Short Stories audiobooks

Dressing Up for the Carnival

By: Carol Shields

Narrated by: Jean Smart

Length: 6 hours 20 minutes

Abridged: No

Carol Shields had a knack for turning the ordinary into the extraordinary and nowhere more than in this luminous collection of short stories. Throughout these stories runs Shields' preoccupation with identity—as in the title story, about a compacted day in the life of the world, in which a procession of characters try on new selves. Yet these... Read more

Buck Meets the Monster Stick - Abridged

By: Bil Lepp

Narrated by: Bil Lepp

Length: 51 minutes

Abridged: Yes

Remember the Monster Stick? The greatest-and most dangerous-fishing rod ever? What about Buck, who simply "ain't no ordinary dog"? Anyone who has seen the Lepp boys perform — or read their book, The Monster Stick — will never forget them. In this recording, we revisit West Virginia with Bil Lepp as he tells some of the stories that made his... Read more

How We Lost the Moon

By: Paul J. McAuley

Narrated by: Kerin McCue

Length: 37 minutes

Abridged: No

"On the busy, bustling, colonized future Moon, McAuley reminds us that although everyone makes mistakes, some mistakes have far greater consequences than others..." So writes Gardner Dozois, editor of the Seventeenth Annual Collection of The Year's Best Science Fiction, about this thrilling and meticulous sci-fi tale. Read more

Exchange Rate

By: Hal Clement

Narrated by: Kerin McCue

Length: 2 hours 30 minutes

Abridged: No

In this classic novella, harried human explorers must try to figure out the lifeways and motivations of some extremely strange and enigmatic alien creatures on one of the strangest planets ever portrayed in science fiction - and do it all before the clock runs out. Read more

Evermore

By: Sean Williams

Narrated by: Kerin McCue

Length: 1 hour 7 minutes

Abridged: No

"We must all hang together," Benjamin Franklin is reported to have said to his revolutionary peers, "or we will assuredly all hang separately." This is a sentiment that's even more appropriate, and more urgent, when you're lost between the stars in a crippled and out-of-control ship, your shipmates aren't talking to each other (and haven't for... Read more

Mount Olympus

By: Ben Bova

Narrated by: Kerin McCue

Length: 53 minutes

Abridged: No

In this Martian adventure story, two men fly to the highest mountain on Mars, and in the process learn more about Mars and about themselves.

Bova's work is premeated by the idea of space as a new frontier, and of SF settings as opportunities for explorers and entrepreneuers, the classic Heinlein thematics of American SF. Read more

A Hero of the Empire

By: Robert Silverberg

Narrated by: George Guidall

Length: 1 hour 29 minutes

Abridged: No

Another story of Roma Eterna. A Roman nobleman is sent in punishment to a remote corner of the Empire–the Arabian city we know as Mecca. Read more

Lord Emsworth and Others

By: P. G. Wodehouse

Narrated by: Nigel Lambert

Length: 8 hours 16 minutes

Abridged: No

Contained here are nine glorious episodes from the idyllic world of Wodehouse. There’s a crime wave which broke out towards the middle of a fine summer afternoon and was to rock Blandings Castle to its foundations, Ukridge appears on Corky’s doorstep at three in the morning, wearing his yellow mackintosh and requesting a whisky and soda, while... Read more

Magic Terror

By: Peter Straub

Narrated by: Ron McLarty

Length: 14 hours 26 minutes

Abridged: No

Welcome to another kind of terror as Peter Straub leads us into the outer reaches of the psyche. Here the master of the macabre is at his absolute best in seven exquisite tales of living, dying, and the terror that lies in between. . . .

AshputtleIsn’t It Romantic?
“CHILLING.”“SKILLFULLY CONSTRUCTED.”
–The New York Times–Kirkus Reviews (starred... Read more

The Return Journey

By: Maeve Binchy

Narrated by: Fionnula Flanagan

Length: 4 hours 39 minutes

Abridged: No

In this extraordinary collection of stories, New York Times bestselling author Maeve Binchy once again reveals her incomparable understanding of matters of the heart with powerfully compelling stories of love, loss, revelation, and reconciliation.

A secretary's silent passion for her boss meets the acid test on a business trip. . . .
A man and a... Read more

This Year It Will Be Different - Abridged

By: Maeve Binchy

Narrated by: Fionnula Flanagan

Length: 4 hours 53 minutes

Abridged: Yes

From the New York Times bestselling author of Circle of Friends and The Glass Lake comes This Year It Will Be Different, a stunning new work that brings us the magic and spirit of Christmas in fifteen stories filled with Maeve Binchy's trademark wit, charm, and sheer storytelling genius. Instead of nostalgia, Binchy evokes contemporary life;... Read more

The Lawnmower Man

By: Stephen King

Narrated by: John Glover

Length: 3 hours 53 minutes

Abridged: No

John Glover reads a selection of unabridged short stories, including "The Lawnmower Man," from Stephen King's best-selling collection Night Shift. Read more

Gray Matter

By: Stephen King

Narrated by: John Glover

Length: 3 hours 21 minutes

Abridged: No

John Glover reads a selection of unabridged short stories, including "Gray Matter" from Stephen King's best-selling collection Night Shift. Read more

Graveyard Shift

By: Stephen King

Narrated by: John Glover

Length: 3 hours 24 minutes

Abridged: No

John Glover reads a selection of unabridged short stories, including "Graveyard Shift," from Stephen King's best-selling collection Night Shift. Read more

The Commemorative - Abridged

By: Myla Goldberg

Narrated by: Oliver Wyman

Length: 42 minutes

Abridged: Yes

In this short story by bestselling author Myla Goldberg (originally published in Harper's magazine), an unemployed artist lands a freelance job that gives him a strange brand of influence over the population of a distant island nation and places him in an equally strange relationship with the woman who hires him. Read more

Wonderful Town - Abridged

By: David Remnick

Narrated by: Tyne Daly, Maria Tucci, Joe Morton & Timothy Je...

Length: 9 hours 20 minutes

Abridged: Yes

New York City is not only The New Yorker magazine's place of origin and its sensibility's lifeblood, it is the heart of American literary culture. Wonderful Town, an anthology of superb short fiction by many of the magazine's most accomplished contributors, celebrates the seventy-five-year marriage between a preeminent publication and its... Read more

The Black Monk and Other Stories

By: Anton Chekhov

Narrated by: Ralph Cosham

Length: 2 hours 15 minutes

Abridged: No

Chekhov can characterize with a single well-selected detail. He sums up relationships among a group of people, or the beliefs held by an entire country, by finding those key objects that crystallize his characters' strongest emotions. These four stories dramatize an array of obsessions that are at once purely Russian and deeply universal. Ralph... Read more

Dubliners

By: James Joyce

Narrated by: Ralph Cosham

Length: 6 hours 7 minutes

Abridged: No

"Cosham reads with a gentle accent that enhances Joyce's Dublin... Recommended for most collections." -- Library Journal
James Joyce, 1882-1941, is one of the world's greatest writers. Dubliners, his first and most accessible fiction, was started in in 1904 and completed in 1905. Because it was considered explicit and critical of the Church, it... Read more

New England Stories

By: Sarah Orne Jewett

Narrated by: Tana Hicken

Length: 2 hours 13 minutes

Abridged: No

In this collection of four short stories, nineteenth-century writer Sarah Orne Jewett explores the theme of female friendship. Tana Hicken brings authenticity to the New England towns in which each story is set. The skillful reading and vivid descriptions conjure images of strong country women living simple, inspirational, lives.

In... Read more

Legend of Sleepy Hollow and Rip Van Winkle

By: Washington Irving

Narrated by: George Vafiadis

Length: 2 hours 11 minutes

Abridged: No

Two American classics which tell of the earliest days in Dutch New York: Ichabod Crane's encounter with the Headless Horseman and Rip's long nap.Washington Irving, the first American writer to make his living by his profession, was born April 3, 1783. At the age of six he was introduced to his namesake, George Washington. He studied law but then... Read more

Bayou Stories

By: Kate Chopin

Narrated by: Jacqueline Kinlow

Length: 2 hours 8 minutes

Abridged: No

This collection of nine short stories takes the listener back to nineteenth-century Louisiana. Universal themes of love and death are intertwined with the issues of slavery and racism. Each story, steeped in the religious and social culture of the bayou, holds an unexpected turn or two. Read more

Father Was a Wise Old Man - Abridged

By: Donald Davis

Narrated by: Donald Davis

Length: 58 minutes

Abridged: Yes

Joe Davis was in his mid-40s when he became a father, and the experience he was able to apply in raising his sons lent creativity to his parenting. The five stories here recall the wisdom of fathers with humor and rich detail: a visit to the Smithsonian inspires father's memory; father "cures" a boy's impulse to try cigarettes; Santa Claus... Read more

Blood And Smoke - Abridged

By: Stephen King

Narrated by: Stephen King

Length: 3 hours 50 minutes

Abridged: Yes

Stephen King reads three of his classic short stories including 1408, now a feature film!

Enter a nightmarish mindscape of unrelenting horror and shocking revelations as the greatest storyteller of our time takes us inside a world of yearning and paranoia, isolation and addiction. It is the world of the smoker.

Stephen King's audio original... Read more

Stowaway and Milk Run - Abridged

By: Mary Higgins Clark

Narrated by: Jan Maxwell

Length: 1 hour 15 minutes

Abridged: Yes

Bestselling author and Queen of Suspense Mary Higgins Clark draws on her career as a young Pan American Airway flight attendant to create these tales of adventure and intrigue from her first two published stories.

In Stowaway, a courageous flight attendant helps a desperate young man of the underground escape the Soviet police. In Milkrun, a... Read more