“Twice-Told Tales” is a collection of allegorical short stories. These weird and wonderful tales are saturated with figurative, supernatural and symbolic themes. These are among Hawthorne's best stories that reveal the hidden gloominess of man.

The "Woman in White" famously opens with Walter Hartright's eerie encounter on a moonlit London road. Engaged as a drawing master to the beautiful Laura Fairlie, Walter is drawn into the sinister intrigues of Sir Percival Glyde and his "charming" friend Count Fosco, who has a taste for white mice, vanilla bonbons and poison. Pursuing questions of identity and insanity along the paths and corridors of English country houses and the madhouse, The Woman...

"Before John Cheever, Raymond Carver, and Richard Ford, there was Sherwood Anderson, who, with Winesburg, Ohio, charted a new direction in American fiction--evoking with lyrical simplicity quiet moments of epiphany in the lives of ordinary men and women. In a bed, elevated so that he can peer out the window, an old writer contemplates the fluttering of his heart and considers, as if viewing a pageant, the inhabitants of a small midwestern town. The...

The story unfolds with the arrival of a new governess at a remote country estate, who has been hired by the uncle of two young orphans to take complete charge of the children's lives and upbringing. Her first peaceful weeks are disturbed by the apparition of the ghosts of two evil servants who once served in the house.

Includes twenty-five stories including the Klondike stories, and other stories spanning American author Jack London's career.

"In these four stories, Leo Tolstoy (1828-1910) depicts desire in its different manifestations--from idealistic romance to sexual jealousy, from desperate lust to relentless longing. 'Family Happiness,' an early work, portrays the struggles of a couple as they move from courtship and passion through disillusionment to the quieter stage of married love. A passenger tells a bitter tale of sex, suspicion and murder when strangers on a train discuss the...

Dubbed the 'father of science fiction', H.G. Wells forged the path down which many have followed. This beautiful hardback compendium assembles four of his most iconic science fiction works: War of the Worlds, The Invisible Man, The First Men in the Moon and The Time Machine. Whether concerning alien invasion, time travel or the risks of scientific development, these tales examine the potential futures of humanity which are at once thrilling and terrifying. ABOUT...