Short Essays

Word Play is a collection of 101 short stories, essays, and insights to help you improve your communication skills. This book discusses a wide range of topics to build a deeper perception of human dynamics so you can communicate with clarity, power, and warmth. In Word Play, you will learn: how to form allies and grow a network from the ground up, the art of consistency and how to stay disciplined, how to stop people-pleasing, fundamental truths regarding the field of dark psychology, and more.

Short Essays for Inquiring Minds invites listeners into a lively conversation about the forces shaping modern life. Composed of over fifty compelling essays, Ronald Gruner’s latest book ranges effortlessly across science, history, politics, economics, and popular culture, linking today’s headlines to the deeper currents of history. Complex subjects such as pandemics, artificial intelligence, trade wars, and presidential leadership are unpacked through human stories and memorable anecdotes.

“Never write if you can speak; never speak if you can nod; never nod if you can wink.”

This is an extensive collection of short essays and other pieces by C. S. Lewis that have been brought together in one volume for the first time. As well as his many books, letters, and poems, Lewis also wrote a great number of essays and shorter pieces on various subjects. He wrote extensively...

Edgar-award winning author Dana Stabenow is best known for her Kate Shugak novels, but the unifying protagonist of almost all her writing - be it crime, fantasy, horror, or science fiction - is Alaska. This genre-spanning collection of 16 short stories features familiar characters like Kate and Jim, Liam and Wy, and Bill and Moses, but also ranges farther afield than many listeners will expect.

Every tale of terror, every poem of unearthly beauty, every essay of dark philosophy — collected in one definitive volume. This is the complete and unabridged collection of Edgar Allan Poe's works: the gothic horror tales that invented a genre, the poems that still haunt the English language, the mystery stories that created the detective novel, and the critical essays that changed how we think about literature. Includes all tales of horror and suspense: "The Fall of the House of Usher," "The Masque of the Red Death," "The Black Cat," "The Pit and the Pendulum," "The Tell-Tale Heart," "...

From bestselling and award-winning author and professor Elizabeth McCracken comes an irresistible look at the art of writing. Writing can feel like an endless series of decisions. How does one face the blank page? Move a character around a room? Deal with time? Undertake revision? The good and...

This program is read by a full cast. Edited by The Bronx Is Reading founder Saraciea J. Fennell and featuring an all-star cast of Latinx contributors, Wild Tongues Can’t Be Tamed is a ground-breaking anthology that will spark dialogue and inspire hope In Wild Tongues Can’t Be Tamed...

Veteran golfers know that the secret to a lower score is a solid short game, but mastering those small strokes can be maddening - even for the pros. One of golf's most revered instructors, Stan Utley now reveals the step-by-step tactics behind his revolutionary short-game techniques in The Art of the Short Game. 

“Short stories can act like little tuning forks, helping us to clarify our own values,” writes guest editor Celeste Ng. “In a time when our values are being tested daily, it’s hard to think of anything more important.” The Best American Short Stories 2025 resonates precisely at this...

Grace Livingston Hill’s Lost Gems Rare Short Stories of Faith, Love, and Everyday Miracles Edition – Plus One Brand-New Story for Today) Step back into a gentler era when a single act of kindness could change a heart forever—and discover that the same God who worked in village post offices and church choirs is still working today. This exclusive collection gathers ten of Grace Livingston Hill’s most cherished (and long-forgotten) early magazine stories—heartwarming gems written before her famous novels, each one brimming with gentle humor, quiet faith, and the unmistakable touch ...

This flash-fiction form has become a popular structure for efficiently teaching a wide variety of literary devices, terms, and processes in a targeted way. Part teaching guide, part anthology, 100-Word Stories is a dynamic guide complete with lessons and prompts to help young writers learn and practice literary elements, narrative skill, and personal voice.

This audiobook, read by Audie award-winning narrators, includes unabridged recordings of all Fyodor Dostoyevky's greatest works: 15 novels and novellas, 18 short stories, a short study of Dostoyevsky by Virginia Woolf, and two books of non-fiction - his Letters and European travel journal.

This audiobook, read by Audie award-winning narrators, includes unabridged recordings of all Mark Twains's greatest works: 12 novels; over 120 of his beloved short stories; Chapters From My Autobiography; 5 pieces of short non-fiction; and 6 pieces of his groundbreaking, wide-ranging travel writing.

“This stunning collection from one of the great writers on Black culture covers the gamut: aging, love, poverty, trauma and plenty of lightness in between.”—People From the #1 New York Times bestselling author of How Stella Got Her Groove Back and Waiting to Exhale comes a remarkable...

Essays from humanist freethinker, Chris Highland, explore the boundaries of belief. Includes chapters on: Freedom of Thought is Good for All; Who Builds and Buttresses the Boundaries of Belief?; Can You Be evangelical without being an Evangelical?; Sacraments, Screens and a Spirituality of Separation; Love the Believer, Hate the Beliefs?; Shining a Light on the Good Things We Do; Not for the Faint of Faith; Crazy for God; African Nativity: Stories of Refuge and Refugees; Pickpocketing, Freethinking and Breaking a Leg; Spinning with Spinoza; Charles Chesnutt’s Vision; Temple of Science, ...

Short-Reads Include: Playbook, Algorithm Audit, Notice of Liabilities, Mased, Lined of Credit, IoB, Pole Star, Stargate, General Discrepancy, Real Mail, Kakistocracy

These widely acclaimed essays from the besteselling author of Infinite Jest — on television, tennis, cruise ships, and more — established David Foster Wallace as one of the preeminent essayists of his generation. In this exuberantly praised book — a collection of seven pieces on subjects...

Lars Horn's Voice of the Fish, the latest Graywolf Press Nonfiction Prize winner, is an interwoven essay collection that explores the trans experience through themes of water, fish, and mythology, set against the backdrop of travels in Russia and a back injury that left Horn temporarily unable to speak. In Horn's adept hands, the collection takes shape as a unified book: short vignettes about fish, reliquaries, and antiquities serve as interludes between longer essays, knitting together a sinuous, wave-like form that flows across the book.

Edgar Allan Poe was a writer, poet, editor and literary critic. Poe is best known for his poetry and short stories, particularly his tales of mystery and the macabre, and is widely regarded as a central figure of Romanticism in the United States and of American literature. Poe was one of the country's earliest practitioners of the short story and considered to be the inventor of the detective fiction genre, as well as a significant contributor to the emerging genre of science fiction.