A young man does a kindness for an old woman, but the reward he gets is stolen by a witch! Will he be able to outsmart her and regain his treasures?

Today’s story, “The Farmer’s Children” by Elizabeth Bishop, an American poetry and short story writer, seems a showcase for the evil stepmother archetype.  

A kind and clever young man named Jesper sets off to marry the princess. Will the tasks the king sets prove too much for him?

The emperor has ears like a goat’s, but woe to anyone who says so! Might a barber’s apprentice be the one who can hold his tongue?

One of the great works of revenge fiction, Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Cask of Amontillado,” has been so widely anthologized that it is considered required reading for many a high schooler,  to whom the narrator imparts two requirements for satisfactory vengeance--one, that the act must be committed with impunity, and two, that the victim must be unmistakably certain as to the identity of the avenger.