short stories gathered from the far reaches of the Space Team Universe. Some of these stories have been available elsewhere over the past few months, while others are new for this collection. The spectacular tales of space adventure you'll find in this audio are: "Dead Men Don't Get Paid" Undead detective, Dan Deadman, has a problem. He has a number of them, in fact. He's missing an arm. He needs money to repair his broken window. Someone has opened a portal to the hell-like Malwhere in a nightclub, filling the place with slavering flesh-eating monsters. Fortunately, Dan's diminutive house guest, Artur, has a plan to help him fix at least one of these problems, but like everything else in Dan's afterlife, nothing quite works out the way it should. A brand new Dan Deadman Space Detective adventure, set in the aftermath of Dial D for Deadman. "Space Team: The Holiday Special" Die Hard meets The Nativity in Space! It's Space Christmas Eve, and all through the space station not a creature was stirring except a load of evil space pirates who are trying to kidnap a very special newborn baby so it can be eaten by their pirate king. They hadn't counted on Cal Carver and the Space Team, though, who happen to be on the station for some much needed R & R. Originally published in December 2016 as a standalone short story. "The Last Bounty" Once the baddest bounty hunter in the galaxy, all Konto Garr wants these days is a quiet family life with the woman he loves, and the respect of Deenia, the step-daughter who hates his guts. But when Deenia is taken hostage, Konto must employ all his skills to mount a death-defying rescue mission. With a terrorist-filled station between him and the hostages, and an infuriatingly upbeat boy from Deenia's class for company, Konto's talents will be stretched to their limit as he goes after the most important bounty of his life - his daughter. Originally published as part of the comedy sci-fi anthology, "Pew Pew - Sex, Guns, Spaceships.... Oh My!" "Death Comes to Carverville - A Tobey Maguire Mystery" Former Hollywood actor, Tobey Maguire, now spends his days as an imaginary construct inside the subconscious of Space Team's Cal Carver, only ever called upon when Cal is knocked unconscious. But when a murderer starts to stalk the corridors of Cal's mind, Tobey Maguire - accompanied by a wise-cracking racist squirrel only he can see or hear - must turn detective and unmask the killer before the imaginary inhabitants of Cal's head are picked off one by one, leaving Cal completely brain dead. The first ever solo Tobey Maguire adventure, written just for this collection. "Nun Shall Pass" Former Nun, Ronda Sallas, is on a mission to save her son, Narp, from himself. And also from some evil Xandrie gangsters who have tricked him into helping them steal a weapon of mass destruction. Mostly from them, actually. Fortunately, Ronda's time at the convent has left her more than capable to deal with a few dozen gangsters, but when an Anti-Nun strips her of her precognition powers, things suddenly become more difficult. First published in The Expanding Universe - Volume 2 anthology. "Splurt Home Alone" An all-new short solo adventure starring everyone's favorite adorable green blob, Splurt.
©2017 Barry J. Hutchison (P)2020 Barry J. Hutchison
No One Belongs Here More Than You
Summary
In a series of stories that are shocking, sexy, charming, and ultimately unforgettable, Miranda July explores the hearts and minds of characters who are desperate for human connection and yet don't know what to do when it actually happens. In the brilliant opening story, "The Shared Patio", a woman longs to share her neighbor's life, but learns that her fantasy of him has no resemblance to reality. In "The Swim Team", a young woman teaches three elderly citizens in a town with no water how to swim. A man who works at a leather factory gets set-up by his co-worker for a date that never arrives in "The Sister". In "Something That Needs Nothing", a young woman's job at a peep show changes her identity in the eyes of her friend, allowing their relationship to take a different course. In these stories, Miranda July shows a remarkable skill for inhabiting the hearts and minds of a varied cast of characters, imbuing them with a tenderness and humanity that is the mark of a great writer.
©2007 Miranda July (P)2007 Simon & Schuster Audio
7d6
Summary
This is a collection of of six short stories in the Caverns and Creatures series. It includes the following stories: "Slimes and Misty Wieners" "Great Balls on Fire" "Your Anus Is a Gas Giant" "Clear and Present Ranger" "The Mimic's Chest" "Styxian Stoners May Break My Boners"
©2019 Robert Bevan (P)2020 Robert Bevan