Showing results by publisher "Penguin Audio" in Short Stories

Innovative, startlingly perceptive and aglow with colour, these 15 stories were written towards the end of Katherine Mansfield's tragically short life. Many are set in the author's native New Zealand, others in England and the French Riviera. All are revelations of the unspoken, half-understood emotions that make up everyday experience - from the blackly comic 'The Daughters of the Late Colonel' and the short, sharp sketch 'Miss Brill', in which a lonely woman's precarious sense of self is brutally destroyed, to the vivid impressionistic evocation of family life in 'At the Bay'.

From Roald Dahl, the master of the sting in the tail, a newly collected audiobook of his darkest stories, read by Will Self, Adrian Scarborough, Stephanie Beacham, Andrew Scott, Richard E Grant, Tamsin Greig, Mark Heap, Juliet Stevenson and Jessica Hynes. Even when we mean to be kind we can sometimes be cruel. We all have streaks of nastiness inside us. In these ten tales of cruelty, master storyteller Roald Dahl explores how and why it is we make others suffer.

Empowering life lessons from myths and monsters. Encounter rebel goddesses, stories of complex love and the mythical might of women as Nikita Gill takes listeners on a magical journey of empowerment. Inspired by ancient Greek mythology, discover the power and glory of the greatest goddesses. From the potent venom of Medusa and transformative sorcery of Circe to the rising up of Athena over Olympus, these are the mothers, warriors, creators, survivors and destroyers that shook the world.

Penguin presents the audiobook edition of Fear collected by Roald Dahl, read by Julian Rhind-Tutt, Kevin Eldon, Tom Felton and Rory Kinnear. An audio collection of deliciously dark ghost stories for adults, picked by Roald Dahl himself. Do you enjoy being scared? Featuring 14 classic spine-chilling stories chosen by Roald Dahl, these terrible tales of ghostly goings-on will have you shivering with fear as you listen.

The Plumberry School of Comfort Food by Cathy Bramley was originally published as a four-part serial. This is the complete story in one audiobook, read by Colleen Prendergast. Verity Bloom hasn't been interested in cooking anything more complicated than the perfect fish finger sandwich ever since she lost her best friend and baking companion two years ago. But an opportunity to help a friend lands her right back in the heart of the kitchen. The Plumberry School of Comfort Food is due to open in a few weeks' time....

Daft Wee Stories is Limmy’s first book. It is a collection of stories. There are short stories. There are longer stories. There are stupid stories. There are thoughtful stories. There are upside-down stories. There are normal-way-up stories. There are weird stories. There are less weird stories. There are really weird stories. There is nothing else like it. Have a listen.

Step into the unsettling world of Shirley Jackson this autumn with a collection of her finest, darkest short stories, revealing the queen of American Gothic at her mesmerising best. In the haunting world of Shirley Jackson, nothing is as it seems and nowhere is safe, from the city streets to the country manor and from the small-town apartment to the dark, dark woods.

What makes us innocent and how do we come to lose it? Featuring the autobiographical stories telling of Roald Dahl's boyhood and youth as well as four further tales of innocence betrayed, Dahl touches on the joys and horrors of growing up. Among other stories, you'll hear about the wager that destroys a girl's faith in her father, the landlady who has plans for her unsuspecting young guest and the commuter who is horrified to discover that a fellow passenger once bullied him at school.

Two husbands secretly agree to a night of passion - with each other's wives; a slighted old man takes an elaborate and chilling revenge on his tormentor; a sculpture comes between a scheming wife and her put-upon husband.... Lust highlights a domestic familiarity always on the edge of something much, much darker.

In the first of the four cases in Trouble is My Business, Los Angeles PI Philip Marlowe is offered a job that leaves a bad taste in the mouth: smearing a girl who's 'got her hooks into a rich man's pup'. Before too long Marlowe's up to his neck in corpses and cops and he's taken pity on the girl. There's nothing like making trouble out of your business.

A man travels to his son's school to deal with the fallout of a violent attack and to make sure his son will not lose his college place. But what exactly has his son done? And who is to blame? A young woman trying to make it in LA, working in a clothes shop while taking acting classes, turns to a riskier way of making money but will be forced to confront the danger of the game she's playing. And a family coming together for Christmas struggle to skate over the lingering darkness caused by the very ordinary brutality of a troubled husband and father.

Roald Dahl turns his pen to anything, twisting everyday life into powerful, and sometimes terrifying fantasies. Seven superb stories, full of Roald Dahl's usual magic, mystery and suspense: meet the boy who can talk to animals, the man who can see with his eyes closed, and find out about the treasure, buried deep underground on Thistley Green. 

A collection of 17 wonderful short stories showing that Tom Hanks is as talented a writer as he is an actor. A gentle Eastern European immigrant arrives in New York City after his family and his life have been torn apart by his country's civil war. A man who loves to bowl rolls a perfect game - and then another and then another and then many more in a row until he winds up ESPN's newest celebrity, and he must decide if the combination of perfection and celebrity has ruined the thing he loves.

A brand-new audiobook by the number one best-selling author Katie Fforde containing never before published Christmas short stories. Perfect for anyone who loves romance, humour and happy-ever-after endings.

Not the End of the World is Kate Atkinson's first collection of short stories. Playful and profound, they explore the world we think we know whilst offering a vision of another world which lurks just beneath the surface of our consciousness, a world where the myths we have banished from our lives are startlingly present and where imagination has the power to transform reality.

From Roald Dahl, the master of the sting in the tail, a newly collected audiobook of his darkest stories, read by Juliet Stevenson, Cillian Murphy, Adrian Scarborough, Tamsin Greig, Stephanie Beacham and Andrew Scott. 'There is a pleasure sure in being mad, which none but madmen know.' Our greatest fear is of losing control - of our lives, but, most of all, of ourselves. In these 10 unsettling tales of unexpected madness master storyteller Roald Dahl explores what happens when we let go our sanity.

There's a whole world of Dahl still to discover in a newly collected audiobook of his deliciously dark tales for adults. In war, are we at our heroic best or our cowardly worst? Featuring the autobiographical stories from Roald Dahl's time as a fighter pilot in the Second World War as well as seven other tales of conflict and strife, Dahl reveals the human side of our most inhumane activity.

Random House presents the audiobook edition of The Christmas Scorpion by Lee Child. Jack Reacher likes to head south for the winter, to stay warm, so just before Christmas he arrives in a small town in Southern California. But the weather there is not warm and dry, as it’s supposed to be: he arrives in a freak blizzard. Reacher finds refuge in a snowed-in roadhouse with four other strangers stranded by the storm.

The eight masterly stories in this new collection are all told in the first person by a classic Murakami narrator. From nostalgic memories of youth, meditations on music and an ardent love of baseball to dreamlike scenarios, an encounter with a talking monkey and invented jazz albums, together these stories challenge the boundaries between our minds and the exterior world. Occasionally, a narrator who may or may not be Murakami himself is present. Is it memoir or fiction? The listener decides.

Prepare to be terrified with C. J. Tudor's first collection of short stories, featuring eleven twisted tales of the macabre, including: The Lion at the Gate in which a strange piece of graffiti leads to a terrifying encounter for four school friends; Butterfly Island which tells the story of a group of survivors who wash up on a deserted island and make a horrifying discovery; Gloria where a cold-hearted killer encounters a strange young girl at a motorway service station with unexpected consequences.