In the six volumes of the Library of the World's Best Mystery and Detective Stories, Julian Hawthorne presents us thrilling and mysterious short stories from all corners of the world. Some of the stories appeared in this collection for the first...

One favorite topic of his was the excellence of virginity, and so successful was he in persuading maidens to adopt the religious profession that many a mother refused to permit her daughters to listen to his words. The saint was forced to refute the...

This excellent book contains many great stories from the various mythologies of man throughout the ages....

Joel, a crippled boy, cannot play with the children and has nothing to care about. Rabbi Phineas helps him to find something he can do and tells him the reason that he is so kind is because of a boy from his hometown of Nazareth. Soon stories are...

Remember the story of the Ant and the Grasshopper? the Fox and the Sour Grapes? The Boy who Cried Wolf? These wonderful tales and hundreds more have been passed down to us over the centuries. The man credited with writing them, Aesop, was an Ancient...

Written for the Atlantic magazine in 1877, this is a collection of stories about a trip Mark Twain made with some friends to Bermuda. (Summary by John Greenman)...

When Mr Henry Dashwood dies, with his estate entailed to his son and grandson, his wife and three daughters are left in reduced circumstances. In their new home at Barton Cottage, the two older sisters, Elinor and Marianne, experience both romance...

In 1862 Anna Leonowens accepted an offer made by the Siamese consul in Singapore, Tan Kim Ching, to teach the wives and children of Mongkut, king of Siam. The king wished to give his 39 wives and concubines and 82 children a modern Western education...

It is the Christmas season once again and things are, well, boring for the adults at Penlyon Castle. "...if somehow or other I had a pack of children belonging to me, I would keep Christmas with the best — keep it as it ought to be kept." says Sir...

The first collected volume of short stories of the New Zealand modernist. Inspired by her own travels, Mansfield begins to refine her craft with a series of tales which depict German life at the brink of the first world war. (Introduction by S....

One of May Sinclair’s “uncanny” stories, this novella explores many of Sinclair’s most treasured themes: the bounds of marriage, the conflict between flesh and spirit, the complexity of human emotions in relation to other humans, the practical...

These whimsical short stories offer fanciful answers to a dozen of childhood's favorite "why" and "how" questions. With their generous sprinkling of nonsense words as well as a delightfully rhythmic storytelling feel, they seem to have been written...

A collection of ten pieces, read by various readers, about the unreal edges of this world in legend and story; tales of love, death and beyond. If just one story prickles the hair on the back of your neck, or prickles your eyelids with the touch of...

1812 is the year and Portugal the location for this adventure. The characters for the most part are British officers. Lord Strathern sends for his daughter Lady Mabel Stewart presently in Scotland to join him in Elvas where he has stationed his...

The Adventures of Paddy Beaver is another in the long list of children’s books by the conservationist, Thornton W. Burgess. In this book, the industrious and clever Paddy Beaver, a newcomer to the Green Forest, has encounters with Sammy Jay, Jerry...

Lightfoot and his friends, Sammy Jay and Paddy Beaver, help each other through hunting season in the Green Forest. - Summary by Jude Somers...

This work of fiction by Herbert Jenkins (1876-1923) features one of his best-loved comic characters, the affable Cockney, Joseph Bindle. It was Bindle who conceived the idea of forming ”The Night Club”, where people from different walks of London...

Seymour Merriman stops at the side of the road 26 miles outside Bordeaux, an action that will change his life forever. The events that follow lead him into mystery, smuggling, murder and love. Two amateur detectives try to unravel the mystery of...

The Story of a Stuffed Elephant is... well, the story of a Stuffed Elephant and the little boy who owns him, and his sister, and all their adventures. A delightful children's book by the author of The Bobbsey Twins series. (Summary by Vlooi and Kara)...

The Comedy of Errors is one of William Shakespeare's earliest plays, believed to have been written between 1592 and 1594. It is his shortest and one of his most farcical comedies, with a major part of the humour coming from slapstick and mistaken...