Предлагаем вашему вниманию аудиокнигу, записанную на студии АРДИС по самой известной повести замечательного русского писателя В. Г. Короленко «Дети подземелья». История создания повести такова. Сначала, в 1885 году Короленко опубликовал рассказ «В дурном обществе», а спустя полгода переработал его...

Who knew Dorothy could speak rabbit? A delightful Christmas story to read with your children This charming Christmas story was published in L. Frank Baum's first children's book, Mother Goose in Prose (1897), illustrated by Maxfield Parrish. Dorothy meets a shy little bunny at the edge...

""A Kidnapped Santa Claus"" is a Christmas-themed short story by American writer L. Frank Baum; it has been called «„one of Baum's most beautiful stories“» and constitutes an influential contribution to the mythology of Christmas. ""A Kidnapped Santa...

Leonid Nikolaivich Andreyev was born in Orel in 1871. After his father's death he was thrown upon his own resources, but managed to study at both Petrograd and Moscow Universities, graduating in Law in 1897. During this period he endured great hardship—often even actual hunger—and was the...

Lazarus is 1906 short story by Leonid Andreyev. The story is a speculation about the life of the Biblical Lazarus after Jesus brings him out of the tomb. And when the scarlet, flattened globe would lower, Lazarus would set out for the desert and walk straight toward the sun, as though striving to...

“Christmas at Red Butte” – it is one of Lucy Maud Montgomery's short stories, and can most likely be found in one of her short story collections, which would be a better value. Christmas at Red Butte is about an orphaned girl, Theodora, who sacrifices her one family memento so her cousins can...

“A Christmas Inspiration” is a short Christmas story first published in 1901. It is a wonderful story written by world-famous Canadian author L. M. Montgomery. As in the most of her Christmas story in this one Montgomery emphasizes the place of simple human kindness in this holiday. We are glad to...

Linda Grant, beset by medical bills and other pressing obligations, tells her children that they will not be celebrating Christmas this year. Older Keith takes the news in stride, while younger Teddy angrily insists he will have his Christmas turkey one way or another. When the neighborhood...

A Merry Christmas collects the treasured holiday tales of Louisa May Alcott, from the dearly familiar Yuletide benevolence of Marmee and her “little women” to the timeless “What Love Can Do,” wherein the residents of a boarding house come together to make a lovely Christmas for two poor girls....

December is a time for traditions and rituals, from hanging the familiar decorations and singing carols to making that family Christmas cake recipe or sharing a seasonal story. We’ve picked ten classic books with a festive theme that have timeless appeal and will give parents and grandparents the...

Desperate in his search of the secret of life, young Dr Victor Frankenstein attempts to construct and then bring to life a previously inanimate creature. He succeeds, yet immediately finds himself horrified and repulsed by the fruit of his long-lasting labors and, as a result, abandons the creature...

The Scarlet Letter – published first in 1850, was in its time considered as an innovative and at the same time scandalous novel, written by Nathaniel Hawthorne. This book was strongly disapproved by the fellow countrymen of the author and banned by the Russian tsars Now «The Scarlet Letter» is...

In «The Embroidered Towel» by Mikhail Bulgakov the young doctor arrives at his new post after a bone-jarring 24-hour wagon ride. He frets about how young he looks, and feels intimidated by the well-stocked pharmacy and medical library his predecessor has left behind. He also worries that he'll...

On the Decay of the Art of Lying is a short essay written by Mark Twain in 1885 for a meeting of the Historical and Antiquarian Club of Hartford, Connecticut. In the essay, Twain laments the dour ways in which men of America's Gilded Age employ man's «most faithfull friend.» He concludes...

One Autumn Night by Maxim Gorky, April 1902. It’s a touching tale of a young man who finds himself without shelter or food on a cold “Autumn Night” in Moscow. The strong opening lines of the narrator set the stage nicely: “Once in the autumn I happened to be in a very unpleasant and inconvenient...

Her Lover is a short story by Russian writer Maxim Gorky. Debates three views. The first one is human loneliness, lack of communication, fragmented and lost identity in modern industrialized Russian society, which was actually a general view in the early decades of the twentieth century. Secondly,...

The Wind in the Willows is a children's novel by Scottish novelist Kenneth Grahame, first published in 1908. Alternately slow-moving and fast-paced, it focuses on four anthropomorphised animals (Mole, Rat (a European water vole), Toad, and Badger) in a pastoral version of Edwardian England....

The Awakening is a novel by Kate Chopin, first published in 1899. Set in New Orleans and on the Louisiana Gulf coast at the end of the 19th century, the plot centers on Edna Pontellier and her struggle between her increasingly unorthodox views on femininity and motherhood with the prevailing social...

The Tao Te Ching is a Taoist philosophical treatise. Lao Tzu, a great Ancient Chinese philosopher and teacher, is considered to be the author of this book. We owe this book to an unnamed guardian who kept safe the far western borders of a country, Zhou in the fifth century BC. The legend says that...

The Death of Ivan Ilyich – first published in 1886, is a novella by Leo Tolstoy, considered one of the masterpieces of his late fiction, written shortly after his religious conversion of the late 1870s. "Usually classed among the best examples of the novella", The Death of Ivan Ilyich...