Our Collection – The Short Story Project

USA

“Off there to the right—somewhere—is a large island,” said Whitney. “It’s rather a mystery——” “What island is it?” Rainsford asked. “The old charts call it ‘Ship-Trap Island,'” Whitney replied. “A suggestive name, isn’t it? Sailors have...

The Most Dangerous Game

Richard Connell

32 min

USA

I. THE LAND OF RED APPLES. There were eight in our party of bronzed children who were going East with the missionaries. Among us were three young braves, two tall girls, and we three little ones,...

The School Days of an Indian Girl

Zitkala-Ša

24 min

UK

Such an expression of unhappiness was enough by itself to make one’s eyes slide above the paper’s edge to the poor woman’s face—insignificant without that look, almost a symbol of human destiny with it. Life’s what...

An Unwritten Novel

Virginia Woolf

17 min

UK

The only thing that moved upon the vast semicircle of the beach was one small black spot. As it came nearer to the ribs and spine of the stranded pilchard boat, it became apparent from a...

Solid Objects

Virginia Woolf

9 min

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

Ukraine

In the department of—but it is better not to mention the department. There is nothing more irritable than departments, regiments, courts of justice, and, in a word, every branch of public service. Each individual attached to...

The Overcoat

Nikolai Gogol

48 min

Iran

The first time she heard of the Aal was from her grandmother. The story itself wasn’t particularly frightening, but the stench of scorched frankincense and stale opium rasping out of her withered throat with every word...

The Smell of a Baby

Miaad Banki

10 min

UK

“Forthwith this frame of mine was wrench’d With a woful agony, Which forced me to begin my tale, And then it set me free. “Since then, at an uncertain hour, That agony returns; And till my...

Transformation

Mary Shelley

27 min

UK

July 16, 1833.—This is a memorable anniversary for me; on it I complete my three hundred and twenty-third year! The Wandering Jew?—certainly not. More than eighteen centuries have passed over his head. In comparison with him,...

The Mortal Immortal

Mary Shelley

21 min

UK

On my fourteenth birthday, My Hunger stepped out of my body and sat beside me at my party. She looked me up and down before wrapping both hands around my red velvet cake and whispered “Well,...

Disappearing Acts

Amanda Miles

8 min

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

Sudan

I am fifty now—the same age my mother was when God took her, thirty years ago to the day. I am not recounting her story to mark a thirtieth anniversary, as people do for the mothers...

Me, The Other, and My Mother

Abdelaziz Baraka Sakin

6 min

UK

Letter the first To Miss Webster My dear Amelia You will rejoice to hear of the return of my amiable Brother from abroad. He arrived on thursday, & never did I see a finer form, save...

Amelia Webster

Jane Austen

1 min

UK

a novel in twelve Chapters. dedicated by permission to Miss Austen. Dedication. Madam You are a Phoenix. Your taste is refined, your Sentiments are noble, & your Virtues innumerable. Your Person is lovely, your Figure, elegant,...

The beautifull Cassandra

Jane Austen

1 min

UK

The delight of his youth had become the burden of his old age. Forty years ago Wormald desired nothing better than to spend a whole day in book-hunting. Regardless of fatigue and of shoe-leather, he tramped...

Two Collectors

George Gissing

5 min

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

USA

When I was eighteen I wanted something to do. I had tried teaching for two years, and hated it; I had tried sewing, and could not earn my bread in that way, at the cost of...

How I Went Out to Service

Louisa May Alcott

23 min

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

USA

Carlisle Street runs westward from the centre of Johnstown, across a great black bridge, down a hill and up again, by little shops and meat–markets, past single–storied homes, until suddenly it stops against a wide green...

Of the Coming of John

W. E. B. Du Bois

23 min

USA

He stood a moment on the steps of the bank, watching the human river that swirled down Broadway. Few noticed him. Few ever noticed him save in a way that stung. He was outside the world—...

The Comet

W. E. B. Du Bois

20 min

USA

“It is perfectly clear,” said my wife, pointing to the sign on the door. “It is perfectly absurd,” I answered and yet there it stood written: “Prof Johnson, Laboratory in Sociology. Hours 9 until 3.” We...

Princess Steel

W. E. B. Du Bois

19 min

USA

When the call came I remember that I turned from the tele- phone in a romantic flutter. Though I had spoken only once to the great surgeon, Roland Maradick, I felt on that December afternoon that...

The Shadowy Third

Ellen Glasgow

39 min

USA

I had no sooner entered the house than I knew something was wrong. Though I had never been in so splendid a place before—it was one of those big houses just off Fifth Avenue—I had a...

The Past

Ellen Glasgow

39 min

USA

Twilights were wonderful just after the war. They hung above New York like indigo wash, forming themselves from asphalt dust and sooty shadows under the cornices and limp gusts of air exhaled from closing windows, to...

A Millionaire’s Girl

Zelda Fitzgerald

18 min

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

USA

Bitter things dried behind the eyes of Miss Ella like garlic on a string before an open fire. The acrid fumes of sweet memories had gradually reddened their rims until at times they shone like the...

Miss Ella

Zelda Fitzgerald

11 min

After dark on Saturday night one could stand on the first tee of the golf-course and see the country-club windows as a yellow expanse over a very black and wavy ocean. The waves of this ocean,...

Bernice Bobs Her Hair

F. Scott Fitzgerald

35 min

UK

It was nearly bed-time and when they awoke next morning land would be in sight. Dr. Macphail lit his pipe and, leaning over the rail, searched the heavens for the Southern Cross. After two years at...

Rain

William Somerset Maugham

60 min

UK

No one knew better than he that he was an important person. He was number one in not the least important branch of the most important English firm in China. He had worked his way up...

The Taipan

William Somerset Maugham

12 min

Israel

It was difficult to explain the true nature of her journey. After some deliberation, she decided to mention it only in passing: for her fortieth birthday, she would take a kind of pilgrimage in Sigmund Freud’s...

Sigmund Freud Slept Here

Orna Reuven

14 min

USA

The hills across the valley of the Ebro were long and white. On this side there was no shade and no trees and the station was between two lines of rails in the sun. Close against...

Hills Like White Elephants

Ernest Hemingway

5 min

USA

In the fall the war was always there, but we did not go to it any more. It was cold in the fall in Milan and the dark came very early. Then the electric lights came...

In Another Country

Ernest Hemingway

8 min

USA

The door of Henry’s lunchroom opened and two men came in. They sat down at the counter. “What’s yours?” George asked them. “I don’t know,” one of the men said. “What do you want to eat,...

The Killers

Ernest Hemingway

11 min

USA

“Don’t tell me!” said old Mis’ Briggs, with a forbidding shake of the head; “no mother that was a mother would desert her own child for anything on earth!” “And leaving it a care on the...

The Unnatural Mother

Charlotte Perkins Gilman

12 min

USA

“There won’t be many more such good times as these for us,” said Olive Sargent, mournfully hugging her knees as she sat on the floor under the big Victory; “we’ve got to go out into the...

Five Girls

Charlotte Perkins Gilman

5 min

New Zealand

Getting ready was a terrible business. After supper Frau Brechenmacher packed four of the five babies to bed, allowing Rosa to stay with her and help to polish the buttons of Herr Brechenmacher’s uniform. Then she...

Frau Brechenmacher Attends A Wedding

Katherine Mansfield

9 min

New Zealand

I think it must be the umbrellas which make us look ridiculous. When I was admitted into the enclosure for the first time, and saw my fellow-bathers walking about very nearly “in their nakeds,” it struck...

The Luft Bad

Katherine Mansfield

4 min

USA

It was a Negro yard around a Negro house in a Negro settlement that looked to the payroll of the G. and G. Fertilizer works for its support. But there was something happy about the...

The Gilded Six-Bits

Zora Neale Hurston

18 min

UK

People are accustomed to think of Somerset as a country of deep, bosky bays, sunny coves, woods, moorlands, but Hemerton was in itself sufficient to blur this bland illusion. It lay a mile and a half...

Hodge

Elinor Mordaunt

31 min

USA

Kilimanjaro is a snow covered mountain 19,710 feet high, and is said to be the highest mountain in Africa. Its western summit is called the Masai “Ngàje Ngài,” the House of God. Close to the western...

The Snows of Kilimanjaro

Ernest Hemingway

36 min

USA

A giant of a brown-skinned man sauntered up the one street of the Village and out into the palmetto thickets with a small pretty woman clinging lovingly to his arm. “Looka theah, folkses!” cried Elijah Mosley,...

Spunk

Zora Neale Hurston

8 min

USA

It was eleven o’clock of a Spring night in Florida. It was Sunday. Any other night, Delia Jones would have been in bed for two hours by this time. But she was a wash-woman, and...

Sweat

Zora Neale Hurston

18 min

USA

One hot evening in Padua they carried him up onto the roof and he could look out over the top of the town. There were chimney swifts in the sky. After a while it got dark...

A Very Short Story

Ernest Hemingway

2 min

Russia

In the cemetery above a fresh mound of earth stands a new cross of oak⁠—strong, heavy, smooth, a pleasant thing to look at. It is April, but the days are grey. From a long way off...

Gentle Breathing

Ivan Bunin

9 min

Israel

I was assigned to work with Guy at Bells. We were both freshmen. He was in a prestigious social sciences program that I’d also applied to. I got a 655 on the psychometric exam, which was...

Bells

Yam Traiber

13 min

Germany

In summer, during the season, he works from sunrise to sunset. Drives to work at dawn, comes back at dusk. It’s beautiful; the drive takes exactly as long as the sun rising and setting. They set...

Lost in the Forest

Terézia Mora

20 min

Germany

‘Porta-Pat!’ comes in stereo from either side. They laugh. ‘Your turn!’ To get the beers in, they mean. They’re already drunk as twin skunks. They really mean it. Porta-Pat. Supposed to be my new nickname, they...

On a Saturday

Finn-Ole Heinrich

14 min

Germany

South I woke myself up by laughing and couldn’t stop for quite a while, even though from the first moment on I couldn’t remember what I was laughing about. Henri said he once woke up...

Story About Nothing

Peter Glaser

17 min

Germany

No matter whether I really ever said I had no desire to surround myself with nerds, hoarders, bon vivants, and pizza eaters, I can empathize with a good man who one day pays a visit to...

The Old Cable

Max Goldt

4 min

USA

After Guadalupe Nettel’s “Fungus” With my big toe, I pressed down on the bloated bulb of seaweed until a burst of salt air and ocean water popped out of its membrane. Amalia refused to do the...

Fungus

Mia Carrillo

5 min

Israel

1. I loved the subject very much. What made me love it even more was Mr. Emad, the teacher. He would laugh with us and tell us many stories that made us love the lesson. And...

My Head and The Globe

Nader Abu Tamer

1 min

USA

In the latter part of the last century there lived a man of science, an eminent proficient in every branch of natural philosophy, who not long before our story opens had made experience of a spiritual...

The Birthmark

Nathaniel Hawthorne

25 min

Egypt

My name is Asser, and I’m not a little kid—I’m six years old! I’m a whole year older than my cousin Malika. Just a little while ago, we hid behind the curtain. Of course, we love...

Japanese Watches and Egyptian Cats

Ahmed Tharwat

1 min

USA

When I’m feeling down, I go for nighttime swims with the aquarium turtles. I was hired as a security guard because people keep trying to steal our very expensive penguins. In my opinion, the sea turtles...

Aquarium’s Most Wanted

Sophie Hoss

0 min