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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 Garden Party
New Zealand
And after all the weather was ideal. They could not have had a more perfect day for a garden-party if they had ordered it. Windless, warm, the sky without a cloud. Only the blue was veiled...
The Garden Party
Katherine Mansfield
21 min
The Mouse
Cuba|UK
The mouse and I lived on a houseboat anchored near Notre Dame where the Seine curved endlessly like veins around the island heart of Paris. The Mouse was a small woman with thin legs, big breasts,...
The Mouse
Anais Nin
10 min
Over the Hills and Far Away
UK
Margaret Mahuntleth, in the corner of the big settle, basked in the hearth-glow like one newly come to heaven. Warm light reddened her knitted shawl, her white apron, and her face, worn and frail. It was...
Over the Hills and Far Away
Mary Webb
5 min
Dracula's Guest
Ireland
Dracula’s Guest was excised from the original Dracula manuscript by its publisher because of the length of the original book. It was published as a short story in 1914, two years after Stoker’s death.   ***...
Dracula's Guest
Bram Stoker 
13 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
Enter Mitchell
Australia
The Western train had just arrived at Redfern railway station with a lot of ordinary passengers and one swagman. He was short, and stout, and bow-legged, and freckled, and sandy. He had red hair and small,...
Enter Mitchell
Henry Lawson
2 min
Solid Objects
UK
The only thing that moved upon the vast semicircle of the beach was one small black spot. As it came nearer to the ribs and spine of the stranded pilchard boat, it became apparent from a...
Solid Objects
Virginia Woolf
9 min
How I Met the Author of My Obituary
Czech Republic
In the course of the five or six years I spent in Russia I was several times killed and liquidated by various organizations and individuals. When I returned home to Czechoslovakia I found I had been...
How I Met the Author of My Obituary
Jaroslav Hašek
4 min
Gottfried Heinrich's Dream
Catalonia
It is music: it has come from a heart. J.S.B. At four in the afternoon the old man sat up in bed and said Kaspar, son, where are you? B flat, A, D flat, B, C....
Gottfried Heinrich's Dream
Jaume Cabré
12 min
The Nose
Ukraine
I On the 25th March, 18——, a very strange occurrence took place in St Petersburg. On the Ascension Avenue there lived a barber of the name of Ivan Jakovlevitch. He had lost his family name, and...
The Nose
Nikolai Gogol
36 min

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