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Short Stories

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Solid Objects
Virginia Woolf
9 min
http://Solid%20Objects
UK
The only thing that moved upon the vast semicircle of...
The Most Dangerous Game
Richard Connell
32 min
http://The%20Most%20Dangerous%20Game
USA
“Off there to the right—somewhere—is a large island,” said Whitney....
An Unwritten Novel
Virginia Woolf
17 min
http://An%20Unwritten%20Novel
UK
Such an expression of unhappiness was enough by itself to...
The School Days of an Indian Girl
Zitkala-Ša
24 min
http://The%20School%20Days%20of%20an%20Indian%20Girl
USA
I. THE LAND OF RED APPLES. There were eight in...

Short Stories from around the world  |

Short Stories from around the world  |

Short Stories from around the world  |

Hidden Gems

Gym Period
Germany
The military school of St. Severin. The gymnasium. The class in their white cotton shirts stand in two rows under the big gas lights. The gym teacher, a young officer with a hard, swarthy face and...
Gym Period
Rainer Maria Rilke
7 min
Before the Law
Czech Republic
Before the law sits a gatekeeper. To this gatekeeper comes a man from the country who asks to gain entry into the law. But the gatekeeper says that he cannot grant him entry at the moment....
Before the Law
Franz Kafka
2 min
The Purloined Letter
USA
Nil sapientiae odiosius acumine nimio. Seneca.   At Paris, just after dark one gusty evening in the autumn of 18–, I was enjoying the twofold luxury of meditation and a meerschaum, in company with my friend...
The Purloined Letter
Edgar Allan Poe
28 min
An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge
USA
A man stood upon a railroad bridge in northern Alabama, looking down into the swift water twenty feet below. The man’s hands were behind his back, the wrists bound with a cord. A rope closely encircled...
An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge
Ambrose Bierce
11 min
A Play
Russia
“Pavel Vassilyevitch, there’s a lady here, asking for you,” Luka announced. “She’s been waiting a good hour….” Pavel Vassilyevitch had only just finished lunch. Hearing of the lady, he frowned and said: “Oh, damn her! Tell...
A Play
Anton Chekhov
7 min
The Ransom of Red Chief
USA
It looked like a good thing: but wait till I tell you. We were down South, In Alabama—Bill Driscoll and myself—when this kidnapping idea struck us. It was, as Bill afterward expressed it, “during a moment...
The Ransom of Red Chief
O. Henry
16 min
Two Friends
France
Besieged Paris was in the throes of famine. Even the sparrows on the roofs and the rats in the sewers were growing scarce. People were eating anything they could get. As Monsieur Morissot, watchmaker by profession...
Two Friends
Guy de Maupassant
8 min
Adam Marek
My son’s Tamagotchi had AIDS. The virtual pet was rendered on the little LCD screen with no more than 30 pixels, but the sickness was obvious. It had that AIDS look, you know? It was thinner than it had been. Some of its pixels were faded, and the pupils of its huge eyes were smaller, giving it an empty stare
Leonid Andreyev
They talked about various ailments, and each spoke of his own, and when they separated they did so with a prolonged pressure of the hand, but they quite forgot to ask each other’s name
Ramona Ausubel
They fret over husbands, who have been left at home with nothing in the refrigerator. Cats are likely pawing the heavy leg-s of couches. The couches will never survive the absence of the grandmothers. This will be the end of the couches
Philipp Schönthaler
No, I don’t know if I can make myself understood, nor whether my discomfiture actually stands in relation to your microwave, insofar as the latter ever stood in the discrete relationship to the objects and events in my unit as I suspected? In so saying, I won’t deny that a telephone call would have been a better way to articulate my malaise

Our Classics

The Other Two
USA
Waythorn, on the drawing-room hearth, waited for his wife to come down to dinner It was their first night under his own roof, and he was surprised at his thrill of boyish agitation. He was not...
The Other Two
Edith Wharton
29 min
The Paradise of Bachelors and the Tartarus of Maids
USA
  The Paradise of Bachelors It lies not far from Temple-Bar. Going to it, by the usual way, is like stealing from a heated plain into some cool, deep glen, shady among harboring hills. Sick with...
The Paradise of Bachelors and the Tartarus of Maids
Herman Melville
32 min
Misery
Russia
“To whom shall I tell my grief?”   The twilight of evening. Big flakes of wet snow are whirling lazily about the street lamps, which have just been lighted, and lying in a thin soft layer...
Misery
Anton Chekhov
8 min
The Rocking-Horse Winner
UK
There was a woman who was beautiful, who started with all the advantages, yet she had no luck. She married for love, and the love turned to dust. She had bonny children, yet she felt they...
The Rocking-Horse Winner
D.H. Lawrence
21 min
Transformation
UK
 “Forthwith this frame of mine was wrench’d With a woful agony, Which forced me to begin my tale, And then it set me free. “Since then, at an uncertain hour, That agony returns; And till my...
Transformation
Mary Shelley
27 min
Napoleon and the Spectre
UK
Well, as I was saying, the Emperor got into bed. “Chevalier,” says he to his valet, “let down those window-curtains, and shut the casement before you leave the room.” Chevalier did as he was told, and...
Napoleon and the Spectre
Charlotte Brontë
4 min
The Story of an Hour
USA
Knowing that Mrs. Mallard was afflicted with a heart trouble, great care was taken to break to her as gently as possible the news of her husband’s death. It was her sister Josephine who told her,...
The Story of an Hour
Kate Chopin
4 min
Miracle of the Horses
Russia
(A true story) Since she was beautiful and foolish —and she became more foolish when she was beautiful and more beautiful when she was foolish — and since he loved her, and since he had nothing...
Miracle of the Horses
Marina Tsvetayeva
7 min
A Play
Russia
“Pavel Vassilyevitch, there’s a lady here, asking for you,” Luka announced. “She’s been waiting a good hour….” Pavel Vassilyevitch had only just finished lunch. Hearing of the lady, he frowned and said: “Oh, damn her! Tell...
A Play
Anton Chekhov
7 min
A Joke
Russia
IT was noon of a bright winter’s day. The air was crisp with frost, and Nadia, who was walking beside me, found her curls and the delicate down on her upper lip silvered with her own...
A Joke
Anton Chekhov
4 min

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