LitReading - Classic Short Stories

An original story, written and read by me, Don McDonald.This one began with something I read and couldn't shake. The universe is expanding, and it won't stop, and the stars are spending the only fuel there is. The brightest burn out first. The small, dim, patient ones hold on the longest, for trillions of years, until at last the final star flickers out and the dark that follows has no end and no dawn.I found I couldn't stop thinking about that last light, and about who might be there to watch it die. Less the physics of the thing than the ache underneath it, one witness at the end of everything, keeping a watch that has finally run out of anything to keep.That became Dark. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

On a bright Sunday afternoon in a French public garden, a lonely English teacher lifts her treasured fox fur from its box, settles onto her usual bench, and quietly borrows the lives going on around her. Katherine Mansfield's "Miss Brill," first published in 1920, is a small marvel, barely two thousand words that somehow hold an entire life up to the light. The band plays, the season has begun, the crowd parades, and Miss Brill, watching, decides she too has a part in the great Sunday performance. It is warm and observant and quietly shattering, modernist storytelling at its most humane, and it ends on a single image you won't soon shake. Read by Don McDonald.Katherine Mansfield was born in Wellington, New Zealand, in 1888, and spent most of her short adult life in England and on the Continent, restless, often ill, and always writing. She is remembered now as one of the great modernists of the short story, a writer who could fit an entire life inside a few pages and turn it slowly in the light. Virginia Woolf, not a generous judge of her contemporaries, once confessed that Mansfield's was the only writing she had ever been jealous of. Mansfield died in France in 1923, of tuberculosis, just thirty-four years old, with most of her finest work behind her and, you can't help feeling, a great deal more still ahead.Litreading is part of Short Storyverses (shortstoryverses.com), a multiverse of audio fiction devoted to exceptional storytelling, classics and originals alike. Explore Readastorus for timeless tales for the youngest listeners, Season's Readings to brighten your holidays any time of year, Love Lit for the romantics and the hopelessly devoted, and FRIGHTLY! for tales that keep the lights low and the floorboards creaking. Search for all of them wherever you get your podcasts.If you enjoy historical fiction, be sure to check out Don's first novel, The Line Uncrossed available at Amazon.com. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

In August 1864, thirty thousand Union prisoners were dying behind a wall of felled pine in southern Georgia. The man in command was a Swiss-born captain with a ruined arm, a sick wife back home, and a daughter whose portrait he kept on his writing table. His name was Henry Wirz, and a year later he would be the only man executed for war crimes after the Civil War."Man or Monster" follows him through a single day. The morning report. The short rations. The chain. The deadline. The letters to a Richmond that never wrote back. No verdict, no villain's speech, just one man doing his duty inside a horror he could name but could not stop, and the question the title leaves with you.From the world of Don McDonald's novel The Line Uncrossed. The book is available at Amazon.com, BN.com, and others booksellers or you can get a special ebook bundle that includes this and two other Civil War stories at donmcdonald.com Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Ambrose Bierce fought as a Union officer at the battle of Chickamauga in September of 1863. Twenty-six years later, he wrote this story about it.A warning before you press play. "Chickamauga" is brief and graphic. Bierce describes wounded and dying men in unflinching detail, and there is a small child at the center of the story. If you've served, if you've lost someone to war, or if you're listening with children present, take a moment before you begin.This is not the Civil War of monuments and ceremony. It is the war as Bierce saw it, written by a man who refused to let his country forget.A note on the language: Bierce wrote for readers of 1889, and his vocabulary, sentence length, and classical allusions reflect that. He expected his audience to do some work. The difficulty is part of the experience.The battle in the title was a real battle. More than 34,000 men were killed, wounded, or captured over three days in north Georgia. One of them, captured on September 20th, 1863, was John B. Anderson of the 6th Indiana Volunteer Infantry — my great-great-grandfather. He survived Libby Prison, Danville, and Andersonville, and walked home on the last day of 1864.His story inspired The Line Uncrossed, a novel following a young soldier named Levi Anderson from enlistment through capture, captivity, and homecoming. It's available May 22nd, 2026, wherever books are sold. You can also immediately purchase a special ebook package with The Line Uncrossed and a three story bonus ebook with this story and two original stories from the world of The Line Uncrossed for only $5 at donmcdonald.com Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Henry Pollard has always had a dangerous relationship with words.In 1861 Indianapolis, while the country rushes headlong toward war, Henry would prefer to remain where he is: alive, sarcastic, and safely distant from glory. But a simple errand on behalf of a worried mother places him at a recruiting table outside the statehouse, where one ordinary moment begins quietly rearranging the rest of his life.The Pen is an original short story set in the world of The Line Uncrossed, a literary Civil War novel about family, memory, survival, and the irreversible weight of seemingly small decisions. Told with wit, warmth, and the hindsight of years, it offers a deeply human glimpse into the young men who marched toward war before they understood what war truly was.The Line Uncrossed, available May 22, 2026 at Amazon.com, BN.com, and a host of other book and e-book services.Podcast listeners can get an early access to The Line Uncrossed e-book offer with bonus stories, including this one, at donmcdonald.com Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

A man is offered five gifts by a fairy, and told that only one of them holds any real value. He is asked to choose. What follows is one of Mark Twain's bleakest parables, written in the shadow of personal loss, and rendered with the dark precision of a writer who had stopped pretending that wisdom arrives in time to be useful.The Five Boons of Life was published in 1902, when Mark Twain was sixty-six years old, and it belongs to a period of his work that bears little resemblance to the river-bright comedy of Tom Sawyer or the rolling satire of Huckleberry Finn. By the time he wrote this fable, the man born Samuel Clemens had buried his beloved daughter Susy, who died of meningitis in 1896 while he was abroad, unable to reach her. His wife Olivia, the center of his emotional life for more than three decades, was in failing health and would die two years after this story was written. His youngest daughter Jean, who suffered from epilepsy, would drown in a bathtub on Christmas Eve of 1909, four months before Twain himself died. He outlived nearly everyone he had built his life around.He had also outlived his own fortune. A series of disastrous investments, most notoriously in the Paige typesetting machine, had bankrupted him in the 1890s and forced him to undertake a global lecture tour, in his sixties, to pay back creditors he was not legally obligated to repay. He did it anyway, because his name was on the debt, and his name had once meant something to him.By 1902, fame had become, in his own assessment, a kind of haunting. Pleasure had thinned. Love had cost him more than he believed any human heart should be asked to pay. And wealth, he had learned twice over, was a borrowed thing that the world reclaimed without warning. What remained was the suspicion, hardened by experience into something like conviction, that the only mercy available to a human being was the one nobody wanted to ask for, and that even that mercy was distributed without justice. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

In April, 2026, an American F-15E Strike Eagle went down over western Iran. The weapons officer ejected into the Zagros Mountains and was eventually recovered, in an operation whose full scope remains classified, but which is understood to have involved the destruction of hundreds of millions of dollars in American aircraft on the ground rather than risk leaving them, or him, behind.The Crevice is a work of fiction built on the bones of that event. The names are invented. The mountain is invented. The man wedged into the rock is invented. But the cost was real. The promise that brought the helicopters in was real. And the men who flew through the dark to keep that promise, the special operators and aircrews who do this work in places most of us will never know about, for people whose names they will never learn, they are real, and they are the reason the story ends the way it does.This story is being presented on Litreading for limited time to help build the audience for its eventual primary home, New Tales Told part of Short Storyverses. New Tales Told is made up of totally original modern stories written with the feel of classic short stories (suitable for all ages). There are now fourteen original stories so please check start listening and subscribing to New Tales Told. On Apple Podcasts it is part of the Short Storyverses Channel.We are expanding our universe of short story podcasts on our new podcast channel, Short StoryVerses. Listen to some of Don's new, original short stories on the "New Tales Told" podcast. Look it up on your favorite podcast player. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Lady Carlotta misses her train, and a stranger on the platform mistakes her for the new governess. Rather than correct the error, Lady Carlotta decides to accept the position — and teach history by a method the Quabarl household will not soon forget. From the inimitable Saki, a story of social comeuppance served with perfect composure.Saki was the pen name of Hector Hugh Munro, born in Burma in 1870 and raised in England by two strict aunts whose tyrannies would later populate his fiction. He worked as a journalist and foreign correspondent before turning to the short story, where his wit, elegance, and appetite for mischief found their natural home. He enlisted at the outbreak of the First World War and was killed by a sniper in France in 1916. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

During the Civil War, the military's telegraph network was run by civilians. Teenagers, some of them. Elias Murrow was nineteen, careful, and precise. He trusted the procedure because the procedure had never failed him. Then two messages arrived that couldn't both be real, and he did exactly what he was trained to do.This story is being presented on Litreading for limited time to help build the audience for its eventual primary home, New Tales Told part of Short Storyverses. New Tales Told is made up of totally original modern stories written with the feel of classic short stories (suitable for all ages). There are now fourteen original stories so please check start listening and subscribing to New Tales Told. On Apple Podcasts it is part of the Short Storyverses Channel.We are expanding our universe of short story podcasts on our new podcast channel, Short StoryVerses. Listen to some of Don's new, original short stories on the "New Tales Told" podcast. Look it up on your favorite podcast player. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

A chance reunion at a Paris café. A photograph of a woman who looks like she's hiding something. And a story that asks a question Wilde never quite answers: What's worse, a woman with a secret, or a woman who simply loves the appearance of having one? Oscar Wilde's "The Sphinx Without a Secret," published in 1887, is a small, perfect jewel of a story about mystery, obsession, and the danger of needing people to be more complicated than they are.Oscar Wilde wrote "The Sphinx Without a Secret" in 1887, when he was thirty-three and already the most quotable man in England. He's remembered for the big things, "The Picture of Dorian Gray," "The Importance of Being Earnest," the trials that destroyed him. But pieces like this one remind you that he could do more with a photograph and a cup of coffee than most writers can do with a hundred pages.f you enjoyed this story, there's a lot more where it came from. At ShortStoryverses.com you'll find all of our podcasts: New Tales Told for original fiction, Season's Readings for holiday stories, Readastorus for the whole family, and FRIGHTLY for when you want to lose a little sleep. And if you've got a second, tap that five-star rating on Apple Podcasts or Spotify. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

The Committee Committee is a parable set in a village where things run smoothly—because they always have.Problems are addressed. Responsibilities are shared. And when questions arise, there is a structure in place to handle them.Over time, that structure has grown more refined, more comprehensive… and more complete.This story is being presented on Litreading for limited time to help build the audience for its eventual primary home, New Tales Told part of Short Storyverses. New Tales Told is made up of totally original modern stories written with the feel of classic short stories (suitable for all ages). There are now fourteen original stories so please check start listening and subscribing to New Tales Told. On Apple Podcasts it is part of the Short Storyverses Channel. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

There are things we expect from the world.Walls stay still. Rooms hold their shape. The spaces we live in behave.And when they don’t, we look for explanations.Old houses settle. Pipes shift. Light plays tricks.But sometimes the world doesn’t explain itself.When an answer can’t be seen, that doesn’t mean there isn’t one.There is something.Something all too real.Something beyond frightening.This story is being presented on Litreading for limited time to help build the audience for its eventual primary home, New Tales Told part of Short Storyverses. New Tales Told is made up of totally original modern stories written with the feel of classic short stories (suitable for all ages). There are now fourteen original stories so please check start listening and subscribing to New Tales Told. On Apple Podcasts it is part of the Short Storyverses Channel. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

First published in 1870, “My Watch” is one of Mark Twain’s sharpest short comic essays. What begins as a simple adjustment to a timepiece becomes an escalating satire of overconfidence, technical jargon, and the human tendency to meddle with what already works. In fewer than ten minutes, Twain turns a minor inconvenience into a masterclass in comic exaggeration.Mark Twain was the pen name of Samuel Langhorne Clemens, born in 1835. A riverboat pilot, journalist, lecturer, and one of America’s most enduring humorists, Twain built his reputation on sharp observation, comic exaggeration, and a deep skepticism of human certainty. His works include The Adventures of Tom Sawyer and Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, but he was equally at home in short essays like this one — small mechanical failures turned into very large human truths. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Every crime begins as a solution. At least to someone. This is a story about a solution. A rented room. A promise. And a man who believes he is doing what’s necessary.This story is being presented on Litreading for limited time to help build the audience for its eventual primary home, New Tales Told part of Short Storyverses. New Tales Told is made up of totally original modern stories written with the feel of classic short stories (suitable for all ages). There are now fourteen original stories so please check start listening and subscribing to New Tales Told. On Apple Podcasts it is part of the Short Storyverses Channel. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Published in 1921, The Doll’s House is one of Katherine Mansfield’s most quietly powerful stories. Set in a small New Zealand community, it explores class, exclusion, and childhood cruelty through something deceptively simple: the arrival of an elaborate doll’s house.Mansfield does not moralize. Instead, she observes. Through small gestures and overheard whispers, she reveals how social hierarchies are absorbed and enforced — even by children.At its center is a tiny amber lamp. And a moment of grace. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

This story is not about the America we live in.It’s about an America that could exist—slowly, legally, and quietly—if people stop asking questions.Civic Duty follows a retired teacher whose life is reduced to data points, compliance scores, and administrative decisions.A speculative warning about what happens when systems replace judgment and loyalty becomes measurable.This story is being presented on Litreading for limited time to help build the audience for its eventual primary home, New Tales Told part of Short Storyverses. New Tales Told is made up of totally original modern stories written with the feel of classic short stories (suitable for all ages). There are now more than a dozen original stories so please check them out. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Set in the frozen Yukon during the Klondike Gold Rush, it follows a man traveling alone through temperatures so extreme they defy ordinary experience. Confident in his judgment and dismissive of risk, he presses forward—unaware of how narrow his margin for error truly is.With stark realism and relentless tension, London explores humanity’s limits in the face of nature’s indifference. This is not a story of heroic triumph. It is a story of judgment, instinct, and the consequences of small mistakes in unforgiving conditions.First published in 1908, To Build a Fire remains a timeless classic of American literature.If you enjoy great stories narrated by Don, be sure to check out his other short story podcasts at shortstoryverses.com Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Here is a quiet story about love that arrives too late, and lingers in unexpected ways.About two people who find each other where they never expected to meet.And what it means to hold on, even when you know you can’t.Please check out our other short story universes are shortstoryverses.com Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

The Necklace by Guy de Maupassant is a classic tale of ambition, illusion, and unintended consequences.In this short, elegant story, a young woman’s desire for wealth and status leads her down a path she never expected.A quiet masterpiece with a devastating final twist.Guy de Maupassant was a nineteenth-century French writer and one of the masters of the modern short story.He wrote hundreds of stories, known for their clarity, irony, and emotional precision.His work often explored class, ambition, and the hidden costs of desire.The Necklace, published in 1884, remains one of his most famous and enduring stories.If you want more stories like this, go to shortstoryverses.com. You’ll find a whole story universe there: classic literature brought to life, original fiction, stories for younger listeners, and themed collections for whatever mood you’re in. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

This is a special presentation of my original short story, “The Right Call,” first released on my companion podcast, New Tales Told.For now, I’ll be sharing my new stories here on Litreading as well—so you can hear them easily, without having to go looking.Litreading will always remain a home for classic short fiction. These are simply new stories, told in the same spirit.The Right Call is a work of fiction, loosely inspired by a real turning point in my own life.The events, characters, station, and circumstances have been changed. What remains is the emotional truth of a moment many people recognize: standing at a crossroads between what looks sensible and what feels right.This story isn’t about radio.It’s about listening—to others, and to yourself—when the script stops working. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

The Bet is a devastating meditation on freedom, knowledge, money, and the illusions we cling to when we mistake intellect for wisdom and wealth for meaning. Sparse, icy, and quietly explosive, this story leaves no one untouched—not the characters, and not the listener.Anton Chekhov was a Russian physician, playwright, and master of the modern short story. Writing at the turn of the twentieth century, Chekhov rejected melodrama in favor of moral ambiguity, emotional restraint, and brutal psychological honesty.His stories rarely offer heroes or villains—only people, trapped by their own beliefs, habits, and blind spots. With surgical precision and profound compassion, Chekhov reshaped fiction, influencing generations of writers who followed.He believed that a writer’s job was not to provide answers—but to ask questions so clearly that the reader could not escape them.The Bet is one of his sharpest.You're invited to explore our many short story podcasts at shortstoryverses.com Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

This is a special presentation of my new original short story, "The Eternal Code," first released on my companion podcast, New Tales Told. Until the new podcast finds its audience, I will continue to post my original stories at Litreading, too. Litreading will continue to feature classic short fiction, just as always.For listeners who enjoy original, contemporary stories, New Tales Told is where I share new work—standalone fiction meant to be experienced in audio. Just search for it on this podcast service or visit shortstoryverses.comNo one remembers the first human thought. But it remembers us.We tell ourselves that memory lives in bones, in blood, in history books and hard drives. But memory is older than all of that. Memory is the original technology. And once it learned how to survive us, it never stopped evolving.The Eternal Code is a story about inheritance that has nothing to do with money and everything to do with continuity. About the quiet arrogance of believing we are the end of the line. About a signal so deeply embedded in humanity that we mistake it for destiny. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Every story you've ever loved learned it from somewhere. The plot twist, the heartbreak, the monster in the dark—somebody wrote it first. Narrator Don McDonald brings classic literature back to life, read out loud the way it was meant to be heard. Dickens. Poe. Twain. Wharton. Doyle. Names you know. Stories you think you know—until you actually hear them. Some built entire genres. Some broke every rule. Some are just flat-out better than they have any right to be after a hundred years. No class. No test. Just your ears and a little time. Because the classics aren't homework. They're the stories that refused to die.Litreading is part of the "Short Storyverses" podcast network. If you love stories, check out our other shows: Season's Readings for holiday tales, New Tales Told for original fiction, Readastorus for stories the whole family can enjoy, and FRIGHTLY for when you want to lose a little sleep. Find them all at shortstoryverses.com.If you're enjoying Litreading, take a second to tap that five-star rating on Apple Podcasts (or "Rate the Show" five-stars on Spotify). It helps other listeners find the show—and keeps me from taking that two-star rating too personally. Thanks. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Jack London takes us into the frozen silence of the Yukon and leaves us beside an aging chief who has reached the appointed end of his trail. As the tribe moves on, Old Koskoosh remains behind with only a small fire, a dwindling stack of wood, and the memories of a life spent obeying the relentless rhythms of nature. This is a stark, almost ceremonial meditation on aging, duty, and the brutal simplicity of the natural world. The Law of Life is one of London’s most quietly devastating works—not because of violence, but because of its honesty.Jack London, born in 1876, rose from poverty and hard labor to become one of America’s most influential writers. A sailor, gold prospector, journalist, and social critic, he wrote with the authority of someone who had lived every inch of hardship he described. His stories of the North—lean, unsentimental, and deeply human—helped define American literary naturalism and continue to shape how we imagine life on the frontier.If you enjoyed this story, I’d be grateful if you’d share Litreading or leave a quick review. And for more timeless stories—from classics to brand-new originals—visit ShortStoryverses.com, the home of Litreading, Readastorus, New Tales Told, FRIGHTLY!, and Season’s Readings. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Ernest Hemingway’s “Hills Like White Elephants” is one of the most celebrated short stories ever written — a masterclass in subtext, restraint, and emotional tension.Set at a train station in Spain, it captures a quiet conversation between two lovers waiting for a train — a moment in which everything that matters lies between the lines.Presented by Litreading, part of Short Storyverses — where classic and original tales are read with depth and heart. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

O. Henry had a gift for wrapping heartbreak in humor. His stories feel light, almost playful—until that last line hits and you realize he’s been quietly aiming for your chest the whole time.In The Skylight Room, we meet a bright, hopeful young woman renting the smallest, loneliest room in New York. But she still finds a way to fill it—with imagination, with laughter, and with a star she names Billy Jackson.What happens next is pure O. Henry: tender, tragic, and—somehow—still kind of beautiful. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Kate Chopin’s Doctor Chevalier’s Lie is a moving meditation on compassion in the face of tragedy. Set against the backdrop of a harsh and unforgiving city, the story turns on a doctor’s quiet decision: whether to report what he sees with unflinching honesty, or to soften the truth for the sake of those left behind. Chopin invites us to consider the value of mercy, the weight of dignity, and the moments when a carefully chosen falsehood can become an act of profound kindness.Kate Chopin, born in 1850, was among the first American writers to explore the hidden truths of everyday lives. Living in Louisiana, she drew on its people and culture to shape her work. Her novel The Awakening shocked readers of her time but is now praised as a classic of American realism. In her short stories, like Doctor Chevalier’s Lie, she showed how even the smallest choices can carry profound humanity. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

A fleeting glimpse in the pines, a photograph stolen from a friend’s mantel, and a correspondence born from mistaken identity—The Girl and the Photograph by Lucy Maud Montgomery is no simple tale of memory. It’s about the way chance, error, and destiny conspire to test a heart’s fidelity. What begins as a love nurtured by letters and a photograph turns into a crisis of identity, and then, at the last moment, a revelation that love had been waiting patiently all along. This isn’t just about remembering a face—it’s about recognizing a soul when it finally stands before you. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Most stories for children try to teach a lesson—this one tries to blow them up. In The Storyteller by Saki, an overstuffed train car, three fidgety kids, and one very unconventional tale collide in a wickedly sharp jab at moralistic storytelling. It’s short, twisted, and just the kind of thing you’d expect from an author who clearly didn’t have much patience for either sanctimony or small talk. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

How can we best learn life’s secrets during our short lives? Is the best student the one with eyes fixed on the words in a book or focused on the world around them? That is the fundamental question of this profound short tale.Often, it is the shortest stories that impart the most profound notions. This tale is one of many thoughtful, brief short stories penned by late 19th-century American feminist author Kate Chopin. Chopin was a prolific writer, who published more than 100 short stories and novels before her death in 1904. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

This tale flips the traditional "boy meets girl" fairy-tale narrative by introducing a strong-willed nature loving girl who puts her own desires and beliefs ahead of those of a young man she meets in the woods.The child of a rural family doctor in Maine, Sarah Orne Jewett was writing short stories professionally from age 18. Most of her work was purchased by The Atlantic magazine, with the glaring exception of "The White Heron." The story went of the become the title piece of her first book and her most popular story. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Here is a story for those times when you only have a few minutes for a story. While not long itself, this incredibly Kafkaesque parable may leave you pondering its meaning long after you have listened to "Before the Law."Bohemian author Franz Kafka is considered one of the greats. Few storytellers have had their names turned into adjectives. Orwellian, maybe Hitchcockian come to mind. But the best known of these is Kafkaesque, whose meaning is elusive, like that of many Kafka stories. I have my own somewhat religious interpretation of “Before the Law.” I will leave it to you to ponder your own.  Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Loneliness can grind a man down like a millstone—yet grief, transformed, can become the miller’s divine salvation. A widowed man turns a forgotten mill into a memorial for his lost little girl, and fate brings a stranger—fragile, secretive—who just might be the miracle he’s been waiting for.He called himself O. Henry, but the man behind the pen was William Sydney Porter—a sneaky little Texan with a mustache, a wicked sense of irony, and a knack for surprise endings that snap like mousetraps. He wrote hundreds of short stories while dodging his past, which included a stint as a pharmacist, a failed bank career (let’s just say the books didn’t balance), and yes, a little time behind bars. But prison gave him a pen name and plenty of time to dream up twisty tales of crooks with hearts of gold, lovers with bad timing, and small moments that change everything. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

What must life have been like in the Garden of Eden for the first man, Adam, and that new creature who suddenly appeared in his idyllic life? Well, left to the imagination of Mark Twain, the story takes a fanciful and funny early 20th-century take on Genesis.Extracts from Adam’s Diary was written in 1904, the final decade of Samuel Clemens's (aka Mark Twain’s) life, and was published as a short book. The character of Adam is obviously based on Twain himself, and Eve was his wife Lily. Shortly after writing this story, Lily died. This may have led to Twain penning “The Diary of Eve,” which was first published in 1905. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Imagine waking up in a strange and wonderful place with no memory and no one to guide you. Your world is filled with strange creatures and incredible beauty along with one enigmatic creature who looks similar to you but is still quite different. Here is the sequel to “Extracts from Adam’s Diary.”When Mark Twain (whose real name was Samuel Clemens) wrote “Eve’s Diary” he was in his 80s and had enjoyed and long career as an author, speaker, and publisher. Two years before its publication, Twain had penned “Extracts from Adam’s Diary” (also available on Litreading). Shortly thereafter his wife of 34 years, Olivia (Lily) died. While he never explicitly said as much, many believe this to be his final love letter to her. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.