Bret Harte (1837–1902) was an American author and poet, best remembered for his accounts of pioneering life in California.

Bret Harte (1836–1902) was an American author and poet, best remembered for his accounts of pioneering life in California.... He moved to California in 1853, later working there in a number of capacities, including miner, teacher, messenger, and journalist. He spent part of his life in the northern California coastal town of Union (now known as Arcata), a settlement on Humboldt Bay that was established as a provisioning center for mining camps in the interior.... In 1868 he became editor of The Overland Monthly, another new literary magazine, but this one more in tune with the pioneering spirit of excitement in California...

A collection of short stories set in the American West at the end of the 19th century.

In January of 1930 a new magazine with a flashy color cover appeared on newsstands, Astounding Stories of Super-Science. Filled with stories of adventure, sometimes with only a tinge of science, this magazine was to host and nurture many science fiction giants like Murray Leinster and Ray Cummings and would help inspire many of the writers of the "Golden Age of Science Fiction". This inaugural issue includes stories by Murray Leinster, Ray Cummings, S. P. Meek, Victor Rousseau and others.

A collection of comedic short stories from the perspective of an old country man.

Carl Sandburg is beloved by generations of children for his Rootabaga Stories and Rootabaga Pigeons (which is not in the public domain), a series of whimsical, sometimes melancholy stories he originally created for his own daughters. The Rootabaga Stories were born of Sandburg’s desire for “American fairy tales” to match American childhood. He felt that the European stories involving royalty and knights were inappropriate, and so populated his stories with animals, skyscrapers, trains, corn fairies, and other colorful characters.

It is pleasant to have another book about a group of merry, natural girls, who have the attractions of innocence and youthful faults. "The Sweet Sixteen" Club made fudge, and went on picnics, and behaved just as jolly, nice maidens should. (The Outlook, vol. 82, Mar. 24, 1906)

This is an intriguing collection of folklore from the Santal Parganas, a district in India located about 150 miles from Calcutta. As its Preface implies, this collection is intended to give an unadulterated view of a culture through its folklore. It contains a variety of stories about different aspects of life, including family and marriage, religion, and work. In this first volume, taken from Part I, each story is centered around a particular human character. These range from the charmingly clever (as in the character, The Oilman, in the story, “The Oilman and His Sons”) to the tragically comical (as in the character, Jhore, in the story “Bajun and Jhore”)...

This is a collection of weird tales inspired from the natural history expeditions of the author, an independently wealthy bird collector, Olympic golfer, writer of many books on birds of the world, and, as evidenced in these pages, a fine storyteller to boot.

As a gifted writer with a strong interest in supernatural phenomena, Charles Dickens produced a string of ghost stories with enduring charm. Three of them are presented here, of which The Signal Man is one of the best known. Though quite different from his most celebrated realistic and humorous critical novels, these ghost stories, Gothic and grotesque as they are, are of good portrayal, and worth a read/listen. Summary by Vivian Chan

The Charles Dickens 200th Anniversary Collection comprises short works - fiction, essays, poetry, letters, magazine articles and speeches - and each volume will be a pot pourri of all genres and periods of his writing. This first volume is released on Dickens' 200th birthday, February 7th 2012. Further volumes will follow during the anniversary year.Volume 1 includes short stories including, amongst others, The Holly Tree, the first part of Holiday Romance and three pieces from Mugby Junction.Some...

A short story of a ship wreck in 1851 trying to round Cape Horn on its way to the California gold fields. Poignant and well written. (

The Mudfog Papers was written by Victorian era novelist Charles Dickens and published from 1837–38 in the monthly literary serial Bentley's Miscellany, which he then edited. They were first published as a book as 'The Mudfog Papers and Other Sketches. The Mudfog Papers relates the proceedings of the fictional 'The Mudfog Society for the Advancement of Everything', a Pickwickian parody of the British Association for the Advancement of Science founded in York in 1831, one of the numerous Victorian learned societies dedicated to the advancement of Science...

These 14 short stories about animals are superb examples of Roberts smooth storytelling style. Knows as the Father of Canadian Poetry, he loved to also write in prose about the wilderness and the personalities of the animals to be found there as well as the exciting things they are capable of. Bears, White Wolves, Lynxs, hawks and yes, cattle are just a few of the animals written about.

Lowell Massachusetts was founded in the 1820s as a planned manufacturing center for textiles and is located along the rapids of the Merrimack River, 25 miles northwest of Boston. By the 1850s Lowell had the largest industrial complex in the United States. The textile industry wove cotton produced in the South. In 1860, there were more cotton spindles in Lowell than in all eleven states combined that would form the Confederacy. Mind Amongst the Spindles is a selection of works from the Lowell Offering, a monthly periodical collecting contributed works of poetry and fiction by the female workers of the textile mills...

Published in 1899 by Houghton Mifflin, Chesnutt's first book, The Conjure Woman, was a collection of seven short stories, all set in "Patesville" (Fayetteville), North Carolina. While drawing from local color traditions and relying on dialect, Chesnutt's tales of conjuring, a form of magic rooted in African hoodoo, refused to romanticize slave life or the "Old South." Though necessarily informed by Joel Chandler Harris's popular Uncle Remus stories and Thomas Nelson Page's plantation fiction, The Conjure Woman consciously moved away from these models, instead offering an almost biting examination of pre- and post-Civil War race relations...

Published in 1899, The Wife of His Youth and Other Stories of the Color Line is a collection of narratives that addresses the impact of Jim Crow laws on African Americans and white Americans of the South. Many of Chesnutt's characters are of mixed-race ancestry which sets them apart for a specific yet degrading kind of treatment from blacks and whites. These stories examine particularly how life in the South was informed through a legacy of slavery and Reconstruction—how members of the “old dominion” desperately struggled to breath life into the corpse of an antebellum caste system that no longer defined the path and direction in which this country was headed...

Lovely book for children written by teacher and naturalist Clara Dillingham Pierson. This book in the "Among the People" series explores the animal inhabitants of a pond. The beautiful writing brings the pond creatures into being in the reader's imagination and allows them a glimpse of the mysterious lives being carried out above and below the water's surface.

This is a collection of folk tales originating in Canada, some from aboriginal oral tradition and others due to early French, Scottish, Irish and British colonists. They are presented as “fables” though many are without obvious moral.

The collection of short stories – of which The Prussian Officer is one – was Lawrence’s first such book. A German officer and his orderly are the focus of the piece and, while socially the superior of his orderly, the officer demonstrates his is the distinctly baser character. (Introduction by Cathy Barratt)

These 22 stories are told by the Goblin to the King Vikram. King Vikram faces many difficulties in bringing the vetala to the tantric. Each time Vikram tries to capture the vetala, it tells a story that ends with a riddle. If Vikram cannot answer the question correctly, the vampire consents to remain in captivity. If the king answers the question correctly, the vampire would escape and return to his tree. In some variations, the king is required to speak if he knows the answer, else his head will burst...

Biographer Nathan Ward has called “The Tenth Clew” Dashiell Hammett’s “first real jewel of a story.” In it, Hammett’s nameless Continental Detective Agency operative survives being knocked unconscious and dumped in San Francisco Bay. This kind of action was what his Black Mask magazine editors and readers were asking for, and Hammett somewhat grudgingly obliged them with continuing stories of the Continental Op.

This is a lovely collection of short stories and poems some well known others not so well known. Something to appeal to everyone.

A sampling of the children's books written and illustrated by E. Boyd Smith. The first story is Mr. Smith's version of the Story of Noah's Ark. He then tells us the story of Pocahontas and Captain John Smith. Next we join a hen as she hatches her chicks and their life on the farm. We then go on several adventures with Bob and Betty as they visit their Uncle's farm, go to the seashore and learn about ships, and then learn about railroads and trains. Our last story is a brief history of the United States up until the time just after World War I.

Published in 1908, this is a further collection of twelve humorous short stories about English school boys. The author wrote two other books in this series: The Human Boy and The Human Boy And The War . Eden Phillpotts was popular with the reading public and wrote prolifically novels, short stories, poetry, plays, and nonfiction. - Summary by David Wales

This story opens with a mother and daughter found brutally murdered inside a locked room in an upstairs apartment on a street in Paris. The police are baffled by both the ferocity of the crime and the lack of clues. Neighbors give conflicting evidence. Two friends are intrigued by the entire situation as reported in the newspapers. They decide to do a little investigating on their own. What they come up with is one of the most shocking and strangest of conclusions. The Murders in the Rue Morgue by Edgar Allan Poe is perhaps the first modern detective tale, though similar stories by Voltaire and ETA Hoffman did appear a few decades earlier...

Published in 1838, The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym of Nantucket is Poe’s only complete novel and concentrates on several sea adventures gone awry. The novel follows Arthur Gordon Pym, who finds himself in the center of gloomy occurrences on board numerous vessels, as his anticipated sea adventure takes a drastic shift in the wind. Shipwreck, starvation, mutiny, near death experiences and cannibalism are just some of the issues endured in the gripping, and at times gruesome novel. The adventure...

Edgar Allan Poe is best known for his famous short horror stories; however, horror is not the only genre in which he wrote. How To Write a Blackwood Article and its companion piece A Predicament are satirical works exploring the pieces of the formula generally seen in short horror stories (”articles”) found in the Scottish periodical “Blackwood’s Magazine” and the successful misapplication of said formula by – horrors! – a woman author! – respectively.

Jungle Tales of Tarzan is a collection of twelve loosely-connected short stories written by Edgar Rice Burroughs, comprising the sixth book in order of publication in his series about the title character Tarzan. Chronologically, the events recounted in it actually occur between chapters 12 and 13 of the first Tarzan novel, Tarzan of the Apes.

Eight enchanting tales about a variety of whimsical dragons, by a master of the craft, E Nesbit, are contained in this absolutely delightful volume, The Book of Dragons. While it's essentially meant for children, there are plenty of adults who will find it irresistible enough to peek into and a most charming way to spend a magical hour. Beautifully illustrated by the enormously talented Harold Robert Millar, the Scottish designer and illustrator famed for his unique and imaginative illustrations, The Book of Dragons is sure to delight both first time readers of the unique writer Edith Nesbit and those who have found pleasure in her other works...

Nine original and, yes, unlikely fairy-tales, which include stories of the arithmetic fairy, the king who became a charming villa-residence and the dreadful automatic nagging machine. All are classic-Nesbit: charming, novel and not afraid to squeeze in a moral or two — told with proper fairy-tale style. Summary by Cori

Talking cats, birds, fish and bells, wicked fairies, uglified princesses – adventure, magic, and more magic. A delightful collection of stories for children of all ages. The Magic World is an influential collection of twelve short stories by E. Nesbit. It was first published in book form in 1912 by Macmillan and Co. Ltd., with illustrations by H. R. Millar and Gerald Spencer Pryse. The stories, previously printed in magazines (like Blackie’s Children’s Annual), are typical of Nesbit’s arch, ironic, clever fantasies for children.