Short Stories

For six years Agrafena has said almost nothing beyond asking about dinner. Then, just as her master is leaving for work, she insists he rent out a room so a lodger can “live in the window.”

In a solitary bachelor’s modest quarters, the old soldier Astafy Ivanovitch brings welcome company—and stories. But when a stranger steals the narrator’s greatcoat in plain sight, Astafy is more shaken than its owner, and his indignation gives way to an unlikely confession: he once knew a man who stole, yet whom he could only pity. Dostoyevsky turns a household mishap into a searching tale of loneliness, poverty and the uneasy border between guilt and compassion. What could make a thief seem honest to the man who knows him?

With centuries of literature, it's inevitable that some will fall through the cracks. We hunt down public domain works and restore them so they're not lost to the world.

Who are we? We're Cairn Press. Our background is in design, publishing, typography, and technology. These skills fuel our mission to create the highest quality Public Domain eBooks available online, at an affordable price. We give them the treatment they deserve; our proprietary process restores books for a better overall user experience in design, readability, and e-reader compatibility.