Showing results by author "Ambrose Bierce" in All Categories

Love. Perhaps the one word solution for everything. An emotion, a state of mind that we strive for, search for. A wondrous force that binds, inspires, and a force that can spin out of control; unbalanced and fragile. Love reflects, changes and embraces us all. The capture of love in this life is a very special happening, it may only strike us once, and for some perhaps never. But what if those on the ‘other side’ have designs on us? What if their desire is just so strong that we can’t resist? Can true love survive?

Short stories have always been a sort of instant access into an author’s brain, their soul and heart. They can lift our lives into locations, people and experiences with a sweep of landscape, narration, feelings and emotions that is difficult to achieve elsewhere. This decade is resplendent with literature and its many prodigiously talented authors who write on as varied a range of subjects as might be thought possible. Yet each is studded with careful literary precision and narrative verve. It is a remarkable decade.

The American literary tradition has, in a far shorter span of time than others throughout history, achieved a glowing and glittering reputation. From its transatlantic roots it has absorbed the sons and daughters of other cultures, other lands and made them part of her own. Within this melting pot of styles, genres and wordplay one fact stands out: In the American short story, Literary tradition has a strong, vibrant and almost inclusive history, if you know where to look.

Critically acclaimed audiobook reader Barnaby Edwards (Doctor Who, The Voyage of the Beagle, Space Danger) performs 11 tales of ghostly gothic spookiness. From tales of vampyres and spirits to devil’s deals and ethereal coachmen. Short but oh so sweet, these 11 stories from some of the most lauded authors of the Gothic period prove that you need only a few pages to tell a truly terrifying tale.

This collection comprises another 40 stories by and inspired by the originators of weird fiction. From White's seminal body-shocker, Lukundoo, through to Howard's dastardly Pigeons from Hell, and Benson's nightmarish The Room in The Tower. Time immemorial; worlds unimaginable.

In this series we listen to short stories that are NOT by perhaps the most well-known author of this type. But the many other rich talents in the volume may have treated the subject matter a little differently, or were perhaps just overlooked in the stampede to applaud the winner, but these authors are of equal merit.

Volume ten launches with Doug Bradley's well-researched insight into the stories and their authors. This is followed by HP Lovecraft's evocative tale of exploration, "The Strange High House in the Mist". Next we hear Ambrose Bierce's truly chilling "A Diagnosis of Death", and Jeffery Combs reads Edgar Allan Poe's classic revenge tale, "The Cask of Amontillado".

Contents: • Washington Irving: Rip Van Winkle • Edgar Allan Poe: The Murders In The Rue Morgue • Fyodor Dostoevsky: Notes From The Underground • Franz Kafka: The Metamorphosis • Charles Dickens: The Chimes • Ivan Turgenev: Mumu • Francis Scott Fitzgerald: The Curious Case Of Benjamin Button • Joseph Conrad: Heart Of Darkness • Ambrose Bierce: Chickamauga • Arthur Conan Doyle: A Study In Scarlet • H. P. Lovecraft: At the Mountains of Madness • Nathaniel Hawthorne: Roger Malvin's Burial • Guy de Maupassant: Necklace• Leo Tolstoy: God Sees The Truth, But Waits.

Horror and the supernatural are the background of Bierce's short stories. His style is marked by vivid description, grim situations, and sardonic twists of fate. In terms of technique, he was far ahead of his time and his short stories are among the very best in American literature.

A great new collection of classic short fiction, brilliantly read by a selection of narrators. Includes the following stories: "The Lightening-Rod Man" by Herman Melville, "One of the Missing" by Ambrose Bierce, "The Leopard Man's Story" by Jack London, "Tennessee's Partner" by Bret Harte, "The New Catacomb" by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, "A Pair of Silk Stockings" by Kate Chopin, "My Watch" and "The Widow's Protest" by Mark Twain, "An Ideal Family" by Kate Mansfield, "A Painful Case" by James Joyce, "Small Fry" by Anton Chekhov, and more!

Life has the capacity of great moments and attainment, of lives well lived, fulfilling for ourselves and for those we touch. But for others life is arduous. There is no spark to ignite the curiosity, to explore and achieve a stability and a growth to their lives. Indeed their lives, in their own eyes, become almost meaningless, their sense of themselves subsumed under a myriad of problems, whether real or imagined. Seismic events in a life might crush them; the loss of a loved one for instance. Coping is difficult, support hard to find and isolation abounds.

Prepare yourself for the shocking, the strange, and the terrifying in Ambrose Bierce’s 1893 story collection Can Such Things Be? One of the greatest masters of horror brings you 25 tales of the supernatural and the unexplained. Whether in stories of ghosts sending desperate warnings to their human counterparts, psychics attempting to bridge unknown dimensions, howling werewolves, or a robot who takes on a life of his own, Bierce plumbs the depths of fear and fascination.

Diplomacy by other means may, at times, sound heroic. A fight for principles and ideals carried out by young men armed to the teeth and directed by older men in pursuit of their own version of glory for themselves and their Nations. Right will triumph over wrong. But war can be an illusion, stirred up by schemers and opportunists to take something from other nations that may or may not be right. As blood and limb are sacrificed the true cost is seen but often set to one side as the dispute becomes embedded in emotions and reason falls away.

American journalist, short story writer, and poet, Ambrose Bierce is best known for his formidably vicious wit - given free rein in his famous column, "The Prattler." But his stories were elegantly crafted, with a compelling blend of realistic detail, clever plot twists, and his own sardonic humor. These 8 macabre stories, read here by Mark Hammer, establish Bierce as a master of the genre.

H. P. Lovecraft is arguably the most important horror writer of the 20th century. Culled from his 1927 essay "Supernatural Horror in Literature”, Lovecraft acknowledges those authors and stories that he feels are the very finest the horror field has to offer, including Washington Irving, Edgar Allan Poe, Henry James, Rudyard Kipling, Bram Stoker, Robert Louis Stevenson, Guy de Maupassant, Ambrose Bierce, and Arthur Conan Doyle. This chilling collection includes 20 works, each prefaced by Lovecraft's own opinions and insights in each author’s work.

Here are 10 unabridged stories by the greatest American authors. These treasured stories from the most influential authors of the 19th and early 20th centuries were selected for their literary importance as well as their dramatic oral qualities.

A thoroughly engaging collection of great classic tales by the very best American authors. 1. 'From Beyond' by H. P. Lovecraft 2. 'The Mysterious Card and the Card Unveiled' by Cleveland Moffett 3. 'Pigs Is Pigs' by Ellis Parker Butler 4. 'The Club of One-Eyed Men' by Arthur Somers Roche 5. 'Afterward' by Edith Wharton 6. 'The Furnished Room' by O. Henry 7. 'A Descent into the Maelström' by Edgar Allan Poe 8. 'Regret' by Kate Chopin 9. 'The Terrible Old Man' by H. P. Lovecraft 10. 'The Dumb Man' by Sherwood Anderson

Written by Ambrose Bierce, and narrated by Mike Vendetti, this story concerns a man from the ancient city of Carcosa who awakens from a sickness-induced sleep to find himself lost in an unfamiliar wilderness. Carcosa was subsequently borrowed by Robert W. Chambers as the setting of his fictional play, The King in Yellow, and features heavily in many of the stories in the book of the same name. These concepts were further expanded upon by H. P. Lovecraft in his Cthulhu Mythos stories.

Written over three decades as a series of instalments for magazines and newspapers, The Devil’s Dictionary is a charmingly eccentric satirical dictionary that tackles all aspects of life with caustic humour and cutting observation.

A veritable library of listening in this splendid collection of American Short Stories! This boxed set includes all stories from Volumes 1, 2 and 3.