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The Goophered Grapevine
Charles W. Chesnutt
22 min
http://The%20Goophered%20Grapevine
USA
Some years ago my wife was in poor health, and...
Mars Jeems's Nightmare
Charles W. Chesnutt
25 min
http://Mars%20Jeems's%20Nightmare
USA
We found old Julius very useful when we moved to...
The Passing of Grandison
Charles W. Chesnutt
26 min
http://The%20Passing%20of%20Grandison
USA
I When it is said that it was done to...
The Wife of His Youth
Charles W. Chesnutt
18 min
http://The%20Wife%20of%20His%20Youth
USA
I Mr. Ryder was going to give a ball. There...

Short Stories from around the world  |

Short Stories from around the world  |

Short Stories from around the world  |

Hidden Gems

Goldene Medene
USA
Dr. Spencer looked up from his misery to the long, winding lines— dark eyes, brown clothes, the occasional red and yellow native costume—and each day before this and after seemed a wretched sameness to him, as...
Goldene Medene
Amy Gustine
18 min
How to Talk to Your Mother (notes)
USA
1982. Without her, for years now, murmur at the defrosting refrigerator, “What?” “Huh?” “Shush now,” as it creaks, aches, groans until the final ice block drops from the ceiling of the freezer like something vanquished. Dream, and...
How to Talk to Your Mother (notes)
Lorrie Moore
11 min
A Predicament
USA
What chance, good lady, hath bereft you thus?—COMUS. It was a quiet and still afternoon when I strolled forth in the goodly city of Edina. The confusion and bustle in the streets were terrible. Men were...
A Predicament
Edgar Allan Poe
14 min
The Green Door
USA
Suppose you should be walking down Broadway after dinner, with ten minutes allotted to the consummation of your cigar while you are choosing between a diverting tragedy and something serious in the way of vaudeville. Suddenly...
The Green Door
O. Henry
10 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
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
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
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

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
LA GRANDE BRETÈCHE
France
“Ah! madame,” replied the doctor, “I have some appalling stories in my collection. But each one has its proper hour in a conversation—you know the pretty jest recorded by Chamfort, and said to the Duc de...
LA GRANDE BRETÈCHE
Honoré de Balzac
11 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
You're Laughing
Italy
Shaken by his wife with an angry tug on the arm, jolted out of his sleep again that night, was poor Mister Anselmo. “You’re laughing!” Dazed, and with his nose still stuffy from sleep, and wheezing...
You're Laughing
Luigi Pirandello
9 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
Love and Freindship
UK
“Deceived in Freindship and Betrayed in Love.”   LETTER the FIRST From ISABEL to LAURA How often, in answer to my repeated intreaties that you would give my Daughter a regular detail of the Misfortunes and...
Love and Freindship
Jane Austen
42 min
The Cold
Japan
 One morning, after a fall of snow. Yasukichi sat on a chair in the physics teachers’ lounge, watching the flames in the heating stove. The flames licked up yellow one moment, then fell to sooty ruins...
The Cold
Ryūnosuke Akutagawa
7 min
The Extra
Russia
Ilya Ilych was injured. It happened in the evening, in the third act. Dressed in braided crimson livery, white stockings and shoes with buckles, Ilya Ilych was to go out on stage to hand the ballerinas...
The Extra
Anatoly Kuznetsov
34 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
A Scandal in Bohemia
UK
To Sherlock Holmes she is always the woman. I have seldom heard him mention her under any other name. In his eyes she eclipses and predominates the whole of her sex. It was not that he felt any...
A Scandal in Bohemia
Arthur Conan Doyle
34 min

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