Our Collection
Our Collection

Read & Listen
to 1,743
Curated
Short Stories

5 min
10 min
15 min

Editor’s Choice 🎵

What’s new?

The Mortal Immortal
Mary Shelley
21 min
http://The%20Mortal%20Immortal
UK
July 16, 1833.—This is a memorable anniversary for me; on...
Transformation
Mary Shelley
27 min
http://Transformation
UK
 “Forthwith this frame of mine was wrench’d With a woful...
The Smell of a Baby
Miaad Banki
10 min
http://The%20Smell%20of%20a%20Baby
Iran
The first time she heard of the Aal was from...
The Overcoat
Nikolai Gogol
48 min
http://The%20Overcoat
Ukraine
In the department of—but it is better not to mention...

Short Stories from around the world  |

Short Stories from around the world  |

Short Stories from around the world  |

Hidden Gems

House Taken Over
Argentina
We liked the house because, apart from its being old and spacious (in a day when old houses go down for a profitable auction of their construction materials), it kept the memories of great grandparents, our...
House Taken Over
Julio Cortázar
8 min
Rashōmon
Japan
It was a chilly evening. A servant of a samurai stood under the Rashōmon, waiting for a break in the rain. No one else was under the wide gate. On the thick column, its crimson lacquer...
Rashōmon
Ryūnosuke Akutagawa
8 min
Philomel Cottage
UK
“Good-bye, darling.” “Good-bye, sweetheart.” Alix Martin stood leaning over the small rustic gate, watching the retreating figure of her husband, as he walked down the road in the direction of the village. Presently he turned a...
Philomel Cottage
Agatha Christie
31 min
The Gift of the Magi
USA
One dollar and eighty-seven cents. That was all. And sixty cents of it was in pennies. Pennies saved one and two at a time by bulldozing the grocer and the vegetable man and the butcher until...
The Gift of the Magi
O. Henry
8 min
Bernice Bobs Her Hair
After dark on Saturday night one could stand on the first tee of the golf-course and see the country-club windows as a yellow expanse over a very black and wavy ocean. The waves of this ocean,...
Bernice Bobs Her Hair
F. Scott Fitzgerald
35 min
In broad daylight
Greece
I was sitting one evening after supper in St. Stephen’s Casino at Ramleh. My friend Alexander A., who resided in the Casino, had invited me and another young man, an intimate friend of ours, to have...
In broad daylight
C. P. Cavafy
15 min
The Hidden Cause
Brazil
Garcia was standing, staring at his fingernails and cracking his knuckles from time to time; Fortunato, in a rocking chair, looked at the ceiling; Maria Luisa, near the window, was finishing off some needlework. For five...
The Hidden Cause
Machado de Assis
14 min
Luigi Pirandello
He was certain, very certain, Mister Anselmo not to have ever had any dream, that could cause those laughs. He didn’t dream at all! He never dreamed! He fell every evening, at the usual time, in a black, leaden sleep, hard and very deep, from which it cost him so much effort and so much pain to rouse himself
Olga Tokarczuk
She wrote him a long letter. She never received a response. He must have crumpled up the paper in the course of reading it and thrown it into the basket. Perhaps he had burned it, he had to think of his biography, he had to point it in a suitable direction
Hermann Hesse
When I returned, it was 1920, and I was disappointed to find that people were still at war with each other all over the globe, and that there was still the same senselessness and obstinance. Some of the borders of countries had shifted; some select regions with ancient high cultures had been carefully destroyed, but all in all nothing much had changed on the surface of things
Doris Lessing
They looked down gravely, frowning. He knew the frown. At moments of failure, when he clowned to claim his mother’s attention, it was with just this grave, embarrassed inspection that she rewarded him

Our Classics

Dr. Heidegger’s Experiment
USA
That very singular man old Dr. Heidegger once invited four venerable friends to meet him in his study. There were three white-bearded gentlemen—Mr. Medbourne, Colonel Killigrew and Mr. Gascoigne—and a withered gentlewoman whose name was the...
Dr. Heidegger’s Experiment
Nathaniel Hawthorne
14 min
A Predicament
USA
What chance, good lady, hath bereft you thus?—COMUS. It was a quiet and still afternoon when I strolled forth in the goodly city of Edina. The confusion and bustle in the streets were terrible. Men were...
A Predicament
Edgar Allan Poe
14 min
Love and Freindship
UK
“Deceived in Freindship and Betrayed in Love.”   LETTER the FIRST From ISABEL to LAURA How often, in answer to my repeated intreaties that you would give my Daughter a regular detail of the Misfortunes and...
Love and Freindship
Jane Austen
42 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
The Decameron: Day the Fifth, The Ninth Story
Italy
FEDERIGO DEGLI ALBERIGHI LOVETH AND IS NOT LOVED. HE WASTETH HIS SUBSTANCE IN PRODIGAL HOSPITALITY TILL THERE IS LEFT HIM BUT ONE SOLE FALCON, WHICH, HAVING NOUGHT ELSE, HE GIVETH HIS MISTRESS TO EAT, ON HER...
The Decameron: Day the Fifth, The Ninth Story
Giovanni Boccaccio
10 min
The Priest of Shiga Temple and His Love
Japan
According to Ashin’s “Essentials of Salvation,” the Ten Pleasures are but a drop in the ocean when compared to the joys of the Pure Land. In that Land the earth is made of emerald and the...
The Priest of Shiga Temple and His Love
Yukio Mishima
24 min
Husband and Wife
Scotland
The trader accustomed to the manners of Eastern Polynesia has a lesson to learn among the Gilberts. The ridi is but a spare attire; as late as thirty years back the women went naked until marriage;...
Husband and Wife
Robert Louis Stevenson
10 min
The Adventure of the Speckled Band
UK
On glancing over my notes of the seventy odd cases in which I have during the last eight years studied the methods of my friend Sherlock Holmes, I find many tragic, some comic, a large number...
The Adventure of the Speckled Band
Arthur Conan Doyle
39 min
The Yellow Wallpaper
USA
It is very seldom that mere ordinary people like John and myself secure ancestral halls for the summer. A colonial mansion, a hereditary estate, I would say a haunted house, and reach the height of romantic...
The Yellow Wallpaper
Charlotte Perkins Gilman
24 min
Rashōmon
Japan
It was a chilly evening. A servant of a samurai stood under the Rashōmon, waiting for a break in the rain. No one else was under the wide gate. On the thick column, its crimson lacquer...
Rashōmon
Ryūnosuke Akutagawa
8 min

Get the Full Story!

Subscribe and enjoy unlimited access to the library. Listen to audio editions and playlists.
Support writers, translators and editors.

Get Full Access
Skip to content