Showing results by publisher "Spoken Realms" in Anthologies

"A Simple Soul" is the perfect Gustave Flaubert short story: a tale told in spare, straightforward language full of richly observed details. The "soul" is Felicite, the exemplary servant of the austere Madame Aubin. Orphaned and illiterate, Felicite devotes her life to her mistress and Madame's two children. Her kindheartedness extends to her nephew and a local beggar, but it is seldom reciprocated.

This short story from The King in Yellow, by Robert W. Chambers, skilfully narrated by Mark Turetsky, concerns an artist, Severn, who lives alone in the Latin Quarter of Paris who befriends a stray cat. Not an ordinary cat, but a pampered cat with a mysterious and lovely owner.

Spot was a good-looking dog and everyone in the Klondike wanted the canine - except the two men that owned him. They tried selling him, they tried leaving him behind, and Spot seemed content to keep them guessing how he was always able to find them. Adventure, humor, and a good dose of owner frustration populate this story from famed writer Jack London.

Katherine Mansfield accomplishes an incredible drama with detailed characterization in "Miss Brill", a story only four pages long, written in the early 1920's. The main character is a lonely spinster, probably an elderly Englishwoman, living in a resort area of France near the seashore, earning enough to support herself by tutoring English children and reading the newspapers to an old invalid whose ability to hear and comprehend are questionable. She sits on a bench at the park and creates fantasy scenarios involving the people around her, enhanced by her eavesdropping skills.

Narrator and actor Glenn Hascall does a masterful job creating Edgar Allen Poe's madman endeavoring to convince the listener of his sanity while describing the murder he committed.

The story begins with a traveling salesman, Gregor Samsa, waking to find himself transformed (metamorphosed) into a large, monstrous insect-like creature. The cause of Gregor's transformation is never revealed, and Kafka himself never gave an explanation. The rest of Kafka's novella deals with Gregor's attempts to adjust to his new condition as he deals with being burdensome to his parents and sister, who are repulsed by the horrible, verminous creature Gregor has become.

Given "The Suitable Surroundings", can a person be scared to death? The answer is yes, according to Ambrose Bierce: Skepticism must occasionally apologize to truth. Once again Ambrose Bierce weaves a tale that, even under present-day conditions, is indeed frightening.

Almustafa, the chosen and beloved, must leave the port of Orphalese upon the ship he has waited upon for 12 years. As he descends to the waterfront, the people of Orphalese gather to question him and hear his wisdom on important topics of their daily lives. Kahlil Gibran's masterpiece is a series of enlightening, philosophical answers to those questions. The inspirational and spiritual words of The Prophet, written in an almost Biblical, poetic style, reveal deep insights into each of the subjects in question.

Spend your next 30 minutes traveling to a future where first adopters have the most advanced robot butlers or where everyone has a superpower - except the young man you just met. Or perhaps you prefer a good hard-boiled detective story or one about a hardscrabble life in the Australian outback.

Do you believe in ghosts? You might reconsider if you don't after listening to this story of a man haunted by a longtime enemy.

A Christmas Present, a gift from an aunt to a niece, Narrated by Mike Vendetti. And we always thought it was a guy thing.

Three disparate and suspenseful looks at ourselves in three very different worlds. These engaging short stories by three of the masters of American science fiction literature, Isaac Asimov, Kurt Vonnegut, Jr., and Philip K. Dick, open windows into our psyches, our souls, and our surroundings that presage the world we find ourselves in today. Like episodes of The Twilight Zone, cinematic in their language and characters, the stories connect with our times in surprising ways.

An award-winning audiobook narrator and producer reads Anton Chekhov's "The Beggar", a moral tale in which the arrogant and self-righteous lawyer thinks he has "saved" the beggar by teaching him how to work for a living. In fact, he would have never continued the original task (or even begun it) if it weren't for the example of the lawyer's compassionate cook, who quietly chopped the wood for him without expecting anything in return. It was Olga's example of self-sacrifice, not Skvortsoff's example of "do-goodism" that inspired the man to change his life.

War is on and an enemy has infiltrated the country looking for ways to fracture American resolve. While the enemy had little success they latched onto an idea that could bring the country to its knees. Would they get away with it, or was failure the common theme of their work on American soil? Part detective story, part science-fiction, this classic tale is narrated by Glenn Hascall.

A father and son argue, the father strikes the son upon the face, and the son promises to kill the father. When the father disappears, the son goes to trial for murder, but how can there be a conviction when there was no body, and the father appeared several miles away.

Step beyond the lamplight and into the gilded darkness of a vanished world. Ghost Stories from the Gilded Age is a classic ghost story anthology featuring eerie tales by female authors who defied convention—Charlotte Perkins Gilman, Edith Wharton, Kate Chopin, and more. Narrated by an all-star ensemble of Audie, SOVAS, and One Voice award winners and nominees, this haunting audiobook collection blends Gothic elegance with supernatural unease.

The great-niece of Harriet Beecher Stowe, Gilman wrote much about the unequal status of women within the institution of marriage. The great-niece of Harriet Beecher Stowe, Gilman wrote much about the unequal status of women within the institution of marriage.

A breathtaking piece of luck, coupled with an unlikely coincidence, secured by a piercing intellect and curious nature, lead three friends to believe they might possibly uncover pirate gold! With all the insight and reasoning of a Sherlock Holmes, Poe's William Legrand plucks faint clues seemingly from mid-air and carefully arrives at a conclusion of exactly where in the world to dig.Has he reasoned - and guessed - correctly? Or, will the only gold he sees be the color of his eponymous beetle?

Welcome to The Brass Teapot and Other Stories - the best of Season 1 of the Fiction on the Web audiobook series. There are so many people out there making beautiful literary art, so many niches snugly filled, so many jokers and prophets and lovers and fighters, so many wonderful stories finding an audience. Literary magazines are packed full of love, craft, art for art's sake, art for life's sake. In a world full of divisions, where we're bombarded by shallow media and tyrannised by selfish politics, literary magazines are antidote, antithesis, haven.

Although published under the name of Jules Verne, “In the Year 2889” is now believed to be chiefly, if not entirely, the work of Jules' son, Michel Verne. In any event, many of the topics in the story echo Verne's ideas. A rather humorous look at the future.