The Man With Two Left Feet and Other Stories

Amazon | Project Gutenberg
From black cats to baseball, detectives to dance contests—all are found in this collection of short stories packed with Wodehouse's trademark hilarity and a dash of romance and heart.

Wild Card Wednesday: Two Sweet Shorts

Today, a special feature: two obscure but delightful short stories by American authors, discovered in the public-domain treasure trove of the Internet Archive. Ebooks from this site are converted from scans and are frequently filled with typos, but still readable if you make want to make the effort! However, the stories can also be read online, similarly to Google Books.



Twenty-Three and a Half Hours' Leave by Mary Roberts Rinehart
In this delightfully funny story set during World War I, a young sergeant makes a rash bet that he will have breakfast with the general, plunging himself and his outfit into a series of comic mishaps. (There is also a 99-cent edition on Amazon that looks to be well-formatted.)



The Spring Concert by Booth Tarkington
Springtime, a band concert, and a bit of matchmaking, all wrapped in Tarkington's lovely nostalgic descriptions of times gone by.

Christmas With O. Henry

O. Henry is perhaps most famous for his beloved Christmas story, "The Gift of the Magi," and deservedly so. But did you know he wrote several more Christmas stories? Here, to kick off the holiday season, is the complete list, available to read online at Project Gutenberg:

• "The Gift of the Magi" (can be downloaded as an individual ebook)


• "Christmas by Injunction"


• "A Chaparral Christmas Gift"


• "Whistling Dick's Christmas Stocking"


• "Compliments of the Season"

Love Stories by Mary Roberts Rinehart

Amazon | Project Gutenberg
A collection of short stories, each a "love story" in its own way, ranging from a bittersweet World War I romance to the delightfully funny "Jane," a tale of a temperamental and not-so-ill patient in a hospital with the staff on strike. Most of the stories feature the hospital setting familiar to Rinehart from her own training as a nurse.

Sunshine Sketches of a Little Town by Stephen Leacock

Amazon | Project Gutenberg
A wonderfully humorous book of interconnected short stories set in the small Canadian town of Mariposa—tales of its social life and politics, its romances and mishaps and everyday occurrences; charmingly nostalgic and often laugh-out-loud hilarious.

My review of this book.

Wild Card Wednesday: Lords of the Housetops

Amazon | Project Gutenberg
For the first time, I'm breaking tradition here at Toll Free Books and sharing a book I haven't read myself. But knowing how cat-lovers abound, and seeing the names of some of the authors in this anthology, I ventured a guess it would be fun. Thirteen stories by a range of authors including Mark Twain, Edgar Allan Poe, Honoré de Balzac, Mary Wilkins Freeman and Booth Tarkington, all on the subject of cats!

The Old Man in the Corner by Emmuska Orczy

Amazon | Project Gutenberg
In this collection of short mystery stories, an old man sits in the corner of a café, tying knots in a bit of string, and discusses baffling crimes with a lady journalist, offering his own suggestions about the true solutions.

Poor, Dear Margaret Kirby and Other Stories by Kathleen Norris

Amazon | Project Gutenberg
A lovely volume of short stories, chiefly of love and family life. A young man is given a new perspective on the stepmother he disapproves of in "The Measure of Margaret Coppered"; a careless prank gives a jolt to a romance in "Dr. Bates and Miss Sally"; a young girl who adores an actress learns a bittersweet lesson about fame in "The Rainbow's End." Some stories are humorous, many touching enough to bring tears to the eyes, all beautifully written.

My review of this book.

The Garden Party and Other Stories by Katherine Mansfield

Amazon | Project Gutenberg
A collection of beautifully written, perceptive, occasionally humorous and sometimes melancholy short stories, mostly dealing with relationships and family life, set in Mansfield's native New Zealand during the Edwardian era.

My review of this book.

The Innocence of Father Brown by G.K. Chesterton

Amazon | Project Gutenberg
The little priest was so much the essence of those Eastern flats; he had a face as round and dull as a Norfolk dumpling; he had eyes as empty as the North Sea; he had several brown paper parcels, which he was quite incapable of collecting...He had a large, shabby umbrella, which constantly fell on the floor. He did not seem to know which was the right end of his return ticket.
The first of four short-story collections featuring Chesterton's famous amateur detective Father Brown, the mild-mannered, insignificant-looking little English priest with a gift for recognizing the simple solutions to seemingly fantastic crimes.

Uncle Abner, Master of Mysteries by Melville Davisson Post

Internet Archive

"It would be the beginning of justice," said Abner, "if every man followed the standard that God gives him."

In rural Virginia of the early 1800s, Uncle Abner, a stalwart, God-fearing landowner, applies his wits to solving a variety of unusual crimes, in pursuit of justice for both the guilty and the innocent. Told through the eyes of Abner's young nephew, these short stories are fascinating mysteries, beautifully written.

The only place that Uncle Abner is currently available for free is Internet Archive. Books here are usually converted from scans, so often contain formatting glitches and typos, but this copy I have linked to appears to be clean enough to read without trouble. (A 99¢ edition is available for Kindle.)

My review of this book.

The Four Million by O. Henry

Kindle | Project Gutenberg

The "Four Hundred" was a term used in the early 1900s to refer to New York City's social elite—supposed by those who valued social distinction to be the only people worth knowing. O. Henry titled this collection of colorful stories about people of all classes The Four Million in response, implying that every person in New York was worth knowing. It's a great place to begin your acquaintance with Henry's sparklingly literate, frequently funny and sometimes poignant stories with their famous twist endings. It contains, among others, one of his most famous, "The Gift of the Magi."

The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes by Arthur Conan Doyle

Project Gutenberg

These twelve classic short stories, including "A Scandal in Bohemia," "The Red-Headed League," "The Man With the Twisted Lip" and more, were the first Sherlock Holmes stories I ever read, and they're an excellent introduction to Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's famed detective, his methods of mystery-solving and his faithful sidekick and chronicler Dr. Watson.

The free Kindle edition is marked as currently unavailable, for unknown reasons.