This collection of Mark Twain stories was compiled and published by Borders, before the bookseller went under. Clearly packaged on the cheap, no introduction or commentary supplements the stories. No pub dates, no rationale for these stories' inclusion. The dates below are from Wikipedia.

The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County (1865)
What Stumped the Bluebirds (1880?)
A Curious Experience (1881)
The Invalid's Story (1877)
The Stolen White Elephant (1882)
The Man That Corrupted Hadleyburg (1900)
Was It Heaven? Or Hell? (1906)
The $30,000 Bequest (1906)
The Mysterious Stranger (posthumous publication in 1916)

The selection is decent, though dominated by stories Twain produced at the end of his life.
The first five stories are familiar types, displaying Twain's humor. The last four are uncharacteristically harsh, mean spirited, bleak.

"The Man That Corrupted Hadleyburg" tells how the honorable, smug, self-centered folks who populate a small town show themselves—in front of the whole town!—to be just as greedy, dishonorable, and hypocritical as the rest of humanity. The perpetrator of the corruption is seeking revenge for an affront, but masks his intent by offering a sack of gold coins (anonymously) to the person who did him a good turn. He doesn't know the person's name, he writes in explanation, but all that person must do is reveal the last words he said.

"Was It Heaven? Or Hell?" sets a trap for two elderly sisters who browbeat a young niece about telling any lie for any reason.

"The $30,000 Bequest" lampoons the pretensions of a man who is informed of the bequest in a letter from a distant relative. I am dying, the relative writes, and upon my passing, the money will be yours. As their vigil drags on, husband and wife fantasize about "growing" the bequest by tracking actual stock transactions and recording imaginary profits. As their make-believe fortune grows, so do their pretensions. You can see where this is going.

"The Mysterious Stranger" is a long tale, set in Austria in 1590, in which a stranger appears in the village of Eseldorf, befriends three young boys, and shows them powers both astonishing and unsettling. The stranger says he is a nephew of Satan (yes, THAT Satan) and that he goes by the same name.

Many interesting ideas come out of The Mysterious Stranger, but not enough to make it a favorite. It jumps around and seems like many ideas were written down, but never refined. If Twain made it to heaven after writing this, it would be one to ask him about this when I get there. ( )

For readers who know Twain only through his often quoted witticisms and works such as The Adventures of Tom Sawyer many of the stories in this book will come as a bit of a shock. The volume begins with the folksy "Famous Jumping Frog" and ends with the surreal novella The Mysterious Stranger. Between the writing of the two, Twain would suffer failure and losses which twisted his already cynical view of mankind into a nearly warped vision. Along the way he seemed to lose much of his good-humored empathy for man and his weaknesses. I do not much share the author's view on people or life, but I have over the years found his work to be thought-provoking. In the case of the very, very dark Stranger, as weird as it is, as twisted as I find his assessment of humankind, it is one of my favorite of his works. One I have re-read several times over the years. As for the other stories in this collection, they were, for me, a mixed bag. Too often they veer too closely to the didactic for artistic effectiveness, a complaint that might be made of Stranger, but it's utter oddness and darkness is haunting. "The Man Who Corrupted Hadleyburg though leant too much towards a preachiness to really catch my imagination. However, I found the premise intriguing. "The Carnival of Crime..." again preachy, but amusing. The story of the wishes; Lord save me from becoming that jaded about life as I get older. ( )

For readers who know Twain only through his often quoted witticisms and works such as The Adventures of Tom Sawyer many of the stories in this book will come as a bit of a shock. The volume begins with the folksy "Famous Jumping Frog" and ends with the surreal novella The Mysterious Stranger. Between the writing of the two, Twain would suffer failure and losses which twisted his already cynical view of mankind into a nearly warped vision. Along the way he seemed to lose much of his good-humored empathy for man and his weaknesses. I do not much share the author's view on people or life, but I have over the years found his work to be thought-provoking. In the case of the very, very dark Stranger, as weird as it is, as twisted as I find his assessment of humankind, it is one of my favorite of his works. One I have re-read several times over the years. As for the other stories in this collection, they were, for me, a mixed bag. Too often they veer too closely to the didactic for artistic effectiveness, a complaint that might be made of Stranger, but it's utter oddness and darkness is haunting. "The Man Who Corrupted Hadleyburg though leant too much towards a preachiness to really catch my imagination. However, I found the premise intriguing. "The Carnival of Crime..." again preachy, but amusing. The story of the wishes; Lord save me from becoming that jaded about life as I get older. ( )

For readers who know Twain only through his often quoted witticisms and works such as The Adventures of Tom Sawyer many of the stories in this book will come as a bit of a shock. The volume begins with the folksy "Famous Jumping Frog" and ends with the surreal novella The Mysterious Stranger. Between the writing of the two, Twain would suffer failure and losses which twisted his already cynical view of mankind into a nearly warped vision. Along the way he seemed to lose much of his good-humored empathy for man and his weaknesses. I do not much share the author's view on people or life, but I have over the years found his work to be thought-provoking. In the case of the very, very dark Stranger, as weird as it is, as twisted as I find his assessment of humankind, it is one of my favorite of his works. One I have re-read several times over the years. As for the other stories in this collection, they were, for me, a mixed bag. Too often they veer too closely to the didactic for artistic effectiveness, a complaint that might be made of Stranger, but it's utter oddness and darkness is haunting. "The Man Who Corrupted Hadleyburg though leant too much towards a preachiness to really catch my imagination. However, I found the premise intriguing. "The Carnival of Crime..." again preachy, but amusing. The story of the wishes; Lord save me from becoming that jaded about life as I get older. ( )