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’s Children’s Short Works Collection 004: a collection of 11 short works for children in the public domain read by a variety of members.

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Children, Short stories, Fairy tales

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Most of the following Kwaidan, or Weird Tales, have been taken from old Japanese books,— such as the Yaso-Kidan, Bukkyo-Hyakkwa-Zensho, Kokon-Chomonshu, Tama-Sudare, and Hyaku-Monogatari. Some of the stories may have had a Chinese origin: the very remarkable Dream of Akinosuke, for example, is certainly from a Chinese source. But the story-teller, in every case, has so recolored and reshaped his borrowing as to naturalize it… One queer tale, Yuki-Onna, was told me by a farmer of Chofu, Nishitama-gori, in Musashi province, as a legend of his native village. Whether it has ever been written in Japanese I do not know; but the extraordinary belief which it records used certainly to exist in most parts of Japan, and in many curious forms… The incident of Riki-Baka was a personal experience; and I wrote it down almost exactly as it happened, changing only a family-name mentioned by the Japanese narrator. (Summary by L. Hearn, from the Introduction to the book)...

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Short stories

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’s Children’s Short Works Collection 009: a collection of 15 short works for children in the public domain read by a variety of members.

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Short stories

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Collection of children’s stories written in 1888, dealing primarily with love and selfishness. These stories are generally sad, with a moralistic message. The collection includes: The Happy Prince, The Nightingale and the Rose, The Selfish Giant, The Devoted Friend, and The Remarkable Rocket. (Summary written by Joy Chan)...

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Short stories

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A well-to-do French farm family is destroyed by a flood. The story, thrilling to the very end, is told from the point of view of the family's 70-year-old patriarch. The story speaks of the helplessness of mankind in the face of the forces of nature. (Summary by Karen Merline)...

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Short stories

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This novella is the final story in Joyce's collection Dubliners. It describes a Christmas party given by Kate and Julia Morkan, two elderly Dublin ladies, that is attended by their nephew, Gabriel Conroy, and his wife. While the party is festive, full of dancing, drinking, and eating, it is also pervaded by political, religious, and sexual tensions, as well as memories of loss. When Gabriel and his wife go home at the end of the night, she reveals a long-kept secret that leads to an epiphany. (Summary by Elizabeth Klett)....

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Short stories

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White Nights and Other Stories by Fyodor Dostoyevsky is a compilation published in 1918 by The MacMillan Company, NY (USA) and Heinemann (UK). It contains these 7 works: - White Nights - Notes from the Underground - A Faint Heart - A Christmas Tree and a Wedding - Polzunkov - A Little Hero - Mr. Prohartchin...

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Short stories

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The town of Hadleyburg had the reputation of being the most honest town in a wide area, indeed an incorruptible community. The elders took this reputation so to heart that they brought up their children shielded from all temptation and trained thoroughly in total honesty. However, a stranger passing through the community was seriously offended by the actions of residents of this Utopia, and he vowed to gain revenge. After several years he came up with the perfect plan to embarrass the town and expose its hypocrisy. (Introduction by Leonard Wilson)...

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Humor, Short stories

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RICHARD HARDING DAVIS, as a friend and fellow author has written of him, was “youth incarnate,” and there is probably nothing that he wrote of which a boy would not some day come to feel the appeal. But there are certain of his stories that go with especial directness to a boy’s heart and sympathies and make for him quite unforgettable literature. A few of these were made some years ago into a volume, “Stories for Boys,” and found a large and enthusiastic special public in addition to Davis’s general readers; and the present collection from stories more recently published is issued with the same motive. This book takes its title from “The Boy Scout,” the first of its tales; and it includes “The Boy Who Cried Wolf,” “Blood Will Tell,” the immortal “Gallegher,” and “The Bar Sinister,” Davis’s famous dog story. It is a fresh volume added to what Augustus Thomas calls “safe stuff to give to a young fellow who likes to take off his hat and dilate his nostrils and feel the wind in his face.” (Summary by Publisher's Note in book)...

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Short stories, Adventure, Children, Teen/Young adult

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’s Children’s Short Works Collection 007: a collection of 15 short works for children in the public domain read by a variety of members.

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Children, Short stories

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Short and sweet stories for children. (Summary by Dr. Heather A. D. Mbaye)

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Children, Short stories

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The purpose of The Junior Classics is to provide, in ten volumes containing about five thousand pages, a classified collection of tales, stories, and poems, both ancient and modern, suitable for boys and girls of from six to sixteen years of age. (summary from book introduction)This collection consists of Volume 1 of The Junior Classics, and it contains many well known stories in their original forms. Among stories from other authors, you'll find Hans Christian Anderson, Aesop, and the Grimm brothers....

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Fairy tales, Short stories, Children

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This group project is a collection of 43 fairy tales (both old and new), folk lore, myths and real life stories by a variety of authors, brought together by writer Fanny E Coe. They are mostly short and are fun to read and tell to children and most teach valuable lessons about life. (Summary by Phil Chenevert)...

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Children, Short stories, Myths/Legends, Fairy tales, Fantasy

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A collection of stories and poems for children by British novelist, journalist, and playwright Lucy Lane Clifford, better known during her lifetime as Mrs W.K. Clifford. She was famous with her mathematician husband for Sunday salons which attracted both scientists and literati. She was born in 1846 and died in 1929. Summary by Val Grimm...

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Children, Short stories, Fairy tales

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’s Children’s Short Works Collection 010: a collection of 15 short works for children in the public domain read by a variety of members.

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Children, Short stories

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Here are three charming fairy tales with happy endings. They feature an enchanted frog; a princess, her brothers, and a dastardly plot against them; and a magical lamp with a Genius inside. (by Laurie Anne Walden)...

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Short stories, Fairy tales, Children

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A charming little book full of the most gorgeous illustrations which can be viewed along with the Gutenberg text at http://www.gutenberg.org/etext/15661 http://www.gutenberg.org/etext/15661 . We see a number of stories in which kindness is rewarded and selfishness is punished but Brooke squeezes a number of intriguing and quite bizarre twists and turns into the story so it is not nearly so predictable as you might imagine. Victorian moral fairy tales from a delightfully inventive mind. (Summary by Jim)...

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Children, Short stories

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’s Children's Short Works Collection 001: a collection of 10 short works for children in the public domain read by a variety of members.

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Children, Short stories

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Saki (December 18, 1870 - November 14, 1916) was the pen name of the British author Hector Hugh Munro. His witty, biting and occasionally odd short stories satirised Edwardian culture. Saki is considered a master of the short story and has been compared to O. Henry and Dorothy Parker as well as Noel Coward and Oscar Wilde (who clearly influenced Saki.) His first collection of short stories, Reginald, was published by Methuen Press in 1904 though these stories first appeared in the 'Westminster Gazette'. The stories in this collection are a foil for allowing the jaded and insider/outsider figure of Reginald to comment on some ridiculous or provincial attitude prevelant in upperclass Edwardian society, although one can easily recoginize these same attitudes in our society today. Long popular and well known, Saki's brilliant humour is as enjoyable now as it was almost a century ago. (Summary by Jason Xanthopoulos)....

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Comedy, Short stories

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Round the Sofa (1859), is a book of stories by the lady that Charles Dickens called his “dear Scheherazade” due to her skill as a story teller. That Lady was Mrs. Elizabeth Gaskell (North and South, Wives and Daughters, Cranford etc.). Mrs. Gaskell begins with Round the Sofa, a short story which she uses as a device to stitch together six previously published stories into a single work. It introduces us to a set of characters who take turns to recount stories to one another during their weekly soirée. My Lady Ludlow tells the story of the widowed, aristocratic Lady Ludlow and her fierce resistance to change. It is told through the eyes of one of her young charges. Incidentally, it was one of the books used to create the TV series Cranford. An Accursed Race is actually an essay about a persecuted minority group, the Cagots in Western France. The Doom of the Griffiths. A Gothic short story about a cursed family and set in Wales. Half a Life-Time Ago. A novella set in the Wiltshire Dales. The Poor Clare. A Ghostly short story! The Half Brothers. A sad short story about brotherly love and a sheep-dog dog named Lassie! (Summary by Noel B...

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Short stories, Fiction, Literature