Hearts and Hands


O. Henry
    

The Devil and Tom Walker


Washington Irving - 1824
    The story is very similar to that of the ancient German legend of Faust.

A Sound of Thunder


Ray Bradbury - 1951
    Free online fiction.The short story, A Sound of Thunder, involves a Time Travel Safari where rich businessmen pay to travel back to prehistoric times and hunt real live dinosaurs.

On the Western Circuit


Thomas Hardy - 1891
    Harnham agrees to help her young protegee Anna write to her lover, she begins the development of an ill-fated misunderstanding.

The Paradise of Bachelors and The Tartarus of Maids


Herman Melville - 1855
    A short story from the Classic Shorts collection: The Happy Failure by Herman Melville

The Real Thing


Henry James - 1892
    He spent much of his life in Europe and became a British subject shortly before his death. He is primarily known for novels, novellas and short stories based on themes of consciousness and morality.

Regret


Kate Chopin - 1894
    Mademoiselle Aurelie knows nothing about children and cares even less for them. But over the following weeks, the children become a part of her life...until the day when their mother reappears to reclaim them.

The Chrysanthemums


John Steinbeck - 1937
    NA

The Cask of Amontillado - an Edgar Allan Poe Short Story


Edgar Allan Poe - 1846
    Like several of Poe's stories, and in keeping with the 19th-century fascination with the subject, the narrative revolves around the possibility of a person being buried alive or enclosed in a small space with not possibility of escape (aka immurement).Librarian's note: this entry relates to the story "The Cask of Amontillado." Collections of short stories by the author can be found elsewhere on Goodreads.

Extract from Captain Stormfield's Visit to Heaven


Mark Twain - 1909
    In a folksy narration peppered with sailor's jargon, the amiable, altogether down-to-earth merchant marine describes a series of amusingly disconcerting revelations about the next world.Sitting on a cloud strumming a harp all day turns out to be insufferably boring; being eternally youthful also has its drawbacks when the captain finds himself not mixing well with a crowd of insipid teenagers; and Native Americans so outnumber whites in the North American district of Paradise that the average white Anglo-Saxon male has trouble finding someone to talk to. In fact the outlandish dimensions and characteristics of heaven utterly explode every human conception.This funny, satirical spoof on human pretensions about the importance of our species in the grand scheme of things was the last published work by Mark Twain. The main character and plot were inspired by the dream of an actual sea captain whom Twain had known. Published at the beginning of the 20th century, when astronomy had just begun to reveal the huge expanse of outer space and traditional religious concepts of our place in the universe had become inadequate, Twain's humorous vision of the afterlife seems to reflect the new scientific awareness of the awesome cosmos that confronts us and the feelings of insignificance that this discovery produced.Two years after publication of this "extract," originally planned as a six-chapter book, Twain himself shipped off to follow in Captain Stormfield's wake.

The Open Boat


Stephen Crane - 1897
    Four men struggle for survival after escaping from a sinking ship and into a small open boat.

Babylon Revisited


F. Scott Fitzgerald - 1931
    Scott Fitzgerald's stories defined the 1920s 'Jazz Age' generation, with their glittering dreams and tarnished hopes. In these three tales of a fragile recovery, a cut-glass bowl and a life lost, Fitzgerald portrays, in exquisite prose and with deep human sympathy, the idealism of youth and the ravages of success.This book includes Babylon Revisited, The Cut-Glass Bowl and The Lost Decade.

The Mansion


Henry Van Dyke - 1887
    Standing on a comer of the Avenue no longer fashionable for residence, it looked upon the swelling tide of business with an expression of complacency and half-disdain. Van Dyke's Christmas story about a mansion that speaks "not of money squandered but of wealth prudently applied" - the companion story to The Other Wise Man.

Harrison Bergeron


Kurt Vonnegut Jr. - 1961
    Because of Amendments 211, 212, and 213 to the Constitution, every American is fully equal, meaning that no one is stupider, uglier, weaker, or slower than anyone else. The Handicapper General and a team of agents ensure that the laws of equality are enforced.One April, fourteen-year-old Harrison Bergeron is taken away from his parents, George and Hazel, by the government.

The Most Dangerous Game


Richard Connell - 1924
    The Most Dangerous Game features a big-game hunter from New York who becomes shipwrecked on an isolated island in the Caribbean and is hunted by a Russian aristocrat.