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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  |

Countries Background
Iraq 8
Germany 40
Greece 3
Egypt 5
USA 206
China 3

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 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
The Garden Party
New Zealand
And after all the weather was ideal. They could not have had a more perfect day for a garden-party if they had ordered it. Windless, warm, the sky without a cloud. Only the blue was veiled...
The Garden Party
Katherine Mansfield
21 min
The Son
Uruguay
It’s a rough summer morning in Misiones, with all the sun, heat and tranquility that the season can provide. Mother Nature, open to the skies, seems proud of herself. Like the sun, the heat, and the...
The Son
Horacio Quiroga
6 min
Corporal Billygoat and I
Poland
“Squad, stand easy… and fall out!” crowed Corporal Billygoat, in a voice that betrayed it had only broken lately. And at once, off duty now, he slapped Dragon on the back and said: “Hey, brother, go...
Corporal Billygoat and I
Tadeusz Konwicki
19 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
The Nose
Ukraine
I On the 25th March, 18——, a very strange occurrence took place in St Petersburg. On the Ascension Avenue there lived a barber of the name of Ivan Jakovlevitch. He had lost his family name, and...
The Nose
Nikolai Gogol
36 min
The Nightingale and the Rose
UK
“She promised she’d dance with me if I brought her a red rose,” cried a young heart-broken student. “But there’s not one in this whole garden.” From her nest in the oak tree, the Nightingale heard...
The Nightingale and the Rose
Oscar Wilde
5 min
The Passing of Grandison
USA
I When it is said that it was done to please a woman, there ought perhaps to be enough said to explain anything; for what a man will not do to please a woman is yet...
The Passing of Grandison
Charles W. Chesnutt
26 min
My First Goose
Russia
Savitsky, the commander of the Sixth Division, rose when he saw me, and I was taken aback by the beauty of his gigantic body. He rose — his breeches purple, his crimson cap cocked to the...
My First Goose
Isaac Babel
5 min
A Drama in the Air
France
  In the month of September, 185–, I arrived at Frankfort-on-the-Maine. My passage through the principal German cities had been brilliantly marked by balloon ascents; but as yet no German had accompanied me in my car,...
A Drama in the Air
Jules Verne
27 min

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