Instructed to abandon her intellectual life and avoid stimulating company, she sinks into a still-deeper depression invisible to her husband, who believes he knows what is best for her. Alone in the yellow-wallpapered nursery of a rented house, she descends into madness.

In Désirée’s Baby, the adopted daughter of a wealthy prewar French Creole couple is courted by the son of another wealthy, respected French Creole family. After they marry, their child is born with dark skin and believed to have African ancestry, a problem for a prewar white family. Accused of dishonesty by her husband, the mother, Désirée, and her child walk off into the bayou, never to be seen again. But when the father finds a letter from his mother to his father which reveals an explosive fact about his own ancestry, he learns a sobering truth.

Kate Chopin is a widely considered a forerunner to the feminist authors of the twentieth century. Focusing on themes of race andgender, her short stories largely center on life in rural Louisiana. In "A Pair of Silk Stockings," a young woman unexpected finds herself with fifteen dollars.Inspired by her newfound wealth, she ignores her natural impulses and indulgesin a day of luxurious abandon. A wistful rumination on loss and the illusion ofcontrol, "A Pair of Silk Stockings" is Chopin at her absolute best.

"The Storm" is Kate Chopin's most sexually charged story, and as such is quite exceptional for a work which was written in 1898. It describes a chance sexual encounter between Calixta and her former flame Alcée during a heavy storm in Louisiana when her husband Bobinôt and her son Bibi are absent. Chopin's description of the events of that day is refreshingly modern and free of the stifling morals of the day.

This magisterial collection of short works by Nobel Prize-winning author William Faulkner reminds listeners of his ability to compress his epic vision into narratives as hard and wounding as bullets. Among the 42 selections in this audiobook are such classics as "A Bear Hunt", "A Rose for Emily", "Two Soldiers", and "The Brooch".

"He travels fastest who travels alone...but not after the frost has dropped below zero 50 degrees or more." (Yukon Code) Jack London’s best short story.

In the rigid theocracy of Salem, Massachusetts, rumors that women are practicing witchcraft galvanize the town. In a searing portrait of a community engulfed by panic—with ruthless prosecutors, and neighbors eager to testify against neighbor—The Crucible famously mirrors the anti-Communist hysteria that held the United States in its grip in the 1950’s.

The bloody-minded Montresor leads the pompous Fortunato deep into the catacombs, seeking the famed Amontillado wine. Here we have one of Poe’s most terrifying, and most “beloved” tales. Revenge and pomposity commingle beneath the river’s bed, leading to a delightfully sinister conclusion.

Ten years ago, Grace saw something that would forever change the course of history. When evil in its purest form is unleashed on the world, she and others from their religious community are already hidden deep in the hills of Tennessee, abiding by every rule that will keep them safe, pure - and alive. As long as they stay there, behind the red perimeter. Her older brother's questions and the arrival of the first outsiders she's seen in a decade set in motion events that will question everything Grace has built her life on.

Rich in its stories, characters, and imaginative range, The Book of Laughter and Forgetting is the novel that brought Milan Kundera his first big international success in the late 1970s. Like all his work, it is valuable for far more than its historical implications. In seven wonderfully integrated parts, different aspects of human existence are magnified and reduced, reordered and emphasized, newly examined, analyzed, and experienced.

George MacDonald was a master storyteller, the author of beautiful fictions such as Phantastes, Sir Gibbie, and The Princess and the Goblin. The story of Lilith is no different. A brilliant piece that dives deep into the human conscience. Some believe this is MacDonald's darkest story. It has been said that C. S. Lewis was fascinated with this work. A fantasy indeed, but as with much of MacDonald's work, living truths are ingrained within. Enjoy.

Here, gathered in one volume, are the stories that made Clarice a Brazilian legend. Originally a cloth edition of 86 stories, now we have 89 in all, covering her whole amazing career, from her teenage years to her deathbed. In these pages, we meet teenagers becoming aware of their sexual and artistic powers, humdrum housewives whose lives are shattered by unexpected epiphanies, old people who don't know what to do with themselves - and in their stories, Clarice takes us through their lives - and hers - and ours.

This new translation of Clarice Lispector's sensational first book tells the story of a middle class woman's life from childhood through an unhappy marriage and its dissolution to transcendence. Near to the Wild Heart, published in Rio de Janeiro in 1943, introduced Brazil to what one writer called "Hurricane Clarice": a 23-year-old girl who wrote her first book in a tiny rented room and then baptized it with a title taken from Joyce.

Edgar Allan Poe, the master of terror, wrote some of literature's most entertaining and influential short stories, works that invented or anticipated modern detective novels, science fiction, and the horror genre. Tales of Terror collects nine of Poe's best-loved stories, all performed in chilling, highly dramatic readings by Jack Foreman. This collection includes such classics as "The Tell-Tale Heart", "The Pit and the Pendulum", "The Fall of the House of Usher", and what many consider his masterpiece, "The Murders in the Rue Morgue."

In this book, Seth Adam Smith expands on the philosophy behind his extraordinarily popular blog post "Marriage Isn't for You" shares how living for others can enrich every aspect of your life, just as it has his. With a mix of humor, candor, and compassion, he reveals how, years before his marriage, his self-obsession led to a downward spiral of addiction and depression, culminating in a suicide attempt at the age of twenty.