Short Essays

Edgar-award winning author Dana Stabenow is best known for her Kate Shugak novels, but the unifying protagonist of almost all her writing - be it crime, fantasy, horror, or science fiction - is Alaska. This genre-spanning collection of 16 short stories features familiar characters like Kate and Jim, Liam and Wy, and Bill and Moses, but also ranges farther afield than many listeners will expect.

This audiobook, read by Audie award-winning narrators, includes unabridged recordings of all Fyodor Dostoyevky's greatest works: 15 novels and novellas, 18 short stories, a short study of Dostoyevsky by Virginia Woolf, and two books of non-fiction - his Letters and European travel journal.

Do you want to master the art of communication, navigate social dynamics with ease, and express yourself with confidence? Reborn is your ultimate guide to improving your conversational skills, understanding human behavior, and sharpening your emotional intelligence through a collection of 101 thought-provoking short stories, essays, and insights. From decoding social cues to handling difficult conversations, this book covers it all.

This is an extensive collection of short essays and other pieces by C. S. Lewis that have been brought together in one volume for the first time. As well as his many books, letters, and poems, Lewis also wrote a great number of essays and shorter pieces on various subjects. He wrote extensively on Christian theology and the defense of faith but also on various ethical issues and on the nature of literature and storytelling. In this essay collection we find a treasure trove of Lewis' reflections on diverse topics.

Edgar Allan Poe was a writer, poet, editor and literary critic. Poe is best known for his poetry and short stories, particularly his tales of mystery and the macabre, and is widely regarded as a central figure of Romanticism in the United States and of American literature. Poe was one of the country's earliest practitioners of the short story and considered to be the inventor of the detective fiction genre, as well as a significant contributor to the emerging genre of science fiction.

Inspired by a personal moment of profound love and generosity, Trent Dalton, best-selling author and one of Australia's finest journalists, spent two months in 2021 speaking to people from all walks of life, asking them one simple and direct question: Can you please tell me a love story? The result is an immensely warm, poignant, funny, and moving book about love in all its guises.

This audiobook, read by Audie award-winning narrators, includes unabridged recordings of all Mark Twains's greatest works: 12 novels; over 120 of his beloved short stories; Chapters From My Autobiography; 5 pieces of short non-fiction; and 6 pieces of his groundbreaking, wide-ranging travel writing.

"Searingly honest, brilliant and disturbing. Brad Phillips peels back the skin and bone and stares right into the human soul." (Anthony Bourdain) Brad Phillips' collection of short stories adeptly walks a very thin line between taboo and propriety, with rigorous self-awareness and generosity. By confusing ideas around fiction and autobiography, Phillips writes with painful sincerity about shame, addiction, trauma, and the more troubling outreaches of sexual desire, with wit that is at odds with the subject matter. Brad Phillips is a well-known Canadian artist.

In Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms, Tim McLoughlin draws upon his three-decade career in the criminal justice system with his characteristic wit and his fascination with misfits and malfeasance. A lifetime immersed in New York City feeds short stories that evoke a landscape of characters rife with personal arrogance and misjudgment; and nonfiction essays about toeing the line when the line keeps disappearing.

A striking and nuanced collection, bringing to life awkward college students, disgraced public figures, raunchy grandparents, and mystical godmothers. To listen to these stories is to experience the transporting joys of discovery and affirmation, and to realize that story writing in America continues to flourish.

Bruce Pascoe has been described as a ‘living national treasure’ and his work as ‘revelatory’. This volume of his best and most celebrated stories and essays, collected here for the first time, ranges across his long career and explores his enduring fascination with Australia’s landscape, culture, land management and history.

The Memory Palace is a collection of tiny, crystalline historical tales that come across like luminous short fiction, and, like Nate DiMeo’s acclaimed podcast of the same name, conjure lost moments and forgotten figures who are calling out across time to be remembered. For fifteen years, Nate DiMeo has turned to the past to make sense of the way we live today, finding beauty and meaning in history’s dustier corners, holding things up to the light and weaving facts, keen insight, wit, and poignant observation into unforgettable tales.

Known for his meaty seriocomic novels–expansive works that are simultaneously lowbrow and highbrow–Tom Robbins has also published over the years a number of short pieces, predominantly nonfiction. His travel articles, essays, and tributes to actors, musicians, sex kittens, and thinkers have appeared in publications ranging from Esquire to Harper’s, from Playboy to the New York Times, High Times, and Life.

David Bain offers ten essays on writing, with an eye toward helping new writers gain their footing and keeping the more seasoned scribe motivated. It also includes his essay "Basic E-Book Self-Publishing Advice for Newbies" which has already helped hundreds of beginning indie authors. A longtime college English prof and former newspaper bureau chief, Bain infuses these essays on the writing life with years of teaching, editing, and indie publishing experience, using an easygoing yet incisive style.

A Sardinian wedding feast, the search for the perfect seaside pasta with wild fennel, meeting a risotto master: Laura Fraser journeys from the SpaghettiOs of her American childhood to savor the best of Italian cuisine and the culture that cooked it up. Using the same dreamy, delicious type of prose that made An Italian Affair a best-selling memoir, these essays will delight listeners who loved that book and all who love Italian food and culture.

Horror movies hold a complicated space in the queer community: historically misogynist, and often homo- and transphobic, the genre has also been inadvertently feminist and open to subversive readings. It Came from the Closet features twenty-five original essays by writers speaking to this relationship, through connections both empowering and oppressive. From Carmen Maria Machado on Jennifer’s Body, Jude Ellison S. Doyle on In My Skin, Addie Tsai on Dead Ringers, and many more, these conversations convey the rich reciprocity between queerness and horror.

This essay is an introduction on the Tao Te Ching exploring the three points of truth, love ,and the interconnectedness of the life. It is written in a modern style using the pop music of Kenny Loggins, Bruce Springsteen, and David Gates to illustrate the points. The purpose of this essay is to serve as a companion to the Tao Te Ching. It is for those who wish to dive deeper into the essence of the Tao while living in the modern world.

Karan Johar is synonymous with success, panache, quick wit, and outspokenness, which sometimes inadvertently creates controversy and makes headlines. KJo, as he is popularly called, has been a much-loved Bollywood film director, producer, actor, and discoverer of new talent. But who is the man behind the icon we all know? Honest, heart-warming and insightful, An Unsuitable Boy is both the story of the life of an exceptional filmmaker at the peak of his powers and of an equally extraordinary human being who shows you how to survive and succeed in life.

For over 60 years, since his award-winning debut, The Room on the Roof, was published, Ruskin Bond has charmed and entertained us with characters ranging from the animal world to humans to ghostly spirits, and his magic touch has often presented to us a world unhurried, tucked away in hills and valleys. What does it mean to be an octogenarian loved by the young and old alike? To be synonymous with the smell of pinewood and rambling mountain paths? In short, what is it that makes him Bond?

Award-winning environmentalist, author, and journalist Bill McKibben selects twenty science and nature essays that represent the best examples of the form published in the previous year. ” The selections in The Best American Science and Nature Writing 2024 reveal a trying year for our planet—from the Lahaina wildfire tragedy to the lush Amazon jungle slowly turning to savanna—while also celebrating the earth’s beautiful and mysterious ways—from the largest beaver dam on earth to the heroic innovation to prevent birds from crashing into Chicago’s expanse of glass buildings.