Short works for Tolstoy are more like novellas. If you want to try Tolstoy, read Anna Karenina.

This one, is an essential book, if you want to know about Tolstoy. In this book, you get to deeply know the different styles of this author, and you confirm that he is much more than War and Peace, and Anna Karenina. There are many styles, such as: historical fiction, romance (not the stupid, typical one in which both of them live forever above a rainbow, NO), short novels, and philosophy. In this book you get a glance of everything, and you are deeply involved with every character that takes place in each one of the 680 pages.
The book includes 8 short stories, and are in chronological order, that includes a bibliography, introduction and a resume of his life.

I love short stories. These were good, but not as good as I was hoping for after reading War and Peace. Tolstoy is so good at dedicating stories towards something of moral consequence and these short stories are no different. I can, however, only handle so many consecutive treatises on humanity and human nature if they aren't carefully concealed in a gripping plot. These, sad to say, really were not.