"The Jogi's Punishment" is a short story by Andrew Lang set in the ancient city of Rahmatabad, where a rajah places his trust in a seemingly holy hermit — a jogi whose piety masks dangerous obsession. When the rajah's beautiful, sharp-witted daughter secretly visits the shrine and sees through the jogi's desires, his wounded pride turns to calculated vengeance. He convinces the rajah that his own daughter is an evil spirit and has her nailed inside a chest and cast into the river — yet the princess's resourcefulness and a fateful encounter on the water set in motion the jogi's undoing.

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"The Fairy Nurse" is a short Irish fairy tale in which a farmer's wife near Coolgarrow is spirited away in the night by fairy folk, leaving her husband and children behind in grief. The story unfolds through a brave midwife drawn blindfolded into a fairy rath, who glimpses the captive woman and learns of a desperate chance for rescue — a moonlit roadside encounter where one man must hold fast against the full fury of the fairy court. Rooted in rural folklore, the tale bristles with dread, tenderness, and a sharp warning about the cost of curiosity.

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"Abdullah the Fisherman and Abdullah the Merman" follows a desperately poor fisherman who, after forty days of empty nets, hauls up a mysterious creature from the sea — a merman who offers him a life-changing pact: daily fruit for baskets of precious jewels. As Abdullah's fortune transforms his world, a deeper bond forms between the two men, drawing the fisherman beneath the waves into a breathtaking underwater world of cities, strange customs, and a king without a tail. But one careless revelation about how people on land mourn their dead puts the entire friendship at sudden risk.

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"The Story Of A Very Bad Boy" is a short story by Andrew Lang following Touéno-Bouéno, a lazy French village boy whose mother doubts he could ever catch a wolf by the tail — until one day, hiding in a hollow tree, he does exactly that. What follows is a chain of audacious schemes: a wolf sold as a prized ram, a fake resurrection whistle, and a sack tossed into a river. Each time the farmers think they've outwitted him, Touéno-Bouéno turns the trap around with maddening ease, leaving chaos, drowned men, and a flock of sheep in his wake.

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The Shifty Lad is a free short story set in the land of Erin, following a widow's son who chooses thievery as his trade despite his mother's warnings that he will "hang at the bridge of Dublin." Apprenticed to the notorious Black Gallows Bird, the boy quickly surpasses his master in cunning — stealing sheep through clever misdirection, outwitting an entire royal court, and ultimately dispatching the Bird himself. Each triumph draws him closer to a fate his mother foretold from the very beginning.

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"The False Prince And The True" is a short story by Andrew Lang in which a young nobleman faces execution after striking the royal prince during a tennis dispute. With his trial just days away and no legal defence in sight, a mysterious old woman offers him a lifeline — but her price is marriage. What begins as a desperate bargain unravels a web of hidden births, secret royal marriages, and a decades-old enchantment. The young man must trust a stranger's strange gift before he can discover who he truly is.

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"The Rich Brother And The Poor Brother" is a short story in which a disinherited man, cast out for a secret marriage, spends years in grinding poverty while his brother inherits everything. When a greedy sister-in-law drags the family into a bitter legal dispute over a gift of unfinished houses, the poor brother's journey to court spirals into a chain of fresh accusations — a poisoned onion, a tailless mule, a dead stranger beneath a wall. Each mishap threatens to destroy him, yet the sharp-witted judge in Evora holds the power to reverse everything.

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"Sun, Moon, and Talia" is a dark fairy tale short story in which young Talia falls into an enchanted sleep after a prophecy about flax comes grimly true. She awakens to find herself a mother of twins — Sun and Moon — without understanding how. When the king who fathered the children returns, his jealous queen sets a deadly trap: she orders the children killed and Talia burned alive. Talia's fate hangs on a compassionate cook, a queen's murderous rage, and whether the king will act before the fire is lit.

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"The Rose Elf" is a short story by Hans Christian Andersen in which a tiny elf, small enough to sleep inside a rose petal, accidentally witnesses a brutal murder when a young man is killed by his beloved's jealous brother. Trapped in a world of grief and secrecy, the elf carries the terrible truth to the grieving girl through her dreams. As sorrow slowly claims her, the jasmine she tends over her lover's remains becomes the instrument of a chilling, nature-driven justice — delivered by flower souls and a swarm of vengeful bees.

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"The Schoolboy's Story" by Charles Dickens unfolds through the voice of a sharp-tongued schoolboy recounting the strange fate of Old Cheeseman — a lonely, mild-mannered figure who grew up at the school as an orphan, became a despised Latin master, and was branded a traitor by his fellow pupils. Sustained only by the quiet loyalty of Jane, the school's wardrobe woman, Cheeseman endures mockery and cruelty until an unexpected inheritance changes everything — and puts his tormentors in a very uncomfortable position.

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