The author of outstanding travel books, autobiographical works and novels, including the classic The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, Mark Twain (Samuel Langhorne Clemens, 1835–1910) is regarded by many as America's finest humorist and a major writer of short stories.
The four selections in this volume span his entire writing career and are among his best-known stories. They include: "The Notorious Jumping Frog of Calaveras County," one of Twain's most amusing pieces of folk humor, first published in 1865; "The £1,000,000 Bank Note," a lighthearted exploration of the power of money; "The Man That Corrupted Hadleyburg," a masterfully written short story about greed; and his last work, "The Mysterious Stranger," a novelette published posthumously in 1916, presenting Twain's rather grim views of God, man, and the universe.