Love and Friendship and Other Early Works is a collection of short epistolary stories initially meant to amuse Jane Austen’s family. Austen wrote these stories at the age of 14 and 15 and read them aloud to her family. All the epistolary stories are satirical mocking the 18th-century English society from the mushy love novels to the former kings and queens of England.
The Mysterious Stranger and Other Stories is a collection of nine short stories meant to divulge the human’s wicked nature. The Mysterious Stranger is more of a novella in which Satan observes - yet doesn’t intervene - the human kind. He speaks of our precarious morality and fear and also about our innate compulsion of following the boldest and at the same time the most impulsive individual, thus acting more like sheep than wolves. Isn’t there any hope?
Mark Twain’s short stories aren’t about his religious beliefs. In fact, the Diaries of Adam and Eve should be taken with a grain of salt as they are humorous and witty and describe in a unique way the relationship between two human beings, man and woman who eventually end up falling in love with each other.
The Chronicles of Clovis is a collection of short stories all centered on the main character Clovis Sangrail. Clovis is not your average young rich kid, nonchalant and arrogant. He likes to surprise doing bizarre things that many would not even imagine. Witness his pranks with a grain of salt and be amazed at the reactions of the people tricked.
When a group of pilgrims bound for Canterbury Cathedral meet on the road, they agree to tell stories to pass the time. Each story reflects a different segment of society, from the pious to the bawdy, and has given countless readers a look into fourteenth-century English life. The stories can be read on their own or as part of the entire work and have been translated from their original middle English by D. Lain Purves.
The Best American Humorous Short Stories is a collection of 19th-century and early 20th-century stories written by the likes of Mark Twain, Edgar Allan Poe, George William Curtis, Bret Harte or O. Henry. These stories aren’t humorous in the sense of our modern understanding, they present a different kind of humor like jokes about men who don’t wear hats and ridiculous notions about the African-Americans and about women.
This is a collection of thirty comic short stories that follow various periods of Twain’s writing career.
As a teenager, Samuel Clemens, aka Mark Twain, spent a great deal of his time traveling from town to town with his brother in the states of Nevada, California and the Sandwich Islands - currently known as Hawaii. Roughing It is about these adventures from gold digging and real estate speculation to find his true meaning and vocation as a writer and novelist.
When the young Montgomery Brewster inherits one million dollars from his grandfather, his luck is only about to get better. His rich and eccentric uncle dies just a short time later, and Brewster finds some very interesting conditions in his uncle's will. He stands to inherit seven million dollars as long as he spends every dime of his grandfather's money in the course of a year. Originally written in 1902, Brewster's Millions is a charming story of wealth and responsibility.
Europe seen through the eyes of an American - Mark Twain decides to discover Europe, more specifically Germany, the Alps and Italy, but he doesn’t do it in the old-fashioned way marveling at the wonders of the Old World. In fact, he has a humorous approach ironizing both the Europeans and the Americans alike.
This collection of urban myths assembles 50 brief stories from modern oral tradition. Commonly attributed to FOAFs (friend of a friend), they are intriguing and often frightening tales passed along in casual conversation. These tales are the substance of modern folklore, an evolving treasury of narratives. From the famous Vanishing Hitchhiker to incredulous tales of alligators in the New York City sewer system these stories still live in our collective imagination.
Appalachian humor can be dry, colorful, and earthy. The chapters vary greatly ranging from topics of Love and Marriage; Schools, Religion; Lawyers; Mountaineers and the Law; Animals and Hunting; Mountaineers and City Folks; Health and Medicine; and Rural Life.
