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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

Hylas
Sweden
I was intending to paint a picture of David as the Shepherd, but nowhere could I find a suit­able model for the face; there were several white and ruddy,’ but none which had on them the impress...
Hylas
Eric Stenbock
12 min
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
The Other Two
USA
Waythorn, on the drawing-room hearth, waited for his wife to come down to dinner It was their first night under his own roof, and he was surprised at his thrill of boyish agitation. He was not...
The Other Two
Edith Wharton
29 min
From the Diary of Sherlock Holmes
UK
Baker Street, January 1 Starting a diary in order to jot down a few useful incidents which will be of no use to Watson. Watson very often fails to see that an unsuccessful case is more...
From the Diary of Sherlock Holmes
Maurice Baring
5 min
The Monkey's Paw
UK
Without, the night was cold and wet, but in the small parlour of Laburnam Villa the blinds were drawn and the fire burned brightly. Father and son were at chess, the former, who possessed ideas about...
The Monkey's Paw
W.W. Jacobs
15 min
A Mighty Nice Man
USA
The child Charlotte sat on the narrow curbstone, her cheek against one knee, drawing idly in the dust with a stick. She sniffed at the flesh of her leg, smelt the dust and the sweat on...
A Mighty Nice Man
Patricia Highsmith
8 min
An Anarchist
UK
That year I spent the best two months of the dry season on one of the estates – in fact, on the principal cattle estate of a famous meat-extract manufacturing company. B.O.S bos. You have seen the three magic letters on...
An Anarchist
Joseph Conrad
24 min
A Strange Christmas Game
UK
It was the middle of November when we arrived at Martingdale, and found the place anything but romantic or pleasant. The walks were wet and sodden, the trees were leafless, there were no flowers save a...
A Strange Christmas Game
Charlotte Riddell
7 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 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

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