Short Stories audiobooks

The Texas Stories of Nelson Algren

By: Nelson Algren

Narrated by: Henry Strozier

Length: 6 hours 7 minutes

Abridged: No

O. Henry and National Book Award-winning author Nelson Algren has inspired thousands with his tough, gritty accounts of urban life. Written over the course of four decades, this collection of 12 stories centers around Depression-era Texas. Characterized by small-town strife, political corruption and frontier-style justice, each tale is a... Read more

What Language is That (A Story from Say You're One of Them)

By: Uwem Akpan

Narrated by: Robin Miles

Length: 23 minutes

Abridged: No

Uwem Akpan's stunning stories humanize the perils of poverty and violence so piercingly that few readers will feel they've ever encountered Africa so immediately. The eight-year-old narrator of "An Ex-Mas Feast" needs only enough money to buy books and pay fees in order to attend school. Even when his twelve-year-old sister takes to the streets... Read more

An Ex-Mas Feast (A Story from Say You're One of Them)

By: Uwem Akpan

Narrated by: Dion Graham

Length: 1 hour

Abridged: No

Uwem Akpan's stunning stories humanize the perils of poverty and violence so piercingly that few readers will feel they've ever encountered Africa so immediately. The eight-year-old narrator of "An Ex-Mas Feast" needs only enough money to buy books and pay fees in order to attend school. Even when his twelve-year-old sister takes to the streets... Read more

My Parent's Bedroom (A Story from Say You're One of Them)

By: Uwem Akpan

Narrated by: Robin Miles

Length: 1 hour 6 minutes

Abridged: No

Uwem Akpan's stunning stories humanize the perils of poverty and violence so piercingly that few readers will feel they've ever encountered Africa so immediately. The eight-year-old narrator of "An Ex-Mas Feast" needs only enough money to buy books and pay fees in order to attend school. Even when his twelve-year-old sister takes to the streets... Read more

The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Caleveras County

By: Mark Twain

Narrated by: B.J. Harrison

Length: 16 minutes

Abridged: No

Leonidas W. Smiley would bet on anything. Horse races, dog fights, cat fights, chicken fights - all were fair game to the gambling nature of Smiley. But he meets his match when a stranger comes into town, and puts his champion jumping frog to the test. Read more

The Monkey's Paw

By: W. W. Jacobs

Narrated by: B.J. Harrison

Length: 27 minutes

Abridged: No

When Sergeant Major Morris brings a mummified monkey’s paw to the White family, they embrace it as a morbid curiosity. When they learn that an old Fakir has enchanted the paw, they continue to treat the thing lightly. But the workings of the paw, once set in motion, cannot be undone, no matter what they try. Read more

Law of the Desert Born

By: Louis L'Amour

Narrated by: Dramatization

Length: 1 hour 11 minutes

Abridged: No

A PRIZED COLLECTION OF AMERICAN FICTION—FROM AMERICA’S FAVORITE STORYTELLER
 
This first-rate collection of short stories by the incomparable Louis L’Amour showcases the legendary writer at his very best: spinning a fascinating and wholly authentic set of unforgettable tales. In these extraordinary stories, we meet a man who is forced to defend... Read more

The Gingerbread Girl

By: Stephen King

Narrated by: Mare Winningham

Length: 2 hours 14 minutes

Abridged: No

In the emotional aftermath of her baby's sudden death, Em starts running. Soon she runs from her husband, to the airport, down to the Florida Gulf and out to the loneliest stretch of Vermillion Key, where her father has offered the use of a conch shack he has kept there for years. Em keeps up her running -- barefoot on the beach, sneakers on the... Read more

In Our Time

By: Ernest Hemingway

Narrated by: Stacy Keach

Length: 3 hours 49 minutes

Abridged: No

A strikingly original collection of short stories and accompanying vignettes that marked Ernest Hemingway’s American debut.

When In Our Time was first published in 1925, it was widely praised for its simple and precise use of language to convey a wide range of complex emotions, and earned Hemingway a place among the most promising American... Read more

The Magic Shop

By: H.G. Wells

Narrated by: B.J. Harrison

Length: 25 minutes

Abridged: No

Simple magic tricks are what a little boy is looking for when he drags his father into a quaint, old shop. The proprietor seems to be a master of illusion - a genius at slight of hand. But, as the son becomes mesmerized, the father feels an icy hand grip his heart. Read more

The Day I Ate Whatever I Wanted

By: Elizabeth Berg

Narrated by: Elizabeth Berg

Length: 7 hours 58 minutes

Abridged: No

Exhilarating short stories of women breaking free from convention

Every now and then, right in the middle of an ordinary day, a woman rebels, kicks up her heels, and commits a small act of liberation.

What would you do, if you were going to break out and away? Go AWOL from Weight Watchers and spend an entire day eating every single thing you... Read more

Winner Take Nothing

By: Ernest Hemingway

Narrated by: Stacy Keach

Length: 4 hours

Abridged: No

Ernest Hemingway's Winner Take Nothing contains fourteen stories of varying length. Some of them have appeared in magazines but the majority have not been published before. The characters and backgrounds are widely varied. Some stories included are “A Clean, Well-Lighted Place,” a story about one man’s night in a café; “Homage to Switzerland”... Read more

Unaccustomed Earth

By: Jhumpa Lahiri

Narrated by: Sarita Choudhury & Ajay Naidu

Length: TBA

Abridged: No

From the internationally bestselling, Pulitzer Prize—winning author, a superbly crafted new work of fiction: eight stories that take us from Cambridge and Seattle to India and Thailand.
 
In the stunning title story, Ruma, a young mother in a new city, is visited by her father, who carefully tends the earth of her garden, where he and his... Read more

Men without Women

By: Ernest Hemingway

Narrated by: Stacy Keach

Length: 4 hours 7 minutes

Abridged: No

Classic short stories from a master of American fiction exploring relationships, war, and sportsmanship.

First published in 1927, Men Without Women represents some of Hemingway’s most important and compelling early writing. In these fourteen stories, Hemingway begins to examine the themes that would occupy his later works: the casualties of war,... Read more

Armageddon in Retrospect

By: Kurt Vonnegut

Narrated by: Rip Torn

Length: 5 hours 15 minutes

Abridged: No

The New York Times bestseller from the author of Slaughterhouse-Five—a “gripping” posthumous collection of Kurt Vonnegut’s previously unpublished work on the subject of war and peace.

A fitting tribute to a literary legend and a profoundly humane humorist, Armageddon in Retrospect is a collection of twelve previously unpublished writings. Imbued... Read more

Pilgrims

By: Elizabeth Gilbert

Narrated by: Coleen Marlo

Length: 6 hours 10 minutes

Abridged: No

The debut by the #1 New York Times bestselling author of Eat Pray Love, Big Magic and City of Girls; a PEN/Hemingway Award finalist and New York Times Notable Book


When it appeared in 1997, Elizabeth Gilbert’s story collection, Pilgrims, immediately announced her compelling voice, her comic touch, and her amazing ear for dialogue. “The heroes of... Read more

Our Story Begins

By: Tobias Wolff

Narrated by: Anthony Heald

Length: 13 hours 5 minutes

Abridged: No

Tobias Wolff’s first two books, In the Garden of the North American Martyrs and Back in the World, proved how the short story can “provoke our amazed appreciation” (New York Times Book Review). In the years since, he’s written a third collection, The Night in Question, as well as several other astounding works. Now he returns with fresh... Read more

The Red-Headed League

By: Arthur Conan Doyle

Narrated by: B.J. Harrison

Length: 51 minutes

Abridged: No

In "The Red-Headed League", the legendary Sherlock Holmes catches one of London's most daring criminals while investigating the strange business of the League, a suspicious organization that gives its members money for "nominal work". Read more

The World of O.Henry

By: O. Henry

Narrated by: Frank Muller

Length: 5 hours 49 minutes

Abridged: No

If you think of classic literature as dry and dusty reading that you have to force yourself to get through, then prepare to change your mind. Not only are these stories witty and entertaining, they are laugh-out-loud funny to boot! Does the 300-year-old ghost of Sir Simon de Canterville really exist? And if he does, will the rambunctious Otis... Read more

An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge

By: Ambrose Bierce

Narrated by: Mark Hammer

Length: 2 hours 41 minutes

Abridged: No

A collection of stories of the supernatural, of ghosts and "strange doings" by a master teller of tales. Includes these stories: An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge; The Damned Thing; A Watcher by the Dead; An Inhabitant of Carcosa; The Famous Gilson Bequest; The Eyes of the Panther; The Secret of Macarger's Gulch; The Night-Doings at Deadman's Read more

The World of Saki

By: H.H. Munro

Narrated by: Alexander Spencer

Length: 2 hours 57 minutes

Abridged: No

The finest champagne, dry and light, ever decanted into a book, are these 16 short stories, including: EsmE; Tobermory; Mrs. Packeltide's Tiger; Sredni Vashtar; The Easter Egg; The Open Window and others. Read more

The Snows of Kilimanjaro and Other Stories

By: Ernest Hemingway

Narrated by: Stacy Keach

Length: 4 hours 10 minutes

Abridged: No

The ideal introduction to the genius of Ernest Hemingway, The Snows of Kilimanjaro and Other Stories contains ten of Hemingway's most acclaimed and popular works of short fiction.

Selected from Winner Take Nothing, Men Without Women, and The Fifth Column and the First Forty-Nine Stories, this collection includes "The Killers," the first of... Read more

The World of Jack London

By: Jack London

Narrated by: Frank Muller

Length: 5 hours 51 minutes

Abridged: No

With these stories: To the Man on Trail; DiablE-a Dog; To Build a Fire; The Law of Life; An Odyssey of the North; Moonface; The One Thousand Dozen; and All Gold Canyon. Read more

Krik? Krak!

By: Edwidge Danticat

Narrated by: Robin Miles & Dion Graham

Length: 4 hours 52 minutes

Abridged: No

American Book Award-winning author Edwidge Danticat earned a National Book Award nomination for this brilliant collection of stories, which includes Pushcart Prize winner "Between the Pool and the Gardenias." A "remarkably gifted writer" (Publishers Weekly), Danticat examines the brutality of her native Haiti, particularly as it affects women,... Read more