When the White family comes into the possession of a monkey’s paw that magically grant wishes, they do what many people would do—they succumb to vanity and wish for the unneeded. But every wish has a …
A Good Man Is Hard to Find is Flannery O'Connor's most famous and most discussed story. O'Connor herself singled it out by making it the title piece of her first collection and the story she most ofte…
In this timeless tale of two mortal princesses- one beautiful and one unattractive- C.S. Lewis reworks the classical myth of Cupid and Psyche into an enduring piece of contemporary fiction. This is th…
"The Cask of Amontillado" (sometimes spelled "The Casque ..") is a short story written by Edgar Allan Poe and first published in the November 1846 issue of "Godey's Lady's Book."
In the first novel of C.S. Lewis's classic science fiction trilogy, Dr Ransom, a Cambridge academic, is abducted and taken on a spaceship to the red planet of Malacandra, which he knows as Mars. His c…
For this novel, Scott moved far away from the setting of his own turbulent time. He went back to the late 12th century, and to England rather than the Scottish settings of all his previous novels. He …
On 15 August 778, Charlemagne’s army was returning from a successful expedition against Saracen Spain when its rearguard was ambushed in a remote Pyrenean pass. Out of this skirmish arose a stirring t…
Shakespeare’s King Lear challenges us with the magnitude, intensity, and sheer duration of the pain that it represents. Its figures harden their hearts, engage in violence, or try to alleviate the suf…
"A wonderful introduction the Japanese tradition of jisei , this volume is crammed with exquisite, spontaneous verse and pity, often hilarious, descriptions of the eccentric and committed monastics wh…
Mystery novelist Harriet Vane knew all about poisons, and when her former lover died in the manner prescribed in one of her books, a jury of her peers had a hangman's noose in mind. But Lord Peter Wim…
The Light Princess is a short story that is warm and humorous, with a surprisingly poignant conclusion. A princess doomed by a witch to lose her "gravity" results in a silly heroine that has neither p…
Among the most influential authors and reformers of his age, Thomas Paine (1737–1809) was born in England but went on to play an important role in both the American and French Revolutions. In 1774, he…
Our narrator, a grown man, tells us about his memories of Doodle, his younger brother. We jump into the past as the narrator begins his story about his brother.
