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Short Stories

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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

A Pair of Silk Stockings
USA
Little Mrs. Sommers one day found herself the unexpected possessor of fifteen dollars. It seemed to her a very large amount of money, and the way in which it stuffed and bulged her worn old porte-monnaie...
A Pair of Silk Stockings
Kate Chopin
5 min
Two Brothers
Russia
Trees cannot talk and they stand as if riveted to the spot, but they are alive nonetheless.  They’re breathing. They keep growing for as long as they live. Even enormous old-man trees – they grow a...
Two Brothers
Evgeny Schwartz
23 min
A Gipsy Prophecy
Ireland
“I really think,” said the Doctor, “that, at any rate, one of us should go and try whether or not the thing is an imposture.” “Good!” said Considine. “After dinner we will take our cigars and...
A Gipsy Prophecy
Bram Stoker 
14 min
Eveline
Ireland
She sat at the window watching the evening invade the avenue. Her head was leaned against the window curtains and in her nostrils was the odour of dusty cretonne. She was tired. Few people passed. The...
Eveline
James Joyce
7 min
The Gentle Lena
USA
Lena was patient, gentle, sweet and german. She had been a servant for four years and had liked it very well. Lena had been brought from Germany to Bridgepoint by a cousin and had been in...
The Gentle Lena
Gertrude Stein
54 min
He and She
Russia
They are nomads. Only Paris is graced with their presence for months; they are stingy to Berlin, Vienna, Neapoli, Madrid and other capitals. In Paris they feel quasi-at home. For them, Paris is the capital, their...
He and She
Anton Chekhov
11 min
The Overcoat
Ukraine
In the department of—but it is better not to mention the department. There is nothing more irritable than departments, regiments, courts of justice, and, in a word, every branch of public service. Each individual attached to...
The Overcoat
Nikolai Gogol
48 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
Bliss
New Zealand
Although Bertha Young was thirty she still had moments like this when she wanted to run instead of walk, to take dancing steps on and off the pavement, to bowl a hoop, to throw something up...
Bliss
Katherine Mansfield
18 min
Emily Of New Moon – Chapter 5
Canada
Diamond Cut Diamond EMILY, who had been pointedly ignored by the Murrays at breakfast, was called into the parlour when the meal was over. They were all there—the whole phalanx of them—and it occurred to Emily...
Emily Of New Moon – Chapter 5
Lucy Maud Montgomery
10 min

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