Stories

Julia meets all kinds of people on the shores of the Black Sea to practice speaking Russian with.

Mikhail Bulgakov was born in Kiev, Ukraine in 1891 and died inMoscow, Russia in 1940. He died from a kidney disease inherited from his father. He was only 48 years old. He was a physician but decided to devote his time to writing. He wrote a lot about the horrors of the Russian civil war (November, 1917 to October 1922). He is famous for writing ‘A Dog’s Heart’ , 'The White Guard' and ‘The Master...

Mark Twain was born Samuel Langhorne Clemens November 30, 1835 in Florida, Missouri and died in Connecticut in 1910.  In 1909 Mark Twain made this comment “I came in with Halley's Comet, It is coming again next year. The Almighty has said, no doubt, 'Now there are these two unaccountable freaks; they came in together, they must go out together. '” He died on April 21, 1910—one day afte...

Theodore Dreiser was an American writer born in Indiana in 1871 and died in Hollywood, California in 1945. He was best known for his novels “An American Tragedy” based on the murder of Grace Brown in Upstate New York in 1906, and “Sister Carrie”. Both novels were made into movies. He grew up extremely poor and was the 12th child of 13 children. His father was a German immigrant. His mother was Men...

In 1861, a Union officer named Sullivan Ballou, assigned to the Grand Army of The Potomac, wrote home to his wife in Smithfield, Rhode Island. He has a wife and two sons waiting for him at home. In the event of his death, he hopes that this letter will ease her pain. He does everything he can to give her comfort and encouragement. It is one of the most noble things I have ever read. What stands ou...

Squeaker’s Mate is about Squeaker, a lazy, conniving, good for nothing husband, and his mate, a strong woman who is capable, conscientious and does all the work whenever they go out on a job. She suffers a severe work-related injury, and becomes incapacitated; unable to work. Squeaker, true to his nature, takes the easy way out, neglecting and abusing her in the process. However, the woman has ano...

The Soviet Union ceased to exist on New Year’s Eve, 1991. The new country, called the Russian Federation, was set to embrace democracy and a market economy. The problem was that no one had any idea how to transform the world’s largest country into a free market state. And, what’s more, there was no historical precedent for this. What ensued was severe economic chaos. Essential items for everyday l...

O. Henry was born William Sydney Porter in North Carolina in 1862 and died in New York City in 1910 at the age of 47. In 1895, he was charged with embezzlement and fled to the Honduras where he started to write a novel in which he coined the term, “banana republic”. He returned to the States when he found out that his wife was dying of tuberculosis. He started to serve his 5 year prison sentence i...

Hans Christian Andersen was born in Odense, Denmark in 1805 and died in Copenhagen, Denmark in 1875. He wrote plays, novels, poems, autobiographies and travel stories but what he is most remembered for are his stories for children. Andersen was born into poverty and had dreams of becoming an actor. The first story he wrote was self-published and was an immediate success. His fairy tales are popula...

Stephen Leacock was born in England in 1869. When he was six his family moved to Ontario, Canada where they lived on a farm on Lake Simcoe. The farm failed but the family survived by money sent from Stephen’s wealthy grandfather. Leacock’s father was an alcoholic and left his mother. However, his grandfather helped him, and his brothers, enroll in an elite private school in Toronto where he was at...

Julia lands in Adler, Russia on the border of Georgia and where the Sochi airport is located. She is now in the southernmost reaches of the Caucasus Mountains where this mountain range meets the Black Sea. This region of the world has seen empires battle for dominance, and yet the Caucasus mountains themselves remain largely unexplored. This stretch of the Black Sea coast from Adler, Russia to Suk...

Lyman Frank Baum was an American author best known for writing “The Wonderful Wizard of Oz”. He was born in Upstate New York in 1856 and died in Hollywood, California in 1919. He was 62 years old. He was named Lyman after his uncle but preferred Frank instead. When Baum was 30 years old his first book was published. It was about the mating and rearing of Hamburg chickens. He went on to write 41 no...

Oscar Fingal O’Flaherty Wilde was an Irish poet and playwright born in Dublin Ireland in 1854 and died in Paris, France in 1900 at the age of 46. He wrote The Happy Prince in 1888. What is wrong with reading a children’s story if you are an adult? They are simple and refreshing while being entertaining and often have a message that we, as adults, may have forgotten. Some of them are classics and t...

I think that had Saki not had such cruel and unforgiving guardians as the 2 aunts who raised him, we would not have the gems that he wrote later on in life. Saki is the pen name of Hector Hugh Monroe born in Burma in 1871. While visiting England in 1872, his mother Mary was charged by a cow. She was so shocked that she miscarried and died days later. Because of this, his father shipped their 3 chi...

Désirée's Baby is a tragedy written in 1893. It takes place in rural Louisiana before the abolition of slavery. It is about inter-racial marriage, but not in the way one might think of it today. Ignorance is bliss, they say, until you find out the truth, but by then it’s too late.

Sherwood Anderson was an American writer born in Camden, Ohio in 1876 and died in Colon, Panama in 1941. He swallowed a toothpick while on a cruise. He was 64 years old. His influences were Walt Whitman, Mark Twain and the Russian writer, Ivan Turgenev. His writing is personal and almost autobiographical. He talks from the heart without much embellishment or sentimentality. Some of us might feel a...

Chapter two of "In the Wrinkle of the Old Cliff". Julia arrives in Moscow.

Edward Frederic Benson was born in Berkshire, England in 1867, and died from throat cancer on February 29, 1940 at the age of 72 in London, England. His father, Edward White Benson, was Archbishop of Canterbury. His parents had 6 children and no grandchildren. Benson was homosexual and never married. He was a very prolific writer and known for his memoirs and biographies, including one of Charlott...

Mark Twain was an American writer, publisher, humorist and entrepreneur. "The Adventures of Tom Sawyer" and its sequel “The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn” are his most famous stories as well as “The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County.” William Faulkner called him “The Father of American literature”. A Ghost Story is about a ghost who makes an embarrassing mistake. We all make mistakes an...

Because we are now in the scary season of October, I have for you some horror and ghost stories that are absolute classics. The first one is written by William Wymark Jacobs born in London, England in 1863. Even though W.W. Jacobs is best known for this one horror story, The Monkey’s Paw, he was actually a prolific writer of humorous stories. He wrote mostly about sailors and their misadventures o...

A Voice in the Night by William Hope Hodgson has been made into a film twice. It is truly a horrific tale that takes place at sea and will not leave you even long after you have listened to it.

The heroine of this story is nameless. The fact that she is without a name, makes her plight even more poignant. It is written by a man who acknowledges all the women who have ever had to survive with their children in the Aussie outback, American frontier, the Canadian prairie, or any other lonesome, godforsaken place on earth. Some went insane. Others committed suicide. And still others, like th...

This is not a short story. This is the first chapter of a book by Julia Frenz. It is about her time spent in Russia after the fall of the Soviet Union. She had studied Russian and wanted to practice speaking it. There is a short poem by Lermontov in the beginning. However, the rest of the chapter is in English.

The Canterville Ghost is a comedy that was made into 4 movies beginning in 1944 right up to 2023. It was also a television series in 2021. It’s the story of a ghost who has been haunting a manor for hundreds of years until an American family buys the house and moves in. They are not afraid of him and in fact turn the tables on him. The poor, beleaguered ghost tries to cope with these new challenge...

A short story by Scottish writer Hector Hugh Monroe, better known by his pen name Saki. A man takes a much needed rest in the countryside for his frayed nerves. Unfortunately, he has the misfortune of picking the worst possible house to visit if he is looking to cure his anxiety.