This book has grown out of the former anthology Short Storiesof the English Language: A Course Book published by ChongqingUniversity Press in 2009. In that book we have laid heavy emphasison language, theme, characters,plot, and stylistic matters. Herethis Great Stories anthology aims to read those same stories as inthe Course Book more profoundly and more academically. For thispurpose, we have deleted the after-text exercises, added shortsummaries and commentary entailed by a further reading list, andmost importantly, supplied each story with more detailed linguisticand cultural notes in order that our readers:students andteachers:can understand more tangibly.