A White Heron and Other Stories is a collection of short fiction by Sarah Orne Jewett. The title story follows the struggle of a girl named Sylvia, transplanted suddenly from her life in the city to the marshy tranquility of her grandmother's country home. Sylvia sees a rare white heron and is later asked to locate it by a hunter looking to kill and stuff it. He promises friendship and money, but Sylvia ultimately chooses to protect the bird.
Young Goodman Brown and Other Hawthorne Short Stories most often concern the hypocrisy of religion as opposed to the purity of true spirituality. These morality tales, which range from a parable about the dangers of vanity to an eerie tale of a demonic ceremony in which a young husband discovers that even his wife is sinful at heart, convey a Gothic sensibility, and often leave the reader unsure of what is real and what is imagined. Major themes include religion, sin, doom, and fear.
The Lottery and Other Stories is a collection that intermingles science fiction and fantasy with stories of the ordinary world and the prejudice that occurs therein. The book deals with racism, sexism, and the smothering confines of life for women in the mid-20th century; it also examines the horrors of post-WWII society. In the titular story, for example, a seemingly normal village quickly turns to vicious violence in the name of tradition and propriety. This collection examines the absurdity of modern life and the darkness that dwells within ordinary people.
A Modest Proposal and Other Satires is a collection of satirical essays by the English humorist, writer, and philosopher Jonathan Swift. Swift's wit tends toward the bleak and irreverent, and in his title essay he lays out a satirical plan to end the famines sweeping the British Isles by eating newborn babies on a colossal scale. The other essays deal with similarly ludicrous topics, exposing the fallacies of many modes of thinking popular at the time in England.
Maggie: A Girl of the Streets and Other Stories a collection of stories by Stephen Crane. The title story, is Maggie's attempts to rise from poverty. Growing up in Manhattan with her domineering parents and brother Jimmie, Maggie eventually finds a menial job and begins to date Jimmie's friend Pete. Jimmy and his family disapprove, slandering and destroying the relationship, eventually convincing Pete to abandon her. Pete goes on to happiness and success, while Maggie becomes a prostitute and dies.
A Rose for Emily and Other Short Stories is a compilation of short fiction by noted Southern author William Faulkner. The title story deals with a town's opinions of an old and eccentric reclusive spinster, Emily, whose personal life is the subject of much debate. Other stories in the collection pursue Faulkner's common themes of Southern life, the decline of the South after the Civil War, and the dynamics of living in small towns.
Rip Van Winkle and Other Stories contains several classic early American tales, including that of Ichabod Crane, the nervous schoolteacher who is frightened by the Headless Horseman, and Rip Van Winkle, who falls asleep for 20 years only to awaken and discover that his nagging wife has died. These stories often delve into class issues and display an affection for poorer, virtuous characters; colonial America, English tradition, greed, imagination, and death are also explored in these stories.