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Short Stories

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Editor’s Choice: Love Stories💕

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Bernice Bobs Her Hair
F. Scott Fitzgerald
35 min
After dark on Saturday night one could stand on the...
Rain
William Somerset Maugham
60 min
http://Rain
UK
It was nearly bed-time and when they awoke next morning...
Sigmund Freud Slept Here
Orna Reuven
14 min
http://Sigmund%20Freud%20Slept%20Here
Israel
It was difficult to explain the true nature of her...
The Taipan
William Somerset Maugham
12 min
http://The%20Taipan
UK
No one knew better than he that he was an...

Short Stories from around the world  |

Short Stories from around the world  |

Short Stories from around the world  |

Hidden Gems

Bohemia
Russia
I – How to Survive with the Aid of Literature. Astride a Play to Tiflis.   If someone asked me what I deserve, I would say in all honesty before God that I deserve hard labor....
Bohemia
Mikhail Bulgakov
9 min
No News, or What Killed the Dog?
USA
It was a day of holocausts, cataclysms, tornadoes, earthquakes, blackouts, mass murders, eruptions, and miscellaneous dooms, at the peak of which the sun swallowed the earth and the stars vanished. But to put it simply, the...
No News, or What Killed the Dog?
Ray Bradbury
9 min
The Cold
Romania
For the first few hours they drove silently. His father simply sat there without saying a word, just sniffling from time to time. It seemed to him that he was doing it ostentatiously. He could see...
The Cold
Augustin Cupsa
8 min
The Queen of Spades
Russia
At the house of Naroumov, a cavalry officer, the long winter night had been passed in gambling. At five in the morning breakfast was served to the weary players. The winners ate with relish; the losers,...
The Queen of Spades
Alexander Sergeievitch Pushkin
14 min
The Model Millionaire
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
The Green Door
USA
Suppose you should be walking down Broadway after dinner, with ten minutes allotted to the consummation of your cigar while you are choosing between a diverting tragedy and something serious in the way of vaudeville. Suddenly...
The Green Door
O. Henry
10 min
The Decameron: Day the Fifth, The Ninth Story
Italy
FEDERIGO DEGLI ALBERIGHI LOVETH AND IS NOT LOVED. HE WASTETH HIS SUBSTANCE IN PRODIGAL HOSPITALITY TILL THERE IS LEFT HIM BUT ONE SOLE FALCON, WHICH, HAVING NOUGHT ELSE, HE GIVETH HIS MISTRESS TO EAT, ON HER...
The Decameron: Day the Fifth, The Ninth Story
Giovanni Boccaccio
10 min
Lucia Berlin
Rich people in cars never look at people on the street, at all. Poor ones always do… in fact it sometimes seems they’re just driving around, looking at people on the street. I’ve done that
Sylvain Tesson
She met Alain one night at the end of March, when Moscow is just starting to warm up. The stalactites drop from the roofs and, on occasion, spear a passerby
Alice Bialsky
When the rock-n-roll phase of my life began, one of the most important goals I set for myself was to fashion an image. Image determined everything. A black leather jacket, tight black jeans, combat boots, hair that said, “we have just been bombed–I tried to escape and used my head as the brakes” and dark sunglasses worn year-round were mandatory items for any self-respecting rocker
Ernest Hemingway
After he no longer meant what he said, his lies were more successful with women than when he had told them the truth. It was not so much that he lied as that there was no truth to tell

Our Classics

Romance with a Double Bass
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
Napoleon and the Spectre
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
Rashōmon
Japan
It was a chilly evening. A servant of a samurai stood under the Rashōmon, waiting for a break in the rain. No one else was under the wide gate. On the thick column, its crimson lacquer...
Rashōmon
Ryūnosuke Akutagawa
8 min
Impoverished
Russia
  I When the waste and dreariness of her life become too much for Zivia, the younger and more embittered of the two unmarried Pozis sisters, she stops eating and washing. Wearing only her shift and...
Impoverished
David Bergelson
11 min
The Curfew Tolls
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
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
Emily of New Moon - Chapter 3
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
The Border-Line
UK
Katherine Farquhar was a handsome woman of forty, no longer slim, but attractive in her soft, full, feminine way. The French porters ran round her, getting a voluptuous pleasure from merely carrying her bags. And she...
The Border-Line
D.H. Lawrence
36 min
The Yellow Wallpaper
USA
It is very seldom that mere ordinary people like John and myself secure ancestral halls for the summer. A colonial mansion, a hereditary estate, I would say a haunted house, and reach the height of romantic...
The Yellow Wallpaper
Charlotte Perkins Gilman
24 min
El Verdugo
France
To Martinez de la Rosa.   The clock of the little town of Menda had just struck midnight. At that moment a young French officer, leaning on the parapet of a long terrace which bordered the...
El Verdugo
Honoré de Balzac
11 min

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