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Short Stories

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Talma Gordon
Pauline E. Hopkins
24 min
http://Talma%20Gordon
USA
The Canterbury Club of Boston was holding its regular monthly...
A Carnival Jangle
Alice Dunbar-Nelson
4 min
http://A%20Carnival%20Jangle
USA
There is a merry jangle of bells in the air,...
Violets
Alice Dunbar-Nelson
2 min
http://Violets
USA
I. “And she tied a bunch of violets with a...
Little Miss Sophie
Alice Dunbar-Nelson
9 min
http://Little%20Miss%20Sophie
USA
When Miss Sophie knew consciousness again, the long, faint, swelling...

Short Stories from around the world  |

Short Stories from around the world  |

Short Stories from around the world  |

Hidden Gems

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
Eve’s Diary
USA
Translated from the Original   SATURDAY. – I am almost a whole day old, now. I arrived yesterday. That is as it seems to me. And it must be so, for if there was a day-before-yesterday...
Eve’s Diary
Mark Twain
12 min
Condensed Milk
Russia
Envy, like all our feelings, had been dulled and weakened by hunger. We lacked the strength to experience emotions, to seek easier work, to walk, to ask, to beg… We envied only our acquaintances, the ones...
Condensed Milk
Varlam Shalamov
6 min
The Sensible Thing
USA
At the Great American Lunch Hour young George O’Kelly straightened his desk deliberately and with an assumed air of interest. No one in the office must know that he was in a hurry, for success is...
The Sensible Thing
F. Scott Fitzgerald
21 min
Lazarus
Russia
When Lazarus rose from the grave, after three days and nights in the mysterious thralldom of death, and returned alive to his home, it was a long time before anyone noticed the evil peculiarities in him...
Lazarus
Leonid Andreyev
29 min
The Cold
Romania
For the first few hours they drove silently. His father simply sat there without saying a word, just sniffling from time to time. It seemed to him that he was doing it ostentatiously. He could see...
The Cold
Augustin Cupsa
8 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
Kate Chopin
While waiting to be served she removed her gloves very leisurely and laid them beside her. Then she picked up a magazine and glanced through it, cutting the pages with a blunt edge of her knife. It was all very agreeable. The damask was even more spotless than it had seemed through the window, and the crystal more sparkling. There were quiet ladies and gentlemen, who did not notice her, lunching at the small tables like her own. A soft, pleasing strain of music could be heard, and a gentle breeze, was blowing through the window
Charlotte Perkins Gilman
There is one end of the room where it is almost intact, and there, when the crosslights fade and the low sun shines directly upon it, I can almost fancy radiation after all,—the interminable grotesques seem to form around a common centre and rush off in headlong plunges of equal distraction
Tillie Olsen
Oh it is a handsome place, green lawns and tall trees and fluted flower beds. High up on the balconies of each cottage the children stand, the girls in their red bows and white dresses, the boys in white suits and giant red ties. The parents stand below shrieking up to be heard and the children shriek down to be heard, and between them the invisible wall “Not To Be Contaminated by Parental Germs or Physical Affection.”
Sigizmund Krzhizhanovsky
Dissolve one teaspoon of the quadraturin essence in one cup of water. Wet a piece of cotton wool or simply a clean rag with the solution; apply this to those of the room’s internal walls designated for proliferspansion. This mixture leaves no stains, will not damage wallpaper, and even contributes—incidentally—to the extermination of bedbugs

Our Classics

The Cheapest Nights
Egypt
After the evening prayer, curses came streaming out of Abdel Karim’s mouth, striking the village fathers and mothers and taking in Tantawi and his forebears on the way. The story was that Abdel Karim had hardly...
The Cheapest Nights
Yusuf Idris
6 min
Mars Jeems's Nightmare
USA
We found old Julius very useful when we moved to our new residence. He had a thorough knowledge of the neighborhood, was familiar with the roads and the watercourses, knew the qualities of the various soils...
Mars Jeems's Nightmare
Charles W. Chesnutt
25 min
The Socialist
Japan
He was a young socialist. His father, a minor official, had thus threatened to disown him. Yet he had remained true to his convictions, for he was possessed of both burning zeal and supportive friends. They...
The Socialist
Ryūnosuke Akutagawa
2 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
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
The Sandman
Germany
NATHANIEL TO LOTHAIRE. Certainly you must all be uneasy that I have not written for so long—so very long. My mother, I am sure, is angry, and Clara will believe that I am passing my time...
The Sandman
E.T.A. Hoffmann
69 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
Bohemia
Russia
I – How to Survive with the Aid of Literature. Astride a Play to Tiflis.   If someone asked me what I deserve, I would say in all honesty before God that I deserve hard labor....
Bohemia
Mikhail Bulgakov
9 min
The Grand Inquisitor
Russia
“Quite impossible, as you see, to start without an introduction,” laughed Ivan. “Well, then, I mean to place the event described in the poem in the sixteenth century, an age—as you must have been told at...
The Grand Inquisitor
Fyodor Dostoyevsky
25 min
An Unexpected Bender | The Cashier
Russia
An Unexpected Bender One day Antonina Alekseevna struck her husband with a rubber stamp and smeared his forehead with ink. The deeply offended Pyotr Leonidovich, Antonina Alekseevna’s husband, locked himself in the bathroom and wouldn’t let...
An Unexpected Bender | The Cashier
Daniil Kharms
5 min

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