Short Stories audiobooks

Miss Bracegirdle Does Her Duty

By: Stacy Aumonier

Narrated by: Cathy Dobson

Length: 42 minutes

Abridged: No

The small minded and prudish sister of an English clergyman travels on her own to a hotel in Bordeaux. When she closes the door of her room after returning from a bath, she finds a man asleep on the bed.

She realises then she is in the wrong room, but the door handle has come off in her hand, and she can’t get out. Then she discovers the man is... Read more

Old Fags

By: Stacy Aumonier

Narrated by: Cathy Dobson

Length: 54 minutes

Abridged: No

Nobel Prize winner (and Forsyte Saga author) John Galsworthy described Stacy Aumonier as ‘one of the best short-story writers of all time’ and predicted that, through the best of his stories, he would ‘outlive all the writers of his day’. "Old Fags" is one of Stacy Aumonier's most memorable stories. Set in a miserable and overcrowded block of... Read more

A Source of Irritation

By: Stacy Aumonier

Narrated by: Cathy Dobson

Length: 32 minutes

Abridged: No

Nobel Prize winner (and Forsyte Saga author) John Galsworthy described Stacy Aumonier as ‘one of the best short-story writers of all time’ and predicted that, through the best of his stories, he would ‘outlive all the writers of his day’. A Source of Irritation is one such story.

Sam Gates, an elderly and somewhat irritable agricultural labourer,... Read more

Where Was Wych Street?

By: Stacy Aumonier

Narrated by: Cathy Dobson

Length: 37 minutes

Abridged: No

Everybody remembers Wych Street, a road in London which no longer exists. But nobody can agree on exactly where it used to run.

Stacy Aumonier's classic story follows the catastrophic events sparked by a dispute over the location of the elusive street, from pub brawls and murders, to the infamous siege of Aztec Street, to the ignominious ending... Read more

No One Writes to the Colonel, and Other Stories

By: Gabriel García Márquez

Narrated by: Armando Durán, Roxanne Hernandez, Marcelo Tuber...

Length: 5 hours 46 minutes

Abridged: No

From the Nobel Prize–winning author of One Hundred Years of Solitude, a series of short stories told in "spare, unpretentious…picturesque prose" (Library Journal)Written with compassionate realism and wit, the stories in this mesmerizing collection depict the disparities of town and village life in South America, of the frightfully poor and... Read more

The Lie

By: T. C. Boyle

Narrated by: T. C. Boyle

Length: 33 minutes

Abridged: No

This short story from the collection Wild Child was originally published in the New Yorker.Lonnie is tired. He's tired of his job, the monotony of it, and tired of the predictability of his home life now that he's a father. It's a day like every other day, and he can't face the inevitability of it all. So he lies. It's a small lie, but he knows... Read more

Bulletproof

By: T. C. Boyle

Narrated by: T. C. Boyle

Length: 46 minutes

Abridged: No

This short story from the collection Wild Child was originally published in Best Life.Smithstown is a divided community, and Cal is right in the middle. He believes, like his best friend Dave, that evolution is scientific fact. But he's drawn to Lynnese, a devout Christian who believes in intelligent design and whose daughter, Mary-Louise, has... Read more

Hands On

By: T. C. Boyle

Narrated by: T. C. Boyle

Length: 19 minutes

Abridged: No

This short story from the collection Wild Child was originally published in the Kenyon Review.A divorc├®e disturbed by her upcoming thirty-fifth birthday decides to get a Botox treatment. But then she develops a crush on the plastic surgeon, whose secretary looks like a walking advertisement for the whole industry. When he spurns her advances,... Read more

The Idiot

By: Arnold Bennett

Narrated by: Cathy Dobson

Length: 12 minutes

Abridged: No

When William Froyle, ostler at the Queen's Arms at Moorthorne, learns that his betrothed has betrayed him, he determines to hang himself in the inn's coach house. His first, unsuccessful attempt, is witnessed by Daft Jimmy, the village idiot. Daft Jimmy offers to help with the process of fixing the noose and takes a great deal of interest and... Read more

The Unlucky Mother of Aquiles Maldonado

By: T. C. Boyle

Narrated by: T. C. Boyle

Length: 41 minutes

Abridged: No

This short story from the collection Wild Child was originally published in Playboy.Marita Vallalba is revered in her Venezuelan village, and not just because her son, Aquiles Maldonado, is a big league baseball player in the United States. In fact, it is because of her son and his multimillion-dollar contract that has been splashed across the... Read more

Admiral

By: T. C. Boyle

Narrated by: T. C. Boyle

Length: 46 minutes

Abridged: No

This short story from the collection Wild Child was originally published in Harper's and selected for The Best American Short Stories, 2008 by Salman Rushdie.In high school Nisha worked as a dog-sitter for the Strikers, eccentric millionaires, taking care of their prized Afghan, Admiral. When she returns after college to tend to her ill mother,... Read more

Ash Monday

By: T. C. Boyle

Narrated by: T. C. Boyle

Length: 40 minutes

Abridged: No

This short story from the collection Wild Child was originally published in the New Yorker.Thirteen-year-old Dill has a tendency to get in trouble, to act out, and perhaps it is due to his mother's latest boyfriend, Grady, leaving them behind. Meanwhile Sanjuro Ichyguro and his wife have moved from Japan to the United States and are having... Read more

Thirteen Hundred Rats

By: T. C. Boyle

Narrated by: T. C. Boyle

Length: 31 minutes

Abridged: No

This short story from the collection Wild Child was originally published in the New Yorker.When Gerald Loomis loses his wife, friends and neighbors try to rally him with food and suggestions for pets to keep him company. But Gerald has already picked a pet, a Burmese Python he's named Siddhartha. During a cold snap, Gerald ventures out to the... Read more

Anacapa

By: T. C. Boyle

Narrated by: T. C. Boyle

Length: 41 minutes

Abridged: No

This short story from Wild Child was originally published in A Public Space.Reeling from his second divorce, Hunter is taken out on a party boat by his old college roommate, Damian. Looking forward to the promise of distraction, and maybe even the chance to meet a woman, Hunter acquiesces to the fishing adventure, despite his tendency toward... Read more

Three Quarters of the Way to Hell

By: T. C. Boyle

Narrated by: T. C. Boyle

Length: 28 minutes

Abridged: No

This short story from the collection Wild Child was originally published in Playboy.It's the middle of a snow storm, and Johnny Bandon, a washed up crooner in the style of Frank Sinatra and Dean Martin, is getting ready to record a Christmas single. The session musicians are there, and so is his backup singer. Darlene Delmar is a down and out... Read more

Wild Child

By: T. C. Boyle

Narrated by: T. C. Boyle

Length: 2 hours 24 minutes

Abridged: No

This is the title story from the collection Wild Child and was originally published in McSweeney's.It is at the end of the eighteenth century, in the new French Republic, when the savage is first seen outside the village of Lacaune. The boy quickly becomes a legend among the townsfolk. Is he truly a human child or a wild beast?"Wild Child" is... Read more

Moti Guj - Mutineer

By: Rudyard Kipling

Narrated by: Cathy Dobson

Length: 16 minutes

Abridged: No

"When Deesa the mahout wants to go on a drinking spree for ten days, he entrusts his beloved elephant Moti Guj to another mahout for the period. The elephant is well aware of the number of days that he is to serve under his temporary master.

When Deesa loses track of time and fails to show up on the eleventh morning, Moti Guj enacts his own very... Read more

Balto

By: T. C. Boyle

Narrated by: T. C. Boyle

Length: 45 minutes

Abridged: No

This short story from the collection Wild Child was originally published in the Paris Review and selected for The Best American Short Stories, 2007 by Stephen King.Angelle's father is a drunk, and Angelle and her little sister, Lisette, know it. Their mother has told them as much. But their mother has abandoned them and gone back to France,... Read more

Question 62

By: T. C. Boyle

Narrated by: T. C. Boyle

Length: 43 minutes

Abridged: No

This short story from the collection Wild Child was originally published in Harper's.Mae is in her southern California garden early one morning when a tiger shows up at the edge of her yard. Meanwhile Mae's sister, Anita, is in Wisconsin grieving her dead husband, dealing with a pack of feral cats under her trailer, and trying to start a... Read more

La Conchita

By: T. C. Boyle

Narrated by: T. C. Boyle

Length: 29 minutes

Abridged: No

This short story from the collection Wild Child was originally published in the New Yorker.Gordon is a delivery driver with a predilection toward road rage, and he's on the most important delivery of his life. In Santa Barbara there's a mother of three on life support waiting for Gordon, waiting for the liver he's transporting from Los Angeles.... Read more

Sin Dolor

By: T. C. Boyle

Narrated by: T. C. Boyle

Length: 44 minutes

Abridged: No

This short story from the collection Wild Child was originally published in the New Yorker.Dámaso Funes is a medical miracle. He didn't make a sound when he was born, and as the years go by it's found that he doesn't feel pain. Not when he picks up hot coals with his bare hands or when he breaks his leg. To his father he is a sideshow freak, a... Read more

A Permanent Member of the Family

By: Russell Banks

Narrated by: Danny Campbell, Andrus Nichols & Robin Miles

Length: 5 hours 58 minutes

Abridged: No

Suffused with Russell Banks’s trademark lyricism and reckless humor, the twelve stories in A Permanent Member of the Family examine the myriad ways we try—and sometimes fail—to connect with one another, as we seek a home in the world.In the title story, a father looks back on the legend of the cherished family dog whose divided loyalties... Read more

The Angel on the Roof

By: Russell Banks

Narrated by: Robert Fass

Length: 17 hours 53 minutes

Abridged: No

""At his shattering best. . . Banks offers answers that are tough, honest, and inevitable without being simple. . . . A book that is not to be missed."" —New York TimesWith The Angel on the Roof, acclaimed author Russell Banks offers readers an astonishing collection of thirty years of his short fiction, revised especially for this volume and... Read more

The Parrot

By: Guy de Maupassant

Narrated by: Cathy Dobson

Length: 14 minutes

Abridged: No

Desiree is married to a wealthy but violent captain of a fishing trawler. For ten years of marriage he terrorizes her, until one night his boat is wrecked at sea and he is never seen alive again.

Four years later, Desiree buys an ill-tempered and foul-mouthed parrot in an auction, and a new nightmare begins. Read more