“The Return of Sherlock Holmes” is a collection of thirteen detective stories of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's most famous literary creation, Sherlock Holmes. These tales originally appeared in magazines in 1903 and 1904 and were published together as a collection in 1905. Doyle had stopped writing Sherlock Holmes stories after 1893, when Holmes appeared to have died in “The Final Problem”. However, the public continued to press Doyle for more t ...
“The Man Who Would be King and Other Stories” is a classic collection of some of the most loved short stories of Rudyard Kipling, one of the most important and accomplished English authors of the twentieth century. The youngest winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature at age 42 in 1907, Kipling, who was born in India in 1865, captured in his writing the British Empire in all of its glory and contradiction in unparalleled detail and nuance. Conta ...
Montague Rhodes James is considered one of the greatest writers of ghost stories of all time. Born in Kent, England in 1862, James was a well-known and respected scholar in his time for his exacting and informative research in medieval studies. He went on to become a Provost at King’s College, Cambridge, and later Eton, in addition to publishing four popular and influential collections of ghost stories between 1904 and 1925. His story-telling mo ...
First published in 1922, “Tales of the Jazz Age” is a collection of 11 short stories by F. Scott Fitzgerald. Many of the stories had appeared in magazines such as “Collier’s”, “Vanity Fair”, and the “Saturday Evening Post” before they were included in this collection. Many of the themes that are found in Fitzgerald’s other famous works can be found in these stories as well: the disparity between the wealthy and the poor, bad things happening to ...
O. Henry, the pen name of William Sydney Porter, is one of the most famous short story writers of all times whose stories are known for their wit, wordplay, warm characterization and clever twist endings. O. Henry is so acknowledged as a great short story writer that his pen name is associated with a prestigious American award given to short stories of exceptional merit. Included in this collection of «The Gift of the Magi and Other Short Storie ...
Early 20th century English author Gilbert Keith Chesterton may be best remembered for his stories which feature the character of an English priest and detective named Father Brown. While the character was based on a real life priest who was involved in Chesterton’s own conversion of faith, the adventures and mysteries that Father Brown solves are purely fictional. Collected together here are fifteen of Chesterton’s most thrilling Father Brown ta ...
Nathaniel Hawthorne’s works are staples in the canon of American literature. The author drew upon the early Puritan influences that played a major role in the country’s history and exploited them through mystery, creativity, science, and witchcraft. Hawthorne wrote with a psychological view of his characters and their motivations, allowing him to craft characters, plots, and scenes that truly represent his story’s themes. His use of foreshadowin ...
The first short story collection by F. Scott Fitzgerald, “Flappers and Philosophers” was originally published in 1920. The eight stories of the collection are set in the era for which the author is best known, the Jazz Age, a term Fitzgerald himself coined. While perhaps best known for his novels, Fitzgerald was a prolific and accomplished short story writer and found the most fame and fortune during his career in writing short stories for magaz ...
Born into poverty in San Francisco in 1876, Jack London is one of the most well-known and beloved of all American authors, as well as one of the first Americans to become world famous and wealthy from his literary career. London lived a colorful and adventurous life as a young man, working as a sailor and then living as a hobo, all before starting high school. After dropping out of college at Berkeley, London joined the Klondike Gold Rush, an ex ...