Ned Kelly

When he was a boy, he was poor and hungry. When he was a young man, he was still poor and still hungry. He learnt how to steal horses, he learnt how to fight, he learnt how to live - outside the law. Australia in the 1870s was a...

Mr Midshipman Hornblower

'Hornblower fired. There was a small cloud of smoke, but no bang. This is death, he thought. My pistol was the unloaded one.' But Horatio Hornblower does not die. He survives the duel with Simpson, learns to overcome his seasickness, and goes on to risk his life many times...

Matty Doolin

"Matty Doolin" is fifteen and is leaving school in a few weeks' time, He wants to work with animals and get a job on a farm. His parents say he's too young to leave home. They also say they can't go on a camping holiday with his friends...

I, Robot. Short Stories

A human being is a soft, weak creature. It needs constant supplies of air, water, and food; it has to spend a third of its life asleep, and it can't work if the temperature is too hot or too cold. But a “Robot” is made of strong metal. It...
Who wants to live in a house, wear clean clothes, be good, and go to school every day? Not young “Huckleberry Finn”, that’s for sure. So Huck runs away, and is soon floating down the great Mississippi River on a raft. With him is Jim, a black slave who...

Goldfish

The Leander pearls were stolen nineteen years ago. The thief was caught, but the pearls were never found, and there is still a $25,000 reward for anyone who finds them. Then somebody comes to private detective Carmady with a story about a guy who knows where the pearls are...

Five Children and It

When the children dug a hole in the gravel-pit, they were very surprised at what they found. 'It' was a Psammead, a sand-fairy, thousands of years old. It was a strange little thing - fat and furry, and with eyes on long stalks. It was often very cross and...

Ethan Frome

Set against the bleak winter landscape of New England, “Ethan Frome” tells the story of a poor farmer, lonely and downtrodden, his wife Zeena, and her cousin, the enchanting Mattie Silver. In the playing out of this short novel's powerful and engrossing drama, Edith Wharton constructed her least characteristic...

Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde

Robert Louis Stevenson, Edimburgo, Gran Bretaña, ¿1850? Vailima, Samoa, 1894), hijo de un dominante constructor de faros, tuvo desde niño varias crisis pulmonares que le llevaron a una constante y nostálgica peregrinación en busca de climas más cálidos, hasta que en 1888 embarca hacia los mares del Sur y...

Dead Man’s Island

Mr Ross lives on an island where no visitors come. He stops people from taking photographs of him. He is young and rich, but he looks sad. And there is one room in his house which is always locked. Carol Sanders and her mother come to the island to...