A delightful and comprehensive collection of all the best known traditional children's rhymes.

A gripping collection of outstanding American classic short stories by some of America's greatest writers.'A Ghost Story' by Mark Twain'Pomegranate Seed' by Edith Wharton'Pigeons from Hell' by Robert E. Howard'Pickman's Model' by H. P. Lovecraft'The Adventure of the German Student' by Nathaniel Hawthorne'Absolute Zero' by Morgan Robertson'The Ghost Club' by John Kendrick Bangs'The Black Dog' by Stephen Crane'Absolute Evil' by ...

A beautiful collection of some of the finest Chinese fairy tales ever told. Incorporating magic, wicked witches, strange adventures and mysterious spirits. Enchanting! Stories include:"The Magic Pillow""The Stone Monkey""Stealing Peaches""The Painted Skin""The Wonderful Pear Tree""The Country of Gentlemen""Learning Magic""Theft of a Duck""Living for Ever""Football on a Lake""Th...

Herman Cyril McNeile, MC (1888 - 1937), who wrote under the pseudonym "Sapper", was a British soldier and author.A Patch on the Quilt is a short story about an actor who is pursued by a strange woman at the theatre with a very odd request. She has attended every performance of his play since it started, skipping meals to afford the tickets. She now wants him to come with her to a house in Kensington after his performance...which she says is part of her 'plan'. But who is this perso...

Henry Lawson's poignant tale of a woman bringing up her four children alone in the Australian outback. When her family is threatened by a venomous snake that has invaded their home, she (with the help of Alligator, the family's dog-of-all-breeds) must find a way to defend her children.

Katherine Mansfield (1888-1923) was a prominent modernist writer of short fiction and a close associate of D. H. Lawrence and Virginia Woolf. The Little Girl and Other Stories was first published in 1921 and includes:'The Tiredness of Rosabel''How Pearl Button Was Kidnapped''The Journey to Bruges''A Truthful Adventure''New Dresses''The Woman at the Store''Ole Underwood''The Little Girl''M...

A splendid collection of both well loved and little known fairy stories which have entertained and delighted children for many generations. "The Twelve Dancing Princesses", "The Golden Goose", "The King of Root Valley and His Curious Daughter", "The Horned Women", "East of The Sun, West of The Moon", "The Sleeping Beauty", In the Wood", "The Three Dwarfs", "The Nettle Spinner", "The Master Cat", "The Emperor's New Clothes", "The Lad with the Goatskin", "The Wonderful Birch", "The Enchanted...

The Cafè of the Broken Heart is situated near the cemetery at Monmartre. When a widow calls by on the last day of the year and asks for a private room to grieve on the third anniversary of the death of her late husband, she is irritated to learn that the room is already occupied. She gets into conversation with the other mourner—a young artist—and discovers that he has a very strange story to tell.

Sir Hugh Seymour Walpole (1884-1941) was a New Zealand-born English novelist famous for his skill at scene setting and vivid plots. He was a best-selling author in the 1920s and 1930s and remains popular to this day. One recurring theme in his works, based in his own unhappy experiences of being bullied at school, is alienation in childhood.The Ruby Glass is a story of dysfunctional childhood. The Cole family play host to their little cousin, Jane, one spring. The other children, J...

Mary Cholmondeley (1859-1925) was an English novelist and short story writer. 'Let Loose' is a supernatural ghost story where a young architect wishes to research a unique fresco in the crypt of a remote and ancient parish church in Yorkshire.The parish clergyman is remarkably reluctant to hand over the keys to the crypt and sets some odd conditions to their use. On the subsequent days after the young architect has opened the crypt, terrible and mysterious deaths begin to plague th...

O. Henry was the pen name of William Sydney Porter (1862-1910), an American writer of outstanding short stories known for their wit, wordplay, warm characterization, and surprise endings.'A Newspaper Story' is an ingenious tale about a lost newspaper blowing through the streets of New York. Each passer-by who comes into contact with any part of it is personally impacted by one of the stories in the paper - but not in the way one would expect.

The Baroness recounts a hunting story with a twist. Instead of a fox, the quarry turns out to be an escaped hyena, which adopts her and Constance Broddle and leads them to cover up a heinous killing. Hector Hugh Munro at his most macabre.