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Short Stories

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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

Rain
UK
It was nearly bed-time and when they awoke next morning land would be in sight. Dr. Macphail lit his pipe and, leaning over the rail, searched the heavens for the Southern Cross. After two years at...
The beautifull Cassandra
UK
a novel in twelve Chapters. dedicated by permission to Miss Austen. Dedication. Madam You are a Phoenix. Your taste is refined, your Sentiments are noble, & your Virtues innumerable. Your Person is lovely, your Figure, elegant,...
The beautifull Cassandra
Jane Austen
1 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 Unwritten Novel
UK
Such an expression of unhappiness was enough by itself to make one’s eyes slide above the paper’s edge to the poor woman’s face—insignificant without that look, almost a symbol of human destiny with it. Life’s what...
An Unwritten Novel
Virginia Woolf
17 min
The Steel Windpipe
Russia
So I was alone, surrounded by November gloom and whirling snow; the house was smothered in it and there was a moaning in the chimneys. I had spent all twenty-four years of my life in a...
The Steel Windpipe
Mikhail Bulgakov
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 Model Millionaire
UK
A Note of Admiration   Unless one is wealthy there is no use in being a charming fellow. Romance is the privilege of the rich, not the profession of the unemployed. The poor should be practical...
The Model Millionaire
Oscar Wilde
7 min
The Mortal Immortal
UK
July 16, 1833.—This is a memorable anniversary for me; on it I complete my three hundred and twenty-third year! The Wandering Jew?—certainly not. More than eighteen centuries have passed over his head. In comparison with him,...
The Mortal Immortal
Mary Shelley
21 min
The Prophetic Pictures
USA
“But this painter!” cried Walter Ludlow, with animation. “He not only excels in his peculiar art, but possesses vast acquirements in all other learning and science. He talks Hebrew with Dr. Mather and gives lectures in...
The Prophetic Pictures
Nathaniel Hawthorne
20 min
Uproar
Israel
There by the long, plain, flour-dusty carts, which usually stood idly in the middle of the spacious empty square, beside the pot-bellied road which sprawled somewhat in the spring sun, with the scrawny little horses which...
Uproar
Uri Nissan Gnessin
17 min

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