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Abraham Hostel & The Short Story Project presents: | Absurd | American Lit | Animals | Arabic Lit | Classics | Comics | Coming of Age | Contemporary | Existential | Family | Female Authors | For the Kids | History | Humor | Latin Lit | Lgbtq | library | Love | Melancholy | Mother Russia | Politics | Realism | Speculative | Suspense | Travel |

Editor’s Choice

The first time, he was fishing with Danny. fishing was a sacrament, and therefore, after the strike, when his head was clear, there was the blurry aftertaste of ritual: the casting of the spoon in lazy repetitions, the slow cranking, the utterance of the clicking reel, the baiting...
USA

The Lightning Man

David Means

14 min
It was the night Dirch Passer the comedian died. He col­lapsed onstage. His heart was sick and he was taken away by ambulance to the hospital, where they said he was dead on arrival. It was September 3, 1980, and the reason I remember it so well is...
Denmark

The Winter Garden

Dorthe Nors

4 min
 Now, just like a beast, it’s howling, Now it cries, just like a child. The whole story began, according to the omniscient Aksinya, with Palchikov the clerk, who lived in Shalometyevo, falling in love with the agronomist’s daughter. The love was ardent, wasting the poor man’s heart. He...
Russia

The Blizzard

Mikhail Bulgakov

20 min
As the train rocked dead at Livingston he saw the man, in a worn khaki shirt with button flaps buttoned, arms crossed. The boy’s hand sprang up by reflex, and his face broke into a smile. The man smiled back gravely, and nodded. He did not otherwise move....
USA

Walking Out

David Quammen

44 min
“Son coeur est un luth suspendu; Sitôt qu’on le touche il rèsonne.” – De Béranger.   During the whole of a dull, dark, and soundless day in the autumn of the year, when the clouds hung oppressively low in the heavens, I had been passing alone, on horseback,...
USA

The Fall of the House of Usher

Edgar Allan Poe

28 min
Day had broken long ago. The mountains on whose peaks black clouds settled sparkled under a cold blue as though reporting that the pause given during the night by the snow that had snowed thus for days was about to end. A pencil of feeble sunlight getting ready...
Turkey

The Snow Traveller

Ayfer Tunç

24 min

New

The Secret Life of Insects
Bernardo Esquinca
5 min
http://The%20Secret%20Life%20of%20Insects Mexico
Two items of interest: (1) Today I’m going to talk...
Fungus
Mia Carrillo
5 min
http://Fungus USA
After Guadalupe Nettel’s “Fungus” With my big toe, I pressed...
The Birthmark
Nathaniel Hawthorne
25 min
http://The%20Birthmark USA
In the latter part of the last century there lived...
By the Water with Friends
Danielle Zilberberg
7 min
http://By%20the%20Water%20with%20Friends Israel
A pregnant woman lays naked in a bathtub filled with...

Short Stories from around the world  |

Short Stories from around the world  |

Short Stories from around the world  |
Countries Background
Chile 7
Tunisia 10
Finland 1
Puerto Rico 1
Mexico 20
UK 61
Uruguay 9

Audio Playlists
3 Nothing-Doing Stories 1 3 Nothing-Doing Stories 2 3 Nothing-Doing Stories 3
3 Nothing-Doing Stories
2 Stories on Female Rage 1 2 Stories on Female Rage 2
2 Stories on Female Rage
6 Detective, Mystery and Horror Stories 1 6 Detective, Mystery and Horror Stories 2 6 Detective, Mystery and Horror Stories 3
6 Detective, Mystery and Horror Stories
Her Story: 5 Iconic Feminist Stories 1 Her Story: 5 Iconic Feminist Stories 2 Her Story: 5 Iconic Feminist Stories 3
Her Story: 5 Iconic Feminist Stories
Coming of Age Around the World 1 Coming of Age Around the World 2
Coming of Age Around the World
Masters and Servants 1 Masters and Servants 2 Masters and Servants 3
Masters and Servants
What Would Freud Say? 5 Stories of Reflection 1 What Would Freud Say? 5 Stories of Reflection 2 What Would Freud Say? 5 Stories of Reflection 3
What Would Freud Say? 5 Stories of Reflection
Lokshen: Jewish soup & Stories 1 Lokshen: Jewish soup & Stories 2 Lokshen: Jewish soup & Stories 3
Lokshen: Jewish soup & Stories
See All Playlists

Hidden Gems

Ptosis Mexico
My father’s job, like many in this city, is parasitic. A professional photographer, he would have starved to death—along with his entire family—if it hadn’t been for Doctor Ruellan’s generous proposal which, in addition to providing...
Ptosis
Guadalupe Nettel
9 min
A Dwarf’s Tale Germany
The following story is as true as anything from the world of science and the realm of the dead can be for the likes of us. Although you can’t see the screen itself, a folding screen...
A Dwarf’s Tale
Georg Klein
4 min
River of Honey, Lake of Milk Syria
Hadiya would visit us with her mother. On sunny days, we did our homework together under the grapevine; in winter, we did it by the stove. Her books were often torn: she didn’t like books or...
River of Honey, Lake of Milk
Ahmed Omar
5 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 Grainless Mill Tunisia
“I haven’t written a word for a year (…) I’ve tried to write. Every day I sit at the typewriter, but I can’t get started.” – J.D Salinger “What’s a director if he can’t engage in...
A Grainless Mill
Ziad Abd el-Qadir
6 min
A Simple Soul France
For half a century the housewives of Pont-l’Eveque had envied Madame Aubain her servant Felicite. For a hundred francs a year, she cooked and did the housework, washed, ironed, mended, harnessed the horse, fattened the poultry,...
A Simple Soul
Gustave Flaubert
48 min
A Child Slovakia
She had been married for five years – and still nothing. Her relatives felt pity and compassion for her; it was not usual for women to be barren in her large family, where children had always...
A Child
Erika Olahová
5 min
Fyodor Dostoyevsky
When I received your vulgar and at the same time queer letter, my impulse for the first minute was to tear it into shreds, but I have preserved it as a curiosity.
/ A Novel in Nine Letters
Read story
Sheila Heti
I have a mermaid in a jar that Quilty bought me at a garage sale for twenty-five cents. The mermaid’s all, “I hate you I hate you I hate you,” but she’s in a jar, and unless I loosen the top she’s not coming out to kill me.
/ Mermaid in the Jar
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Tobias Wolff
They had been young lovers many years ago when the future was still a distant concept for both of them.
/ Bullet in the Brain
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Clarice Lispector
And with that breath of life, a Lisette we didn’t know was suddenly revealed. Her eyes were much less wide, more secretive, more laughing, and her protruding and ordinary face had a certain ironic superiority.
/ Monkeys
Read story
Bram Stoker 
By-and-by the storm seemed to be passing away, it now only came in fierce puffs or blasts. At such moments the weird sound of the wolf appeared to be echoed by many similar sounds around me.
/ Dracula's Guest
Read story

Our Classics

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
Romance with a Double Bass Russia
The musician Bowzinsky was walking from town to the country house of Prince Bibulov, where an evening of music and dance was to “take place,” as they say, for an engagement party. On his back was...
Romance with a Double Bass
Anton Chekhov
6 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
To Build a Fire USA
Day had broken cold and grey, exceedingly cold and grey, when the man turned aside from the main Yukon trail and climbed the high earth-bank, where a dim and little-travelled trail led eastward through the fat...
To Build a Fire
Jack London
28 min
Sleepy Russia
Night. Varka, the little nurse, a girl of thirteen, is rocking the cradle in which the baby is lying, and humming hardly audibly: “Hush-a-bye, my baby wee, While I sing a song for thee.” A little...
Sleepy
Anton Chekhov
9 min
The Decameron: Day the Fifth, The Ninth Story Italy
FEDERIGO DEGLI ALBERIGHI LOVETH AND IS NOT LOVED. HE WASTETH HIS SUBSTANCE IN PRODIGAL HOSPITALITY TILL THERE IS LEFT HIM BUT ONE SOLE FALCON, WHICH, HAVING NOUGHT ELSE, HE GIVETH HIS MISTRESS TO EAT, ON HER...
The Decameron: Day the Fifth, The Ninth Story
Giovanni Boccaccio
10 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
The Bowmen UK
It was during the Retreat of the Eighty Thousand, and the authority of the Censorship is sufficient excuse for not being more explicit. But it was on the most awful day of that awful time, on...
The Bowmen
Arthur Machen
4 min
Miracle of the Horses Russia
(A true story) Since she was beautiful and foolish —and she became more foolish when she was beautiful and more beautiful when she was foolish — and since he loved her, and since he had nothing...
Miracle of the Horses
Marina Tsvetayeva
7 min
The Open Window UK
“My aunt will be down presently, Mr. Nuttel,” said a very self-possessed young lady of fifteen; “in the meantime you must try and put up with me.” Framton Nuttel endeavoured to say the correct something which...
The Open Window
Saki
4 min

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