A delightful and comprehensive collection of all the best known traditional children's rhymes.

"Twenty-Six Men and a Girl" is a short story written by the Russian writer Maxim Gorky in 1899, and is one of his most famous. It is a pioneering tale of social realism (the story predates Soviet socialist realism), and is a lament of lost ideals. Twenty-six men slave away in a cellar, making kringles, looked down on by all around them, including the bread bakers. Their only joy in their lives is the 16-year-old Tanya, who visits them every morning to collect kringles.A new bread b...

Hulbert Footner (1879-1944) was a popular Canadian writer of detective fiction. "The Murder at Fernhurst" features Footner's first great sleuth, Madame Rosika Storey.The famous female detective is called in to investigate what seems like an open-and-shut case. A rich industrialist has been found shot...and all the evidence points to the murder having been committed by his vastly wealthy young ward. By what could have been her motive? Madame Storey sets off to the scene of the crime...

Nikolai Semyonovich Leskov (1831 - 1895) was a Russian novelist, short story writer, playwright, and journalist. He was a favourite of Leo Tolstoy, Anton Chekhov and Maxim Gorky among others. Leskov is praised for his innovative techniques and his ability to create a vivid picture of contemporary Russian society.The Ghost of the Engineers' Castle is a ghost story in which his storytelling skills are displayed to perfection. Scene by scene the tension builds up until the listener's ...

Aboard the Norwegian whaling ship Thorgrim, the Captain announces to the Mate, Sigurd, that he will allow him to take the second shot at the next whale they hunt and if there is a third whale, he will be permitted to take the first shot. Sigurd, ambitious for promotion to gunner on the whaling ship, is delighted and can scarcely contain his impatience and excitement. But as they approach a pod of feeding "finhval" the captain changes his mind and throws the ship into an extraordinary whale...

Edward Frederic Benson (1867-1940) was an English novelist, biographer, memoirist, archaeologist, and short story writer, best known for his evocative and beautifully narrated ghost stories.The Bath Chair is a sinister tale of Alice Farraday who harbours an obsessive hatred of her selfish brother Edmund. Alice is a believer in occult powers, and she well knows that a hatred, nurtured and fed, will take on a life of its own and bring about disaster for its object.She herself...

O. Henry's poignant tale of a failed courtship.On the day his beloved marries another man, Trysdale reflects on his own courtship and how it came to a peculiar end. He had asked the girl to marry him and the next day she had sent him a cactus in a pot. No note, no message. But from that moment the relationship fell apart.But why? Who was to blame? What was the meaning of the cactus?O. Henry at his most ingenious... and with a wonderful twist in the tale.

George Robert Gissing (1857-1903) was a popular English novelist and short story writer who also worked as a teacher and tutor throughout his life.The House of Cobwebs is the story of an emerging friendship between two unlikely housemates: a young, struggling novelist and his landlord, a middle-aged retired assistant chemist who has inherited three dilapidated houses which are most definitely not fit for human habitation.

A wonderful collection of classic thrillers, mystery stories, crime tales and weird accounts of uncanny events.Query by “Seamark”The Furnished Room by O. HenryThe Dancing Partner by Jerome K. JeromeThe Squaw by Bram StokerThe 19 Club by A. J. AlanThe Interruption by W. W. JacobsLaura by SakiA Descent into the Maelström by Edgar Allan PoeThe Diver by A. J. AlanThe Man of the Night by Edga...

Mrs Henrietta Dorothy Everett (1851-1923) was one of the most renowned Victorian horror writers, often publishing her spine-tingling tales under the pen name Theo Douglas. The Death Mask is one of the weirdest and most chilling of her short stories. It tells the tale of a widower who had made a peculiar promise to his late wife on her deathbed. At face value it had seemed such a simple thing... just to cover the dead woman's face with a particular cloth. But the events which follow this ac...

A. J. Alan's curious story of a recurring dream. Possibly one of the strangest and creepiest tales ever told.

Barry Pain (1864-1928) was an English journalist, poet, and writer, best known as a writer of parody and lightly humorous stories.The Giraffe Problem tells the story of an evening at the Problem Club, a secret society of gentlemen in London who meet once a month in a private room above a restaurant, where one of the waiters is the admirable Leonard. Every month Leonard sets the members a problem or challenge. The one who is able to complete the feat successfully wins that month's s...