検索キーワード： 制作 "MuseumAudiobooks.com" 短編小説

Patrick Lafcadio Hearn, was an Irish writer known also by the Japanese name Koizumi Yakumo. His book Kwaidan: Stories and Studies of Strange Things, comprises two parts, the first being the "Kwaidan Proper" and the second, "Insect-Studies", which consists of an essay each on ants, butterflies and mosquitos. According to the author, most of the folk tales and ghost stories in the first part were translated from old Japanese texts. The themes encompass resurrection, sacrifice, magic, and the realm of dreams.

Miss Conway fancies Andy Donovan in this tale of love and lies. She reinvents herself after their first meeting, dressing in all black! But Mr. Donovan assumes she's in mourning and when questioned she lies about the death of a loved one. Can she keep the lie going and still win Andy's affection?

In the Year 2889 by Jules Verne is a diary of the observations of Fritz Napoleon Smith, the editor of an influential futuristic newspaper. It is an action-packed tale of technological advances and science fiction scenarios. Some of the predictions were remarkably accurate.

William Wymark Jacobs (1863-1943) was an English author of short stories and novels, well known for his comedies involving rural Essex characters. His most famous story, "The Monkey's Paw" (1902) is a tale of intense psychological horror. "The Old Man of the Sea" is a farcical comedy about a young man, George Wright, who tries to win a lady’s hand by pretending to be the only heir of a rich uncle.

Daniel Defoe (c. 1660-1731) was an English trader, author, and journalist. Defoe was a prolific writer, publishing more than 300 works on a range of topics including economics, politics, crime, religion, marriage, psychology, and the supernatural. He is most famous for his novel Robinson Crusoe (1719).

Charlotte Perkins Gilman (1860-1935) was a prominent sociologist, novelist, and writer of short stories, poetry, and nonfiction. In the short story "If I Were a Man", a married woman named Mollie Mathewson yearns with all her heart to be a man and is suddenly transported into the body and mind of her husband, Gerald. Through the character of Mollie, Gilman illustrates the roles and attitudes of women in early 19th-century society. The utopian novel Herland describes an isolated society composed entirely of women, with an ideal social order free of war, conflict, and domination.

Dubliners is a collection of 15 short stories by James Joyce, first published in 1914. They provide a portrait of Irish middle class life in and around Dublin in the early years of the 20th century. Each of the stories offers glimpses into the lives of ordinary Dubliners, and together they paint a portrait of a nation. Ireland was at a crossroads of history and culture at that time, pursuing a search for national identity and purpose.

"The Mortal Immortal" (1833), a short story by Mary Shelley, relates the life of Winzy, a man who gains eternal life after taking a mysterious drink. At first elated, Winzy likes immortality less and less as time passes and his loved ones grow old and die. Winzy starts considering himself a pariah among people because they die, while he cannot. He even envies the mortality of others but at the same time dreads death more and more, due to having witnessed the deaths of so many, including that of his beloved wife, Bertha.

Jerome Klapka Jerome (1859-1927) was an English writer and humourist. Passing of the Third Floor Back, first published in 1904, is a collection of early 20th-century short stories portraying the small-minded inhabitants of a building who make life unpleasant for one another. A mysterious stranger arrives, and starts to bring about miraculous changes in the behaviour of the tenants, improving the ambiance and the lives of all.

Bâtard is a short story by Jack London, first published in 1902 under the title Diable - a Dog in The Cosmopolitan. The narrative follows Black Leclère, a hunter, trapper, and adventurer in the Northwest at the time of the Alaskan gold rush. They were both devils - one in human and one in canine form. For five years, the two of them roamed the north, from St. Michael's and the Yukon delta to the head-reaches of the Pelly and even as far as the Peace River and the Great Slave Lake.

A ghost story about a non-existent room 13 in an inn. The occupant of room 12 and the inn-keep hear noises next door, but it’s not coming from room 14. When they do discover the door to number 13, strange things start happening....

A man rants and raves about people’s gullibility when he encounters the Angel of the Odd who claims to cause weird events. Unconvinced, the cynic drives the angel away and falls asleep. Then, a series of bizarre incidents follows.

"Mother Sauvage" by Guy de Maupassant is a short horror story of the Franco-Prussian War. The four young Prussian soldiers quartered in the house of Mother Sauvage do chores around the house as if it were their own. Mother Savage continually asks them about the French 23rd Regiment of the Line in which her son is serving, but they know nothing. When she hears of her son’s death, Mother Sauvage exacts revenge on the young soldiers. The story subtly explores the theme of revenge from the perspective of the narrator, and from the perspective of his friend Serval, who tells him the Mother Savage story.

Twice-Told Tales by Nathaniel Hawthorne is an 1837 collection of stories that had previously appeared in literary journals like Atlantic Souvenir and The Token. The stories explore ideas of pride and sin through allegory in a New England setting. Contemporaries of Hawthorne, including Edgar Allan Poe and Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, praised the book. Twice-Told Tales includes stories like "Sunday at Home", "The Wedding-Knell", "The Minister's Black Veil", "The Maypole of Merry Mount", "The Gentle Boy", "Mr. Higginbotham's Catastrophe", and more.

Winesburg, Ohio is a short story cycle by Sherwood Anderson. The plot revolves around the life of George Willard, from his childhood to him leaving the town as an adult. The work comprises 22 stories, with the first, "The Book of the Grotesque", serving as introduction. The book is considered a pioneering work of modernist literature due to the prominence giving to the psychological insight of the characters and the simple prose style.

The Forged Coupon is a novella in two parts by Leo Tolstoy. In Part One, the schoolboy Mitya is in desperate need of money to pay a debt, but his father refuses to help him. He then changes a 2.50 rouble bond coupon to read 12.50 roubles. This one wicked deed sets off a chain of events which affects the lives of dozens of others. In Part Two, a good deed also sets of a series of events, but to the benefit of many people.

The Beast in the Jungle is a 1903 novella by Henry James, first published in the collection titled The Better Sort. The story addresses themes like fate, loneliness, love and death. The protagonist, John Marcher, anticipates an event that he believes will set him apart from other people. Marcher is frozen by his fears and a sense of impending doom. A haunting tale of egotism, fear of the unknown and unrequited love, the story warns that the only thing one has to fear is fear itself. John’s failure to reciprocate May Bartram’s love condemns him.

"On Duty with Inspector Field" is a nonfiction article by Charles Dickens (1812-1870), first published in 1851 in the magazine Household Words. Dickens authored 15 novels, five novellas, and countless short stories and articles. In this one, Inspector Charles Frederick Field and his men are accompanied by the narrator on an all-night journey through the most dangerous establishments of London’s underworld.

Ambrose Gwinnett Bierce (1842 - circa 1914) was a short story writer, journalist, poet, and Civil War veteran. Bierce wrote realistically of the terrible things he had seen in the Civil War in stories like "The Affair at Coulter's Notch", making him a pioneer of the psychological horror story. In this tale, a Captain Coulter leads the way in a fierce battle between Federal and Confederate forces to capture a house. After the battle, a horrible scene is revealed. The theme of "Coulter's Notch" is to question the nature of war and highlight the sacrifice of the individual.

The story of The Scarlet Plague takes place in 2073 in the San Francisco area, 60 years after an apocalyptic pandemic called the Red Death or Scarlet Plague has depopulated the Earth. James Smith, one of the survivors, lives with his grandsons who are hunter-gatherers in a tribal world. He relates the horror of the plague to them, and tells them of the time when he was a professor of English, and of the start of the pandemic. His grandsons, who are of limited cognitive ability, refuse to believe him; they cannot believe that the disease was spread by germs.