An astonishing collection of fifty of the greatest short stories ever written by some of literature's most highly acclaimed writers.

1. Odour of Chrysanthemums by D. H. Lawrence
2. Miss Harriet by Guy de Maupassant
3. Twenty-six Men and a Girl by Maxim Gorky
4. Hot Potatoes by Arnold Bennett
5. Rats by M. R. James
6. Zodomirsky’s Duel by Alexandre Dumas
7. The Story of an Hour by Kate Chopin
8. The Cask of Amontillado by Edgar Allan Poe
9. The Encased Man by Anton Chekhov
10. A Candle by Count Leo Tolstoy
11. Malachi’s Cove by Anthony Trollope
12. Nine O’Clock by Wilkie Collins
13. The Drover’s Wife by Henry Lawson
14. The Mines of Falun by E. T. A. Hoffmann
15. The Marquise by George Sand
16. Lost in a Pyramid by Louisa May Alcott
17. The Pistol-Shot by Alexander Pushkin
18. The Three Strangers by Thomas Hardy
19. The Boarded Window by Ambrose Bierce
20. Spindleberries by John Galsworthy
21. The Chaplet by Saki
22. In the Reign of Terror by Anatole France
23. Portrait of a Lady by Jerome K. Jerome
24. The Venturers by O. Henry
25. Mons. Cassecruche’s Inspiration by George Walter Thornbury
26. A Witch in the Peak by R. Murray Gilchrist
27. The Brown Wallet by Stacy Aumonier
28. The King of the Golden River by John Ruskin
29. The Reverend Father Gaucher’s Elixir by Alphonse Daudet
30. The Honest Thief by Fyodor Dostoyevsky
31. The Model Millionnaire by Oscar Wilde
32. The One Million Pound Bank Note by Mark Twain
33. The Monkey’s Paw by W. W. Jacobs
34. The Man with the Watches by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
35. A Poor Gentleman by George Gissing
36. An Episode of the Reign of Terror by Honoré de Balzac
37. Jeannot and Colin by Voltaire
38. The Phantom Rickshaw by Rudyard Kipling
39. The Doll’s House by Katherine Mansfield
40. The Judgement of Paris by Leonard Merrick
41. The Child with the Bread Shoes by Théophile Gautier
42. A Falling Out by Kenneth Grahame
43. Long Odds by Henry Rider Haggard
44. A Strange Goldfield by Guy Boothby
45. Hughey’s Dog by Banjo Paterson
46. The Dumb Man by Sherwood Anderson
47. Hunted Down by Charles Dickens
48. The Secret Sharer by Joseph Conrad
49. The Saloon Passenger by E. W. Hornung
50. Jenny by Victor Hugo