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The man with the surprise endings: that was O. Henry's trademark. This is the second published collection of short stories by O. Henry originally released in 1906. There are twenty five stories of various lengths including several of his best known works such as The Gift of the Magi and The Cop and the Anthem. The book's title refers to the then population of New York City where many of the stories are set. Some society snobs has the opinion that there were only 'Four Hundred' people in New York City who were really worth noticing. But O. Henry felt that every person in New York was worth noticing and had their own story which is explains the title of this collection little stories of the 'Four Million.' To O. Henry, everyone in New York counted. And everyone had a story....

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’s Short Story Collection 042: a collection of 20 short works of fiction in the public domain read by a group of members.

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Short stories

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The dead body of a woman was found under a large cabinet. But she had been dead four hours before the cabinet fell upon her. The owners of the house had been on vacation and the place empty. Who was she and why was she in the empty house all alone? Summary by Dawn L....

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Mystery

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The account of some adventures in the professional experience of a member of the Imperial Austrian Police. (from the text)

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Mystery

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Pomona and Jone of Rudder Grange fame travel to England and Scotland. Along the way, Pomona tangles with wild pigs, haymaking, hotels great and small, Pullman cars, comparison-makers, and a Duchess. She makes two matches and - in her usual, unorthodox way - stag hunts and attends a knighting. Pomona is as hilarious as ever, if a bit more rounded off on the edges....

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Fiction

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Mark Twain pulls no punches while exposing the real Percy Shelley in this scathing condemnation of Edward Dowden's Life of Shelley. Even though, as Twain writes, Shelley's life has the one indelible blot upon it, but is otherwise worshipfully noble and beautiful, Twain shows how Shelley's extra-marital conduct might easily be seen to have been the cause of his wife Harriet's suicide. (Introduction by John Greenman)...

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Essay/Short nonfiction

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In this collection of short stories, Susan Glaspell examines the unique character of America and its people. (Summary by wildemoose)

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Short stories, Fiction

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A light-hearted account of a successful middle aged widower who chances to visit the small town in which he grew up to renew old acquaintances and perhaps reflect on his successes since his departure. This visit, however, becomes far more to him than he would have imagined, as he finds that one of his dearest childhood girlfriends had died not long after his departure, and the widower envisions a relationship with none other than her daughter, who he senses to be her mother incarnate. (Summary by Roger Melin)...

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Fiction, Romance

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A bit of a menage-a-quatre in a remote cabin in the wilderness as fugitive Hugh, his younger brother Pete, nursemaid and cook Bella, and now the newly arrived snow-blinded young Sylvie who had been snatched from near death in the snow by the heroic but moody Hugh. Because of her blindness, Sylvie is led to believe her rescuer to be a handsome and dashing hero; his younger brother to be but a young lad of 14; and Bella a matronly old maid. But Sylvie would, in time, form her own image of the clan and attempt to bring them together as they were destined to be split apart. Demonstration lies herein of the inherent ability of the blind to use their other senses to best any situation laid before them. (Introduction by Roger Melin)...

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Fiction

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The Seagull (Russian: Чайка, Chayka) is the first of what are generally considered to be the four major plays by the Russian dramatist Anton Chekhov. The play was written in 1895 and first produced in 1896. It dramatises the romantic and artistic conflicts between four characters: the ingenue Nina, the fading leading lady Irina Arkadina, her son the experimental playwright Konstantin Treplyov, and the famous middlebrow story writer Trigorin. (Wikipedia)...

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Play

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Twenty-four short stories by famous and not-so-famous British authors. (Summary by David Wales)

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Short stories

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Merton of the Movies is a comedy that centers around Merton Gill, an aspiring dramatic artist from Simsbury, Illinois who makes his way to Hollywood to become a serious actor. How could Merton fail in attaining his dreams after finishing a correspondence course from the General Film Production Company of Stebbinsville, Arkansas, certifying him to be a competent screen actor? Harry Leon Wilson, the author, was a very popular humor writer in the first decades of the 20th century. This book was made into film several times, the last in 1947 starring Red Skelton. (Summary written by Margaret.)...

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Comedy, Fiction, Humor

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Raffles, Further Adventures of the Amateur Cracksman (also published as The Black Mask) is the second collection of stories in the Raffles series. After the dark turn of events at the end of The Gift of the Emperor, Bunny's done his time and, his life not being quite what it was before, now finds himself longing for the companionship of his Raffles. (Summary by Kristin Hughes)...

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Adventure, Mystery

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Jewelry thefts, society parties, clairvoyance, and romance marks this mystery, which is set in England and the US in the early 20th century. (Summary by Gesine)...

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Mystery

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A quiet cathedral town in England, full of gossips and people who are not quite who they seem to be, is the setting for this murder mystery. (Summary by Gesine)...

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Mystery

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In this short novel of 1894, Conan Doyle describes a character with seemingly extraordinary powers. Are these powers occult or are they only in the minds of other people? There is no Sherlock Holmes to solve this mystery. (Summary by Delmar H. Dolbier)...

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Fiction, Horror/Ghost stories

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Nat Love was born a slave, emancipated into abject poverty, grew up riding the range as a cowboy and spent his maturity riding the rails as a Pullman Porter. For me, the most amazing thing about him is that despite the circumstances of his life, which included being owned like a farm animal solely because of the color of his skin and spending later decades living and working as an equal with white coworkers, he was an unrepentant racist! Convinced that the only good Indian was a dead one, and that all Mexicans were greasers and/or bums, he rarely passed up a chance to shoot a member of either group, whether in self-defense or cold blood, and shows no sign of having appreciated the difference. At one point, he fell in love with a Mexican girl but, apparently unable to tolerate this reality, considered her Spanish. Nat Love was a fascinating character who lived in equally interesting times, and one only wishes his autobiography was much longer and more detailed. by ohsostrange...

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Adventure

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This story is from Mary Cowden Clarke's multi-volume work The Girlhood of Shakespeare's Heroines, in which she imagined the early lives of characters from Portia to Beatrice to Lady Macbeth. In her revision of Ophelia from Hamlet, she creates a backstory for Shakespeare's tragic heroine, from her infancy to just before the action of Hamlet begins.(Summary by Elizabeth Klett)...

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Fiction, Literature

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The Deerslayer, or The First Warpath (1841) was the last of James Fenimore Cooper’s Leatherstocking tales to be written. Its 1740-1745 time period makes it the first installment chronologically and in the lifetime of the hero of the Leatherstocking tales, Natty Bumppo....

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Adventure, Fiction

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In 1933, Forman Brown wrote, under the pseudonym Richard Meeker, a controversial novel called Better Angel, about a young man coming to terms with his homosexuality. This novel is regarded as the first American novel to present the 'gay' experience in a healthy light....

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Fiction