Our Collection
Our Collection

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to 1,713
Curated
Short Stories

5 min
10 min
15 min

Editors’ Choice♋

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The Little Mermaid
Hans Christian Andersen
36 min
http://The%20Little%20Mermaid
Denmark
Far out in the sea the water is as blue...
The Young King
Oscar Wilde
21 min
http://The%20Young%20King
UK
It was the night before the day fixed for his...
The Happy Prince
Oscar Wilde
7 min
http://The%20Happy%20Prince
UK
The statue of the Happy Prince stood high above the...
The Nightingale and the Rose
Oscar Wilde
5 min
http://The%20Nightingale%20and%20the%20Rose
UK
“She promised she’d dance with me if I brought her...

Short Stories from around the world  |

Short Stories from around the world  |

Short Stories from around the world  |

Hidden Gems

The Daughters of the Late Colonel
New Zealand
The week after was one off the busiest weeks of their lives. Even when they went to bed it was only their bodies that lay down and rested; their minds went on, thinking things out, talking...
The Daughters of the Late Colonel
Katherine Mansfield
28 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
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
The Signal-Man
UK
“Halloa! Below there!”   When he heard a voice thus calling to him, he was standing at the door of his box, with a flag in his hand, furled round its short pole. One would have...
The Signal-Man
Charles Dickens
20 min
El Verdugo
France
To Martinez de la Rosa.   The clock of the little town of Menda had just struck midnight. At that moment a young French officer, leaning on the parapet of a long terrace which bordered the...
El Verdugo
Honoré de Balzac
11 min
There Was a Man Dwelt by a Churchyard
UK
This, you know, is the beginning of the story about sprites and goblins which Mamilius, the best child in Shakespeare, was telling to his mother the queen, and the court ladies, when the king came in...
There Was a Man Dwelt by a Churchyard
M.R. James
5 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
D.H. Lawrence
There were some twiggy apple trees, winter-crack trees, and ragged cabbages. Beside the path hung dishevelled pink chrysanthemums, like pink cloths hung on bushes. A woman came stooping out of the felt-covered fowl-house, half-way down the garden
Anna Starobinets
And the name of the investor who had recently undertaken to fund the magazine, and who had actually commissioned this very article, accidentally migrated from a list of oligarchs who meticulously paid their taxes into a list of inveterate tax-dodgers
Sabrina Huang
This felt like that fairy tale, the shoemaker and the elves—he wondered if something was coming in the middle of the night and only leaving at dawn, working day after day on his sleeping body, filling in and carving out, turning him into a lean-torsoed, clean-featured hunk of a man
Anton Chekhov
It was cold and the snow was still on the ground, the trees were lifeless, but the scent of spring was in the air, and the rooks were cawing noisily as they settled themselves for the night

Our Classics

A Couple Of Nuts
USA
The summer of 1924 shriveled the trees in the Champs-Elysees to a misty blue till they swayed before your eyes as if they were about to go down under the gasoline fumes. Before July was out,...
A Couple Of Nuts
Zelda Fitzgerald
19 min
The Dead
Ireland
Lily, the caretaker’s daughter, was literally run off her feet. Hardly had she brought one gentleman into the little pantry behind the office on the ground floor and helped him off with his overcoat than the...
The Dead
James Joyce
62 min
The Brothers
USA
Doctor Franck came in as I sat sewing up the rents in an old shirt, that Tom might go tidily to his grave. New shirts were needed for the living, and there was not wife or...
The Brothers
Louisa May Alcott
33 min
The Legend of Sleepy Hollow
USA
Found among the Papers of the Late Diedrich Knickerbocker.   A pleasing land of drowsy head it was, Of dreams that wave before the half-shut eye; And of gay castles in the clouds that pass, Forever...
The Legend of Sleepy Hollow
Washington Irving
48 min
The Blue Hotel
USA
The Palace Hotel at Fort Romper was painted a light blue, a shade that is on the legs of a kind of heron, causing the bird to declare its position against any background. The Palace Hotel,...
The Blue Hotel
Stephen Crane
42 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 Mouse
Cuba|UK
The mouse and I lived on a houseboat anchored near Notre Dame where the Seine curved endlessly like veins around the island heart of Paris. The Mouse was a small woman with thin legs, big breasts,...
The Mouse
Anais Nin
10 min
Impoverished
Russia
  I When the waste and dreariness of her life become too much for Zivia, the younger and more embittered of the two unmarried Pozis sisters, she stops eating and washing. Wearing only her shift and...
Impoverished
David Bergelson
11 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
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

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