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Charles Dickens · 1843

Three spirits visit a cold old miser on Christmas Eve and show him his own past, his clerk's crippled son, and the grave that waits for him if nothing changes.

Ambrose Bierce · 1889

Молодой солдат Союза стоит на посту над долиной Виргинии. Он видит одинокого всадника-конфедерата на скале — и должен выбрать между долгом и немыслимым.

O. Henry · 1909

Писатель приезжает в сонный Нашвилл за сюжетом и натыкается на трагедию бедности, гордости и жестокости бывшего конфедерата.

Kate Chopin · 1897

A worn-out mother finds fifteen dollars. She means to spend it on her children — and somehow does not.

Frank R. Stockton · 1881

Муж берёт на себя простое поручение жены — купить кусочек красного коленкора — и проводит весь день, обходя магазины Нью-Йорка в поисках точного оттенка.

Edgar Rice Burroughs · 1912

Пенсильванский ветеран Гражданской войны таинственно переносится на Марс — планету, населённую зелёными гигантами. Часть первая.

Edgar Rice Burroughs · 1912

Часть вторая. Джон Картер изучает жизнь зелёных тарков, встречает Тарса Таркаса и Солу, приручает зверя Вулу и впервые видит воздушные корабли красных марсиан.

Edgar Rice Burroughs · 1912

Продолжение: Дея Торис попадает в руки тарков. Джон Картер придумывает план побега. Часть третья.

Edgar Rice Burroughs · 1912

Финал: Картер спасает Дею Торис и возвращается на Землю — но мечта о Марсе не отпускает его. Часть четвёртая.

O. Henry · 1903

A brilliant safecracker gives up crime for love — until a child locked in an airtight bank vault forces him to choose between the girl's life and his hidden past.

O. Henry · 1905

Two young art students in love marry and live happily but poor — and when money runs short, each secretly gives up their art to support the other.

Sarah Orne Jewett · 1886

Девочка с фермы в штате Мэн встречает молодого охотника, который ищет редкую белую цаплю. Ей предстоит выбрать между деньгами и тайной леса.

O. Henry · 1906

A man waits in a dark doorway to keep a twenty-year-old promise to his oldest friend — but the friend who comes is wearing a badge.

Ambrose Bierce · 1890

In the moments before he is hanged, a Confederate civilian lives through a vivid, desperate escape.

James Baldwin · 1896

A runaway slave pulls a thorn from a lion's paw — and in the Roman arena the grateful beast refuses to harm him.

James Joyce · 1914

A Dublin boy's romantic quest to a bazaar called Araby collapses into a bitter epiphany about vanity and desire.

Jules Verne · 1873

A silent English gentleman bets half his fortune that he can circle the earth in eighty days — with a detective on his heels the whole way, certain that the journey is a bank robber's escape.

Kate Chopin · 1896

Молодая жена с луизианской плантации сбегает в Новый Орлеан, чтобы понять, чего ждёт от жизни — и от мужа.

Herman Melville · 1853

Старый адвокат с Уолл-стрит нанимает тихого писца, который однажды начинает отвечать на каждую просьбу: «Я не хочу». Странная история о человеке, который перестал жить.

Herman Melville · 1855

Американский капитан Делано встречает странный испанский корабль с измученной командой у чилийского побережья. Это первая часть повести Германа Мелвилла.

Herman Melville · 1855

Продолжение истории: Делано всё больше тревожится из-за странного поведения капитана Серено и его слуги Бабо. Часть вторая.

Herman Melville · 1855

Финал: правда о восстании рабов на корабле раскрыта. Американцы атакуют, а капитан Серено уже не оправится.

James Baldwin · 1896

Hiding after six lost battles, Robert Bruce watches a spider try, fail, and try again — and takes heart to fight once more.

Nathaniel Hawthorne · 1837

An old doctor gives four elderly friends water from the Fountain of Youth — and watches whether they have learned from their mistakes.

Bram Stoker · 1897

An English solicitor travels to a castle in the Carpathians to close a property sale, and finds that his client keeps no servants, casts no reflection, and sleeps by day in a box of earth.

Nathaniel Hawthorne · 1852

Старая ведьма оживляет своё пугало и отправляет его в мир в обличье знатного господина. Сатира на то, как люди судят по внешнему виду.

Robert Southey · 1837

A curious little girl wanders into the empty house of three bears, tastes their porridge, breaks a chair, and falls asleep — until the bears come home.

Charles & Mary Lamb · 1807

Prince Hamlet of Denmark, visited by his murdered father's ghost, seeks revenge on his treacherous uncle the king.

Brothers Grimm · 1812

Abandoned in the forest by their parents, a brother and sister outwit a wicked witch whose house is made of bread, cake and sugar.

Joseph Jacobs · 1890

Henny-Penny believes the sky is falling and hurries to tell the king — gathering rhyming-named friends, until a sly fox offers a shortcut.

Rudyard Kipling · 1902

A lazy Camel who answers everything with 'Humph!' is given a hump of his own by the Djinn in charge of all deserts.

Rudyard Kipling · 1902

A rude Rhinoceros steals a Parsee's cake — so the Parsee fills his baggy skin with itchy crumbs, and that is why rhinos are so ill-tempered.

Rudyard Kipling · 1902

A Whale swallows a shipwrecked Mariner — who makes the inside so uncomfortable that the Whale can never again eat anything bigger than small fish.

Joseph Jacobs · 1890

Jack trades the family cow for a handful of magic beans that grow overnight into a beanstalk reaching a giant's castle in the sky.

American Folk Tale · 1900

A steel-driving man takes on a steam drill — and wins, at the cost of his life. The tall tale of the American railroad.

Jack London · 1904

Юный инуит доказывает, что он — великий охотник, побеждая не грубой силой, а смекалкой. История о хитрости, что побеждает силу.

James Baldwin · 1896

Defeated and in hiding, King Alfred is scolded by a peasant woman for letting her cakes burn — and goes on to win back his kingdom.

Brothers Grimm · 1812

A girl in a red hood takes food to her sick grandmother, but a hungry wolf reaches the house first — until a passing hunter saves them both.

Mark Twain · 1886

Английский военный, известный как великий герой, обязан всей карьерой только чистому везению. И старый учитель знает правду.

Charles & Mary Lamb · 1807

Spurred by witches' prophecies and his ruthless wife, the Scottish general Macbeth murders his king to seize the throne — and is destroyed by guilt and blood.

O. Henry · 1908

Молодой Гиллиан получает в наследство ровно тысячу долларов и обязан отчитаться, как именно он их потратил. О. Генри играет с темами благотворительности, любви и цены тайны.

American Folk Tale · 1916

Гигантский лесоруб и его синий бык Бэйб расчищают огромные леса Северной Америки. Американская небывальщина о невероятной силе и доброй дружбе.

Willa Cather · 1905

Питтсбургский школьник, одержимый театром и красотой, ищет побега из серой жизни среднего класса. Часть первая.

Willa Cather · 1905

Продолжение: Пол сбегает с украденными пятью тысячами долларов в Нью-Йорк ради недели роскоши. Часть вторая трагической истории мальчика, мечтавшего о красоте.

American Folk Tale · 1916

Техасский ковбой, выращенный койотами, укротил самую дикую границу Америки. Народная небылица о Пекос Билле — герое американского Дикого Запада.

Ellis Parker Butler · 1905

Упрямый железнодорожный агент классифицирует морских свинок как «свиней» — пока эти быстро размножающиеся «свиньи» не заполоняют станцию.

Nathaniel Hawthorne · 1844

Молодой студент в Падуе поселяется в комнатах над ядовитым садом, который выращивает странный учёный со своей прекрасной дочерью. Часть первая.

Nathaniel Hawthorne · 1844

Продолжение: Джованни узнаёт о тёмной природе сада Раппаччини и ищет противоядие для Беатриче. Часть вторая.

Charles & Mary Lamb · 1807

Two young lovers from the feuding houses of Verona love in secret — with tragic consequences.

Brothers Grimm · 1812

A miller's daughter must spin straw into gold with the help of a strange little man — who demands a terrible price unless she can guess his name.

Arthur Conan Doyle · 1892

A terrified woman comes to Baker Street: her sister died two years ago crying out about a speckled band, and now the same low whistle has begun in the night outside her own door.

Nathaniel Hawthorne · 1835

Молодой путник останавливается в доме горной семьи и делится мечтой остаться в памяти людей — в ночь смертельного обвала. Классический рассказ Готорна о судьбе и амбициях.

Aesop · 1912

All summer the grasshopper sings while the ant works. When winter comes, only one of them has food.

Anton Chekhov · 1889

A banker bets a young lawyer two million that he cannot endure fifteen years of solitary confinement — and the prisoner outgrows both the money and the world that prizes it.

Nathaniel Hawthorne · 1843

Учёный одержим желанием убрать крошечное родимое пятно со щеки своей жены. Притча о перфекционизме и о цене стремления к недостижимому совершенству.

Ambrose Bierce · 1891

Старый одинокий поселенец заколотил окно своей хижины — и история, которая объясняет почему, скрывает жуткую тайну.

Caty Weaver · 2008

Современная подростковая история ужасов о мальчике, переехавшем в новый дом. Он встречает странного нового друга на Грейвз-Энд-Роуд.

Aesop · 1912

A bored shepherd boy fools the village twice with a fake wolf. The third time, the wolf is real — and no one comes.

Brothers Grimm · 1812

An old donkey, dog, cat, and rooster, all past their prime, set out for Bremen — and frighten a band of robbers out of house and home.

Mark Twain · 1893

A gold prospector stops at a beautiful cottage in the abandoned mining country — and learns why a young husband keeps his wife’s portrait so carefully dusted.

Edgar Allan Poe · 1846

A man lures the rival who insulted him deep into the catacombs for a cold and final revenge.

Mark Twain · 1865

A storyteller named Smiley will bet on anything — even on whether a frog can out-jump every frog in Calaveras County.

O. Henry · 1904

A homeless man tries every trick to get arrested for a warm winter in jail — and is finally taken in just as he decides to go straight.

Aesop · 1912

A thirsty crow can't reach the water at the bottom of a tall pitcher — so she thinks her way out.

Washington Irving · 1824

Скупой ростовщик из колониального Бостона заключает сделку с дьяволом — и платит за это душой.

Fitz-James O'Brien · 1858

Учёный одержим микроскопами и встречает медиума, которая укажет ему путь к совершенной линзе. Часть первая.

Fitz-James O'Brien · 1858

Продолжение истории: учёный создаёт идеальный микроскоп из похищенного бриллианта и обнаруживает в капле воды крошечную деву Анимулу. Часть вторая.

Aesop · 1912

A dog with meat sees his reflection in the water, mistakes it for another dog with a bigger piece, and loses his own meat by trying to grab more.

Rudyard Kipling · 1902

An Elephant's Child of 'satiable curiosity asks one question too many — and the Crocodile on the great grey-green, greasy Limpopo River gives him his trunk.

Brothers Grimm · 1812

A poor shoemaker is rescued by two little elves who stitch his shoes each night — until he and his wife find a way to thank them.

Hans Christian Andersen · 1837

A vain emperor buys a magic cloth that does not exist, and a small child finally tells the truth.

O. Henry · 1908

Двое жуликов, Джефф Питерс и Энди Такер, ставят брачное объявление от мнимой богатой вдовы — и наживаются на письмах одиноких мужчин.

Hans Christian Andersen · 1844

A little fir tree is forever longing to be bigger and grander, and never notices its own happiness until it is gone.

Aesop · 1912

A fox can't jump high enough to reach a bunch of grapes — and decides they were never worth it anyway.

Brothers Grimm · 1812

A princess loses her golden ball in a well, and a frog returns it — on the promise that she will let him be her companion.

O. Henry · 1905

A young couple with almost no money each secretly sell their dearest possession to buy the other a Christmas gift.

Jack London · 1901

На Юконе торговец и миссионер сталкиваются с индейским вождём, ненавидящим бога белых. Каждый должен выбрать: отречься или умереть.

Aesop · 1912

A man's goose lays one golden egg a day — until his greed makes him kill it for the gold he imagines inside.

Oscar Wilde · 1888

High above the city, a gilded statue watches over its people — until a swallow arrives and changes everything.

Eleanor H. Porter · 1911

Скорбящая вдова отгораживается от всего мира после смерти маленькой дочери. Случайная встреча на кладбище и зов маленького сына напоминают ей, как снова жить.

Frank R. Stockton · 1882

In a half-barbaric kingdom, a jealous princess must choose her lover's fate behind two doors: a lady, or a tiger.

O. Henry · 1907

A young woman believes the last leaf on the vine outside her window holds her life. An old painter risks everything to give her hope.

Alphonse Daudet · 1873

A boy in Alsace arrives late to find his village schoolroom solemn and full: this is the last lesson in French before only German may be taught, and Monsieur Hamel teaches it with all his heart.

Jack London · 1901

Old and blind, an Inuit elder is left behind by his tribe and faces the law of nature alone in the snow.

Washington Irving · 1820

The superstitious schoolmaster Ichabod Crane courts a farmer's daughter — and meets the terrifying Headless Horseman.

Edith Wharton · 1900

Богатый муж обнаруживает роман своей жены и думает уйти от неё. Но он понимает, что легче ничего не делать.

Aesop · 1912

A small mouse spares a sleeping lion — and later, when the lion is trapped, returns the favour. Kindness is never wasted.

Hans Christian Andersen · 1845

On a freezing New Year's Eve, a poor girl lights her last matches one by one and sees beautiful visions in the flames.

Bret Harte · 1868

A rough California gold-mining camp is transformed when it adopts an orphaned newborn.

Saki · 1914

Barred from a seaside treat for his 'misbehaviour', the boy Nicholas outwits his self-righteous aunt and slips into the forbidden lumber-room.

Edgar Allan Poe · 1842

As plague ravages the land, Prince Prospero seals his court inside a fortified abbey for a masquerade — until a figure costumed as the Red Death itself walks among the revellers.

Aesop · 1912

A milkmaid daydreams her pail of milk into a fortune — until one proud toss of her head spills it all.

Oscar Wilde · 1887

A charming but penniless young man gives his last coin to a ragged old model — never guessing the beggar is one of the richest men in Europe.

W. W. Jacobs · 1902

On a stormy night an old soldier brings the Whites a mummified monkey's paw that grants three wishes — and proves that those who interfere with fate do so to their sorrow.

Guy de Maupassant · 1884

A clerk's wife borrows a diamond necklace for one glittering night, loses it, and pays for the replacement with ten years of poverty — never guessing the truth about the jewel.

Oscar Wilde · 1888

A nightingale gives her own heart's blood to make a single red rose for a student's love — a sacrifice the world finds worthless.

Aesop · 1912

The North Wind and the Sun argue over who is stronger, and a passing traveller's coat decides it — gentle warmth wins where cold force fails.

Stephen Crane · 1897

Four men row a small boat through wild seas toward the Florida coast after their ship sinks. Based on Crane’s own shipwreck.

Saki · 1914

A self-possessed young lady spins a chilling ghost story for a nervous visitor — proving that romance at short notice is her speciality.

Nikolai Gogol · 1842

A meek Petersburg copying-clerk starves himself for a fine new overcoat, only to have it torn from his back — and then returns as a ghost to haunt the bridges of the capital.

Oscar Wilde · 1890

A beautiful young man wishes that his portrait might grow old in his place — and gets his wish, so that every cruelty he commits shows on the canvas instead of his face.

Hans Christian Andersen · 1835

A prince wants a real princess — and finds one by hiding a single pea under twenty mattresses.

Edgar Allan Poe · 1844

Детектив Дюпен ищет письмо, которое полиция Парижа не может найти, обыскав каждый угол комнаты министра. Разгадка — в том, как мыслит сам похититель.

O. Henry · 1907

Two small-time crooks kidnap a wild little boy for ransom — and soon wish they had never met him.

Hamlin Garland · 1890

Союзный солдат возвращается с Гражданской войны на ферму в Висконсине. Дома его три года ждут жена и трое детей.

Oscar Wilde · 1888

A tender fairy tale about a giant whose garden never sees spring — until he learns to love.

Jack London · 1906

Джек Лондон описывает землетрясение и пожар в Сан-Франциско 1906 года — репортаж очевидца с горящих улиц.

Kate Chopin · 1894

A young wife, told that her husband has died, glimpses a sudden and secret freedom in the hour that follows — until the front door opens.

James Baldwin · 1896

A proud tyrant forces the great archer William Tell to shoot an apple from his own son's head.

Saki · 1914

On a stuffy train, a bachelor silences three fidgety children with a subversive tale of a 'horribly good' little girl — to their aunt's dismay.

Robert Louis Stevenson · 1886

A lawyer follows the trail of the small, hateful man who holds a key to his friend's back door and everything in his friend's will — and finds out what a respectable doctor keeps locked in his laboratory.

Hans Christian Andersen · 1841

A prince disguises himself as a swineherd to win a proud princess — and teaches her a hard lesson about what is truly worth having.

James Baldwin · 1896

A flatterer envies the king's good fortune — until he is seated beneath a sharp sword hung by a single horsehair.

Edgar Allan Poe · 1843

A murderer insists he is perfectly sane — even as the imagined beating of his victim's heart drives him to confess.

Asbjørnsen and Moe · 1845

Three brother goats want the sweet grass across the river, but a hungry troll guards the bridge — so the smallest goes first and the biggest settles the troll for good.

Joseph Jacobs · 1890

Three little pigs build houses of straw, sticks, and bricks — and a hungry wolf huffs and puffs to blow them down.

Leo Tolstoy · 1885

A king seeks the answers to three questions and learns them not from scholars but from a hermit, a wounded stranger, and a single day's events.

H. G. Wells · 1895

A man builds a machine that travels in time, comes back starving and lame after eight days away, and tells his dinner guests what humanity has become in the year 802,701.

Aesop · 1912

A boastful hare and a patient tortoise agree to race. The hare laughs, sleeps — and loses.

Aesop · 1912

A town mouse and a country mouse trade homes — and the country mouse learns that a plain meal in peace beats a grand feast in fear.

Hans Christian Andersen · 1843

A grey duckling, mocked by everyone on the farm, wanders cold and alone through marsh and winter — until spring reveals that he was a swan all along.

O. Henry · 1903

A mountain couple climb to a Justice of the Peace for a divorce — and learn that life turns in circles.

Aesop · 1912

A hungry wolf invents a crime to justify eating a lamb. Tyrants never lack excuses.

Charlotte Perkins Gilman · 1892

Confined to a nursery for a rest cure, a woman becomes obsessed with the room's hideous yellow wallpaper — and with the creeping woman she comes to see trapped behind its pattern.

Jack London · 1908

A man walks alone through the Yukon at seventy-five degrees below zero. He has a dog with him. He thinks he knows the cold.

Anton Chekhov · 1886

On Christmas Eve a nine-year-old apprentice pours out his misery in a letter to his grandfather in the village — and drops it in the post-box with an address that can never arrive.