The story comes from novels by American author Robert B. Parker featuring his fictional detective: Spenser.

The novella "The Ocean at the End of the Lane" tells a middle-aged narrator's memories of a supernatural incident that happened when he was aged 7.

“Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry” tells the trials and triumphs of the Logans, a Black family in the American South in 1933. We see the problems brought on by farming as well as the societal conditions of living in the white-dominated society of the South.

Frank R. Stockton was an American contemporary of Mark Twain and, like Twain, wrote stories that were both humorous and thought-provoking. Perhaps his most famous is, “The Lady, or the Tiger?”

The poem tells a tall tale about life on the Yukon gold fields, when some 100,000 men in the “Klondike Gold Rush” descended on northwestern Canada where it meets what is now the American state of Alaska. This is also the setting of Jack London's “The Call of the Wild,” about the domestic dog Buck who joined a pack of wolves.

This is a story told about the original Buddha and his application of “skillful means” in teaching the right lesson at the right time.

“The King of the Golden Mountain” is a story from the Brothers Grimm. Once, a rich merchant lost everything except one field. As he strolled back and forth there, a black dwarf (who was actually the devil) appeared and offered to restore his wealth -- if, 12 years later, the merchant would give the dwarf the first thing that rubbed against his leg when he got home that day. The merchant agreed, assuming this would be his dog. To his horror, it was his little boy!

Mark Twain’s best known novels center around the boys Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn. But he in fact wrote numerous other novels, as well as short stories, essays, and travel stories. One of his better-known novels is “Pudd’nhead Wilson.”