English
0 min 70 min
How I Went Out to Service
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
The Brothers
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
Of the Coming of John
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
The Comet
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
Princess Steel
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
The Shadowy Third
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
The Past
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
A Couple Of Nuts
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
Miss Ella
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
Bernice Bobs Her Hair
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
Hills Like White Elephants
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
In Another Country
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
The Killers
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
The Unnatural Mother
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
Five Girls
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
The Gilded Six-Bits
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
The Snows of Kilimanjaro
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
Spunk
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
Sweat
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
A Very Short Story
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
The Birthmark
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
Aquarium’s Most Wanted
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
The Fig Leaf
USA
The nodes were like beetles, their black metal bodies shining between the attendant’s fingers. “Just a pinch, dear,” he said, leaning in and fixing the nodes to my temples, measuring symmetry with my eyes and his....
The Fig Leaf
Benjamin Shane Evans
6 min
For the Love of Goat
USA
The kid—they call him Spud—sees it while walking the mile to where he catches the school bus every morning except Thursdays when his mom pulls a shift at the school cafeteria and drives him there at...
For the Love of Goat
Clif Travers
14 min
1 2 3 … 6
Small Footer Logo

© The Short Story Project 2026

Made with ☕ and 🚬 by Oddity

Skip to content