Thrilling exploits, tales of mystery and ratiocination, enduring fables, and insightful dramas of the bustling modern city: all sit side-by-side in Short Stories Old and New. In common to all is the mastery on display. This centuries-spanning collection, edited by C. Alphonso Smith, brings together the finest gems of the storyteller's art. Classics of New England are here, from Washington Irving's "Rip Van Winkle" and Nathaniel Hawthorne's "The Great Stone Face." The taut realism of Bret Harte's California, in "The Outcasts of Poker Flat, the mystifications of Edgar Allan Poe's "The Gold Bug," and the perennially heart-warming "A Christmas Carol," by Charles Dickens, are set here alongside the finest from Rudyard Kipling, O. Henry, de Maupassant, and Robert Louis Stevenson -- and even ancient tales from the Old Testament and The Arabian Nights.