Generally thought to be the work that led to the abolishment of serfdom in Russia, “Sketches from a Hunter’s Album” is a series of short stories, written in 1852, that gained Turgenev widespread recognition for his unique writing style. These stories were the result of Turgenev’s observations while hunting all over Russia, particularly on his abusive mother’s estate at Spasskoye. A definitive work of the Russian Realist tradition, this collectio ...
American journalist and satirist Ambrose Bierce is one of the most famous and fascinating figures in all of American literature. He led an adventurous and eventful life, beginning with his birth in a log cabin, to his time as a Civil War soldier, followed by his career as an author and journalist, to finally his mysterious disappearance during the Mexican Revolution at age 71. Bierce is perhaps best known for his short stories about the American ...
“The Kreutzer Sonata and Other Stories” collects six of Tolstoy’s finest short stories into one edition. In “How Much Land Does a Man Need?”, Tolstoy explores this very question through the story of a peasant with an increasing appetite for land—an appetite which becomes his ruin. “The Death of Ivan Ilyich”, one of Tolstoy’s short masterpieces, tells of the early death of a high-court judge in 19th century Russian. “Family Happiness” explores th ...
By the time Alexander Pushkin was twenty years old, he was already being recognized in the Russian literary scene as a great talent. He was born in Moscow and educated at home and at the Lyceum, studying Latin and eighteenth century French literature. Often seen as the founder of modern Russian literature and the first important Russian Poet, Pushkin’s early works spoke largely to social reform which resulted in his exile to southern Russia unti ...
“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 profoun ...
“My Man Jeeves” is a collection of short stories by P. G. Wodehouse, several of which concern two of his most beloved characters, the idle rich young English aristocrat, Bertie Wooster, and his clever and unflappable valet, Jeeves. Bertie and Jeeves, although they are minor characters, appear for the first time in “Extricating Young Gussie”, which while not included in the original collection of “My Man Jeeves” is included in this collection. Fi ...
“Best Short Stories of Algernon Blackwood” is a collection of frightening tales by one of the greatest British writers of supernatural fiction of the twentieth century. Born in London in 1869, Blackwood began publishing ghost stories in 1906 and became a prolific writer, as well as a journalist and radio broadcaster. Included in this collection are such classic tales as “Ancient Sorceries”, which follows a tourist who becomes enchanted by a stra ...
Published in 1917, “His Last Bow: Some Reminiscences of Sherlock Holmes” is a collection of eight previously published detective stories by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, starring his most famous and enduring literary creation, Sherlock Holmes. The collection contains many noteworthy titles, including the titular “His Last Bow: The War Service of Sherlock Holmes”, which was first published earlier in 1917 in “Strand Magazine”. “His Last Bow” is a depar ...
In this volume of “First Love and Other Stories” six of Turgenev’s shorter works are collected together. Firstly in “The Diary of a Superfluous Man” we find the story of a dying man who recounts the incidents of his life. Secondly this collection contains the short story “Mumu”, which relates what follows when Gerasim, a deaf and mute man, rescues a drowning dog. Thirdly, in “Acia”, there is the story of an unnamed narrator who recounts, in a re ...