Our Collection – Page 2 – The Short Story Project

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

France

It was in the midst of these gloomy shadows, in the stifling night that every moment seemed to intensify about him, that there began to shine, like a star lost in the dark abysm of space,...

The Piano

Romain Rolland

19 min

France

Louisa, who let no opportunity escape of earning a little money, used to go out as cook for exceptional occasions, such, as marriages or baptismal feasts. Melchior pretended to know nothing about it—it touched his vanity—but...

Visiting The House of The Rich

Romain Rolland

15 min

France

In the month of September, 185–, I arrived at Frankfort-on-the-Maine. My passage through the principal German cities had been brilliantly marked by balloon ascents; but as yet no German had accompanied me in my car,...

A Drama in the Air

Jules Verne

27 min

Ireland

“I really think,” said the Doctor, “that, at any rate, one of us should go and try whether or not the thing is an imposture.” “Good!” said Considine. “After dinner we will take our cigars and...

A Gipsy Prophecy

Bram Stoker

14 min

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

Austria

Someone had knocked at the door, quite gently, but the doctor awoke at once, turned on the light, and sat up in bed. He glanced at his wife who was sleeping quietly, picked up his dressing-gown,...

The Death of a Bachelor

Arthur Schnitzler

17 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

Canada

Diamond Cut Diamond EMILY, who had been pointedly ignored by the Murrays at breakfast, was called into the parlour when the meal was over. They were all there—the whole phalanx of them—and it occurred to Emily...

Emily Of New Moon – Chapter 5

Lucy Maud Montgomery

10 min

Russia

It was an immense city in which they lived: Petrov, clerk in a commercial bank, and he, the other,—name unknown. They used to meet once a year, at Easter, when they both went to pay a...

The City

Leonid Andreyev

11 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

Egypt

After the evening prayer, curses came streaming out of Abdel Karim’s mouth, striking the village fathers and mothers and taking in Tantawi and his forebears on the way. The story was that Abdel Karim had hardly...

The Cheapest Nights

Yusuf Idris

6 min

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

Canada

Chapter I The House in the Hollow The house in the hollow was “a mile from anywhere”—so Maywood people said. It was situated in a grassy little dale, looking as if it had never been built...

Emily of New Moon

Lucy Maud Montgomery

10 min

Canada

A Watch in the Night Emily stood quite still and looked up at Ellen’s broad, red face–as still as if she had been suddenly turned to stone. She felt as if she had. She was as...

Emily of New Moon – Chapter 2

Lucy Maud Montgomery

15 min

Canada

A Hop Out of Kin Douglas Starr lived two weeks more. In after years when the pain had gone out of their recollection, Emily thought they were the most precious of her memories. They were beautiful...

Emily of New Moon – Chapter 3

Lucy Maud Montgomery

17 min

Canada

A Family Conclave EMILY wakened at daylight the next morning. Through her low, uncurtained window the splendour of the sunrise was coming in, and one faint, white star was still lingering in the crystal-green sky over...

Emily from New Moon – Chapter 4

Lucy Maud Montgomery

13 min

Iran

It was the longest night of winter. At the bottom of the sea, an old fish gathered together 12,000 of her children and grandchildren and began to tell them this story: Once upon a time a...

Little Black Fish

Samad Behrangi

22 min

Russia

The musician Bowzinsky was walking from town to the country house of Prince Bibulov, where an evening of music and dance was to “take place,” as they say, for an engagement party. On his back was...

Romance with a Double Bass

Anton Chekhov

6 min

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

Russia

Our friends the Zaitsevs live out of town “The air is so much better out in the suburbs,” they say. That is, they can’t afford to live where the air is bad. A small group of...

The White Flower

Teffi

4 min

USA

“It is not enough to be the possessor of genius—the time and the man must conjoin. An Alexander the Great, born into an age of profound peace, might scarce have troubled the world—a Newton, grown up...

The Curfew Tolls

Stephen Vincent Benét

25 min

USA

I visited St. Louis lately, and on my way West, after changing cars at Terre Haute, Indiana, a mild, benevolent-looking gentleman of about forty-five, or maybe fifty, came in at one of the way-stations and sat...

Cannibalism In The Cars

Mark Twain

13 min

Russia

They are nomads. Only Paris is graced with their presence for months; they are stingy to Berlin, Vienna, Neapoli, Madrid and other capitals. In Paris they feel quasi-at home. For them, Paris is the capital, their...

He and She

Anton Chekhov

11 min

USA

The woods were already filled with shadows one June evening, just before eight o’clock, though a bright sunset still glimmered faintly among the trunks of the trees. A little girl was driving home her cow, a...

A White Heron

Sarah Orne Jewett

16 min

Japan

He was a young socialist. His father, a minor official, had thus threatened to disown him. Yet he had remained true to his convictions, for he was possessed of both burning zeal and supportive friends. They...

The Socialist

Ryūnosuke Akutagawa

2 min

Israel

High up, stretching into the sky, loomed the tower of the fair princess. It was made of pure crystal and its pinnacle was bedecked with gold and precious stones. All around it, a multi-hued, large rose...

The Rose Garden (A Fairy Tale)

Lea Goldberg

7 min

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

Italy

“As long as there’s the sun … the sun!” the voice of Don Peppino Quaglia crooned softly near the doorway of the low, dark, basement apartment. “Leave it to God,” answered the humble and faintly cheerful...

A Pair of Eyeglasses

Anna Maria Ortese

25 min

Russia

I could think of nothing else all month: Would they let me go to the Christmas party, or not? I was cunning. I prepared the ground. I told my mother about the glorious achievements of Zhenya Ryazanova,...

The Green Devil

Teffi

6 min

Israel

On dark, stormy nights they would run through the sleeping streets, burning torches in their hands, and no one saw their faces and no one knew their names. And the echoes of the steps of fourteen...

Autumn (A Fairy Tale)

Lea Goldberg

3 min

Ireland

Lily, the caretaker’s daughter, was literally run off her feet. Hardly had she brought one gentleman into the little pantry behind the office on the ground floor and helped him off with his overcoat than the...

The Dead

James Joyce

62 min

UK

CHAPTER I–THE PROMISE “An old-fashioned Christmas.–A lively family will accept a gentleman as paying guest to join them in spending an old-fashioned Christmas in the heart of the country.” That was the advertisement. It...

An Old-Fashioned Christmas

Richard Marsh

22 min

UK

It was one of the secret opinions, such as we all have, of Peter Brench that his main success in life would have consisted in his never having committed himself about the work, as it was...

The Tree of Knowledge

Henry James

23 min

Russia

(A true story) Since she was beautiful and foolish —and she became more foolish when she was beautiful and more beautiful when she was foolish — and since he loved her, and since he had nothing...

Miracle of the Horses

Marina Tsvetayeva

7 min

UK

Prologue ‘Sorcery and sanctity,’ said Ambrose, ‘these are the only realities. Each is an ecstasy, a withdrawal from the common life.’ Cotgrave listened, interested. He had been brought by a friend to this mouldering house in...

The White People

Arthur Machen

66 min

Denmark

It happened when I was about eighteen or nineteen years old (began Dr. Simsen). I was studying at the University, and being coached in anatomy by my old friend Solling. He was an amusing fellow, this...

The Amputated Arms

Vilhelm Bergsøe

25 min

Russia

Most of all I hate the sun, loud human voices, and pounding. Rapid, rapid pounding. I am so afraid of people that if I hear someone else’s footsteps and the sound of voices in the corridor...

The Red Crown

Mikhail Bulgakov

8 min

USA

Old Nannie sat hunched upon herself expecting her own death momentarily. The Grandmother had said to her at parting, with the easy prophecy of the aged, that this might be their last farewell on earth; they...

The Last Leaf

O. Henry

6 min

Germany

Lately, on the night before Whit Sunday, I dreamed that I was standing before a mirror, occupying myself with my new summer suit, which my parents had had made against the approaching festival. The dress consisted,...

The New Paris

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

21 min

UK

Margaret Mahuntleth, in the corner of the big settle, basked in the hearth-glow like one newly come to heaven. Warm light reddened her knitted shawl, her white apron, and her face, worn and frail. It was...

Over the Hills and Far Away

Mary Webb

5 min

Japan

Well now, esteemed readers, I am now in Ōsaka and shall therefore relate a local story. Long ago there was a man who came to the city to seek a position as a menial. Ranking as...

The Wizard

Ryūnosuke Akutagawa

5 min

UK

The first time I ever met Mr. Tallent was in the late summer of 1906, in a small, lonely inn on the top of a mountain. For natives, rainy days in these places are not very...

Mr. Tallent’s Ghost

Mary Webb

17 min

UK

Well, as I was saying, the Emperor got into bed. “Chevalier,” says he to his valet, “let down those window-curtains, and shut the casement before you leave the room.” Chevalier did as he was told, and...

Napoleon and the Spectre

Charlotte Brontë

4 min

UK

It was during the Retreat of the Eighty Thousand, and the authority of the Censorship is sufficient excuse for not being more explicit. But it was on the most awful day of that awful time, on...

The Bowmen

Arthur Machen

4 min

UK

All over the pavement of the church spread the exaggerated cross-hatching of the old pews’ oak, a Smithfield market of intersecting lines such as children made with cards in the old days when kings and knaves...

The Marble Child

Edith Nesbit

14 min

UK

This slender narrative has no pretensions to the regularity of a story, or the development of situations and feelings; it is but a slight sketch, delivered nearly as it was narrated to me by one of...

The Invisible Girl

Mary Shelley

22 min

Australia

The Western train had just arrived at Redfern railway station with a lot of ordinary passengers and one swagman. He was short, and stout, and bow-legged, and freckled, and sandy. He had red hair and small,...

Enter Mitchell

Henry Lawson

2 min

UK

BY A PARTIAL, PREJUDICED, AND IGNORANT HISTORIAN. To Miss Austen, eldest daughter of the Rev. George Austen, this work is inscribed with all due respect by THE AUTHOR. N.B. There will be very few Dates in...

The History of England

Jane Austen

14 min

USA

For hours she had lain in a kind of gentle torpor, not unlike that sweet lassitude which masters one in the hush of a midsummer noon, when the heat seems to have silenced the very birds...

The Fulness of Life

Edith Wharton

15 min

USA

I had seen the Magic Shop from afar several times; I had passed it once or twice, a shop window of alluring little objects, magic balls, magic hens, wonderful cones, ventriloquist dolls, the material of the...

The Magic Shop

H. G. Wells

15 min

USA

At the Great American Lunch Hour young George O’Kelly straightened his desk deliberately and with an assumed air of interest. No one in the office must know that he was in a hurry, for success is...

The Sensible Thing

F. Scott Fitzgerald

21 min

USA

On the third day after they moved to the country he came walking back from the village carrying a basket of groceries and a twenty-four-yard coil of rope. She came out to meet him, wiping her...

Rope

Katherine Anne Porter

11 min

Canada

THIS story happened a long time ago in the country where anything may happen. The people who belong to that country stay there, and nothing can induce them to journey beyond its borders. Also, very few travelers...

The Golden Apple Tree

Virna Sheard

26 min