A group of nine short stories written in the 1800's about frontier life.

This comprehensive volume of all of Twain's shorter works is representative of his vast humor and wit. "The Complete Short Stories of Mark Twain" includes the following tales: "The Notorious Jumping Frog of Calaveras County," "The Story of the Bad Little Boy," "Cannibalism in the Cars," "A Day at Niagara," "Legend of the Capitoline Venus," "Journalism in Tennessee," "A Curious Dream," "The Facts in the Great Beef Contract," "How I Edited an Agricultural...

First published in the 1905 edition of "Harper's Bazaar", "Eve's Diary" is a short story written by Mark Twain. Presented in the style of a diary, it recounts the experiences of Eve including her time in the Garden of Eden and her expulsion with Adam. A lovely short comical tale of which is believed to have been a posthumous love letter to Twain's wife. Illustrated beautifully by Lester Ralph. Contents include: "Eve's Diary", "Extract from Adam's...

These acerbic, poignant, and thought-provoking essays concern mankind, its relationship with God, and how the mind works. Twain himself considered them dark and cynical, delaying their publication for many years before finally releasing them as an anonymous, limited-edition collection. The title essay constitutes a deeply felt blow against religious hypocrisy, written in the form of a Socratic dialogue between a young idealist and an elderly, world-weary...

Excerpt: ""Moral Statistician."-I don't want any of your statistics; I took your whole batch and lit my pipe with it. I hate your kind of people. You are always ciphering out how much a man's health is injured, and how much his intellect is impaired, and how many pitiful dollars and cents he wastes in the course of ninety-two years' indulgence in the fatal practice of smoking; and in the equally fatal practice of drinking coffee; and in playing billiards...

In one of Mark Twain's most biting social satires, the allegedly pious town of Hadleyburg has its moral character put to the test. When a sack purportedly loaded with gold is offered to one citizen in return for a good deed done long ago, the upright citizens of Hadleyburg learn a lesson in humility as, one by one, their greed bubbles to the surface. --

The Mysterious Stranger is the novel attempted by the American author Mark Twain. He worked on it intermittently from 1897 through 1908. Twain wrote multiple versions of the story; each involves a supernatural character called "Satan" or "No. 44". All the versions remained unfinished (with the debatable exception of the last one, No. 44, the Mysterious Stranger).