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Short Stories

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How I Went Out to Service
Louisa May Alcott
23 min
http://How%20I%20Went%20Out%20to%20Service
USA
When I was eighteen I wanted something to do. I...
The Comet
W. E. B. Du Bois
20 min
http://The%20Comet
USA
He stood a moment on the steps of the bank,...
The Brothers
Louisa May Alcott
33 min
http://The%20Brothers
USA
Doctor Franck came in as I sat sewing up the...
Of the Coming of John
W. E. B. Du Bois
23 min
http://Of%20the%20Coming%20of%20John
USA
Carlisle Street runs westward from the centre of Johnstown, across...

Short Stories from around the world  |

Short Stories from around the world  |

Short Stories from around the world  |

Hidden Gems

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
The Sphinx Without a Secret
UK
One afternoon I was sitting outside the Cafe de la Paix, watching the splendour and shabbiness of Parisian life, and wondering over my vermouth at the strange panorama of pride and poverty that was passing before...
The Sphinx Without a Secret
Oscar Wilde
5 min
A Haunted House
UK
Whatever hour you woke there was a door shutting. From room to room they went, hand in hand, lifting here, opening there, making sure—a ghostly couple. “Here we left it,” she said. And he added, “Oh,...
A Haunted House
Virginia Woolf
2 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
A Mighty Nice Man
USA
The child Charlotte sat on the narrow curbstone, her cheek against one knee, drawing idly in the dust with a stick. She sniffed at the flesh of her leg, smelt the dust and the sweat on...
A Mighty Nice Man
Patricia Highsmith
8 min
The Wizard
Japan
Well now, esteemed readers, I am now in Ōsaka and shall therefore relate a local story. Long ago there was a man who came to the city to seek a position as a menial. Ranking as...
The Wizard
Ryūnosuke Akutagawa
5 min
The Other Woman
USA
“I am in love with my wife,” he said–a superfluous remark, as I had not questioned his attachment to the woman he had married. We walked for ten minutes and then he said it again. I...
The Other Woman
Sherwood Anderson
14 min
Bram Stoker 
There came a flash of forked lightning that lit up the whole expanse of the heavens. In the instant, as I am a living man, I saw, as my eyes turned into the darkness of the tomb, a beautiful woman with rounded cheeks and red lips, seemingly sleeping on bier
Mariana Enríquez
I came across the bones after a storm that had made a mud puddle out of the patch of soil in my backyard. I put them in a bucket that I used to carry my treasures to the patio faucet, where I would wash them
Camilla Grudova
I have many women friends, and many woo me. One, a rich baron’s wife, had a coat made out of insects’ fur for me. She had hundreds of tarantulas and bees killed in order to make it, in order to appeal to me, but never have I been so repulsed
Fyodor Dostoyevsky
For only now, has it become possible to us, for the first time, to give a serious thought to human happiness. Man is born a rebel, and can rebels be ever happy?… Thou has been fairly warned of it, but evidently to no use, since Thou hast rejected the only means which could make mankind happy

Our Classics

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
Fragment of a Novel
UK
“In the year 17__, having for some time determined on a journey through countries not hitherto much frequented by travellers, I set out, accompanied by a friend, whom I shall designate by the name of Augustus...
Fragment of a Novel
Lord Byron
7 min
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
The Blue Cross
UK
Between the silver ribbon of morning and the green glittering ribbon of sea, the boat touched Harwich and let loose a swarm of folk like flies, among whom the man we must follow was by no...
The Blue Cross
G.K. Chesterton
29 min
The Other Woman
USA
“I am in love with my wife,” he said–a superfluous remark, as I had not questioned his attachment to the woman he had married. We walked for ten minutes and then he said it again. I...
The Other Woman
Sherwood Anderson
14 min
The New Paris
Germany
Lately, on the night before Whit Sunday, I dreamed that I was standing before a mirror, occupying myself with my new summer suit, which my parents had had made against the approaching festival. The dress consisted,...
The New Paris
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
21 min
Was It a Dream?
France
“I had loved her madly! Why does one love? Why does one love? How queer it is to see only one being in the world, to have only one thought in one’s mind, only one desire...
Was It a Dream?
Guy de Maupassant
7 min
They Have Given Us The Land
Mexico
After walking for so many hours without coming upon even the shadow of a tree, not even the seed of a tree, not even a root of anything, you can hear dogs barking. You might sometimes...
They Have Given Us The Land
Juan Rulfo
6 min
August
Poland
In July, my father left to take the waters; he left me with my mother and older brother at the mercy of the summer days, white from the heat and stunning. Stupefied by the light, we...
August
Bruno Schulz
10 min
The Postmaster
India
The postmaster first took up his duties in the village of Ulapur. Though the village was a small one, there was an indigo factory near by, and the proprietor, an Englishman, had managed to get a post office...
The Postmaster
Rabindranath Tagore
8 min

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