Our Collection – The Short Story Project

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

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

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

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

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

UK

HE KILLED me quite easily by crashing my head on the cobbles. Bang! Lord, what a fool I was! All my hate went out with that first bang: a fool to have kicked up that fuss...

The Ghost

Richard Hughes

3 min

UK

3:34 am. She was awake. Her eyes had adjusted to the darkness of the bedroom. She could make out every familiar feature. In recent months, this time had become too familiar to her. She no longer...

Nocturnal Yearnings

Naomi Nightingale

3 min

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 endeavored to say the correct something which...

The Open Window

Saki

4 min

UK

One afternoon I was sitting outside the Cafe de la Paix, watching the splendour and shabbiness of Parisian life, and wondering over my vermouth at the strange panorama of pride and poverty that was passing before...

The Sphinx Without a Secret

Oscar Wilde

5 min

UK

Whatever hour you woke there was a door shutting. From room to room they went, hand in hand, lifting here, opening there, making sure—a ghostly couple. “Here we left it,” she said. And he added, “Oh,...

A Haunted House

Virginia Woolf

2 min

UK

If we all knew our own minds (in a more enlarged sense than the popular acceptation of that phrase), I suspect we should find our nurses responsible for most of the dark corners we are forced...

Captain Murderer

Charles Dickens

4 min

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

UK

On glancing over my notes of the seventy odd cases in which I have during the last eight years studied the methods of my friend Sherlock Holmes, I find many tragic, some comic, a large number...

The Adventure of the Speckled Band

Arthur Conan Doyle

39 min

UK

“I have some papers here,” said my friend Sherlock Holmes, as we sat one winter’s night on either side of the fire, “which I really think, Watson, that it would be worth your while to glance...

The “Gloria Scott”

Arthur Conan Doyle

31 min

UK

There’s been more time to study her since the tribunal, but you can’t do it twenty-four-seven. Some people in this world still have jobs, and Jennifer’s boss would hit high C if she found out you’d...

59 Places to Fuck in Arizona

Rodge Glass

16 min

UK

A Note of Admiration Unless one is wealthy there is no use in being a charming fellow. Romance is the privilege of the rich, not the profession of the unemployed. The poor should be practical...

The Model Millionaire

Oscar Wilde

7 min

UK

Every evening the young Fisherman went out upon the sea, and threw his nets into the water. When the wind blew from the land he caught nothing, or but little at best, for it was...

The Fisherman and His Soul

Oscar Wilde

55 min

UK

I was an utterly unexceptional child of the twenty-ninth century, comprehensively engineered for emortality while I was still a more-or-less inchoate blastula and decanted from an artificial womb in Naburn Hatchery in the county of York...

Mortimer Gray’s History of Death

Brian Stableford

10 min