Showing results by publisher "Blackstone Audio, Inc." in Anthologies

This short story from the collection Wild Child was originally published in Playboy. It's the middle of a snow storm, and Johnny Bandon, a washed up crooner in the style of Frank Sinatra and Dean Martin, is getting ready to record a Christmas single. The session musicians are there, and so is his backup singer. Darlene Delmar is a down and out soul singer ravaged by cheating boyfriends and STDs. But for this one moment in time, maybe music can reach out and soothe both Johnny and Darlene's souls just one more time.

In high school Nisha worked as a dog-sitter for the Strikers, eccentric millionaires, taking care of their prized Afghan, Admiral. When she returns after college to tend to her ill mother, the Strikers call on her once again. But this time they want her to take care of Admiral II, the clone of their deceased dog. The original Admiral's experiences must, of course, be replicated as closely as possible.

Smithstown is a divided community, and Cal is right in the middle. He believes, like his best friend Dave, that evolution is scientific fact. But he's drawn to Lynnese, a devout Christian who believes in intelligent design and whose daughter, Mary-Louise, has only widened the chasm forming in the town. As Smithstown is split between science and religion and their place in the local high school, Cal doesn't know which way to turn or which side of the road to walk on.

This short story from the collection Wild Child was originally published in the New Yorker. Dámaso Funes is a medical miracle. He didn't make a sound when he was born, and as the years go by it's found that he doesn't feel pain. Not when he picks up hot coals with his bare hands or when he breaks his leg. To his father he is a sideshow freak, a spectacle from which he can make money, but to the village doctor who delivered him he is much more. He is a marvel, a wonder of genetics - the next step of human evolution.

Marita Vallalba is revered in her Venezuelan village, and not just because her son, Aquiles Maldonado, is a big league baseball player in the United States. In fact, it is because of her son and his multimillion-dollar contract that has been splashed across the Venezuelan newspapers that she is kidnapped and held for ransom. Upon returning home, Aquiles is advised against paying the ransom, but he is prepared to go to any lengths to get his motherback.

Mae is in her Southern California garden early one morning when a tiger shows up at the edge of her yard. Meanwhile Mae's sister, Anita, is in Wisconsin grieving her dead husband, dealing with a pack of feral cats under her trailer, and trying to start a relationship with Todd, a man who's lobbying for a ballot measure that will allow people to kill strays. Mae and Anita have been vegetarians since high school, but they're still learning what it means to care about animals, both wild and human.

Gordon is a delivery driver with a predilection toward road rage, and he's on the most important delivery of his life. In Santa Barbara there's a mother of three on life support waiting for Gordon, waiting for the liver he's transporting from Los Angeles. But there's a mudslide, and cars are being swept away, people being buried in the sludge. And Gordon, who's as far from a hero as they come, has to find a way to get the liver to Santa Barbara.

Thirteen-year-old Dill has a tendency to get in trouble, to act out, and perhaps it is due to his mother's latest boyfriend, Grady, leaving them behind. Meanwhile Sanjuro Ichyguro and his wife have moved from Japan to the United States and are having trouble adjusting. Between the cultural divide, the swelling emotions of their respective losses, and budding pyromania, Dill and Sanjuro are waging a silent war between their neighboring houses.

Lonnie is tired. He's tired of his job, the monotony of it, and tired of the predictability ofhis home life now that he's a father. It's a day like every other day, and hecan't face the inevitability of it all. So he lies. It's a small lie, but heknows small lies become big ones. He knows it as soon as he says his daughteris in the hospital. But he can't stop himself, and he can't stop the lie fromtaking on a life of its own.

A divorcée disturbed by her upcoming thirty-fifth birthday decides to get a Botox treatment. But then she develops a crush on the plastic surgeon, whose secretary looks like a walking advertisement for the whole industry. When he spurns her advances, she's thrown further into a crisis of self-image, wanting only to see herself in a new light, as something better.

One of F. Scott Fitzgerald's earliest short stories, "The Ice Palace" is about Sally Carrol Happer, a young Southern woman who is bored with her conventional life. She's engaged to Harry Bellamy, a young man from the North. Despite concern from her family and friends, Sally travels to Harry's hometown to meet his family. Hoping for an exciting adventure, she instead finds herself in a cold, unfamiliar place. There, in the dead of winter, she begins to question everything.

The most enduring work by the Renaissance humanist Giovanni Boccaccio, The Decameron is a collection of one hundred stories about ten young noblemen and noblewomen who escape the plague by moving to a country villa outside the Italian city of Florence. Highly influential, numerous writers have borrowed from Boccaccio's tales, including Edgar Allen Poe, John Keats, and George Eliot.

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.

Known as one of the foremost modernist novelists of the twentieth century, Virginia Woolf also wrote several shorter works. In "A Society," one of her earlier short stories, a young woman receives asubstantial inheritance from her father, on the condition that she reads all ofthe books in London Library. Distressed by the unsatisfactory quality of theliterature itself, she shares her woes with a group of female friends. Thewomen decide that they all must seek out knowledge for themselves, visitingsome of England's most iconic landmarks.

Before Louisa May Alcott achieved national fame with Little Women, she received success and recognition for Hospital Sketches, which was published in 1863. The book is based on her experience as a Civil War nurse at a Union hospital in Georgetown. In "The Death of a Soldier," an excerpt from the fourth chapter, she recounts the final days of a young Virginian blacksmith named John. Told through his nurse, Periwinkle, who stands by his side until his death, John never wavers in his desire to return to his post as a soldier and fulfill his duty.

"Eveline" is a short story from James Joyce's classic Dubliners. Nineteen-year-old Eveline has decided to leave home, but her future journey may not be all that she hopes. Like other stories in Dubliners,"Eveline" offers a penetrating analysis of Dublin society, especially its stagnation and paralysis. Each story incorporates epiphanies, by which Joyce meant to convey a sudden consciousness of the "soul" of a thing. Proceeds from sale of this title go to Reach Out and Read, an innovative literacy advocacy organization.

In "The Pit and the Pendulum," one of his most famous short works, a condemned man is judged guilty by the Spanish Inquisition and sentenced to die. Locked away in a pitch-black cell, he soon discovers a pit in the center of the room, a watery grave at its base. Above him hangs a large, razor-sharp pendulum. As the man is slowly tortured, he must face either the pit or the pendulum.

Eve's Diary," is the comic tale of Eve, the first woman in the Judeo-Christian creation story. Written in diary form, Eve offers a first-person account of her relationship with Adam, life in Eden, and their experiences after the Fall. "Eve's Diary" is one of many in a series of stories that Twain wrote, all revolving around Adam and Eve. Proceeds from sale of this title go to Reach Out and Read, an innovative literacy advocacy organization.

Set during the American Civil War, "An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge" is the classic short story of Peyton Farquhar, a Confederate sympathizer condemned to death by hanging from Owl Creek Bridge. Flashing between the present and the past - from Peyton's thoughts as he stands on the bridge to his memories as a major Confederate supporter in the South - he creates parallel realities in which truth and fantasy become indistinguishable.

Robert W. Chanbers' The King in Yellow, a collection of short stories, is considered one of the most important works of American supernatural fiction. Within the collection is "The Prophets' Paradise," a dream-like narrative of prose and poetry. Featuring personifications of Love and Truth, the story's structure has a palindrome-like quality with internal repetition. Romantic in tone and ambiguous in theme, "The Prophets' Paradise" is one of Chambers' more experimental pieces.