Our Collection
Our Collection

Read & Listen
to 1,712
Curated
Short Stories

5 min
10 min
15 min

Editor’s Choice: Love Stories💕

What’s new?

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

Lazarus
Russia
When Lazarus rose from the grave, after three days and nights in the mysterious thralldom of death, and returned alive to his home, it was a long time before anyone noticed the evil peculiarities in him...
Lazarus
Leonid Andreyev
29 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
The Son
Uruguay
It’s a rough summer morning in Misiones, with all the sun, heat and tranquility that the season can provide. Mother Nature, open to the skies, seems proud of herself. Like the sun, the heat, and the...
The Son
Horacio Quiroga
6 min
The Golden Honeymoon
USA
Mother says that when I start talking I never know when to stop. But I tell her the only time I get a chance is when she ain’t around, so I have to make the most...
The Golden Honeymoon
Ring Lardner
26 min
A Simple Soul
France
For half a century the housewives of Pont-l’Eveque had envied Madame Aubain her servant Felicite. For a hundred francs a year, she cooked and did the housework, washed, ironed, mended, harnessed the horse, fattened the poultry,...
A Simple Soul
Gustave Flaubert
48 min
The Legend of Sleepy Hollow
USA
Found among the Papers of the Late Diedrich Knickerbocker.   A pleasing land of drowsy head it was, Of dreams that wave before the half-shut eye; And of gay castles in the clouds that pass, Forever...
The Legend of Sleepy Hollow
Washington Irving
48 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
Batrachophiles and Batrachophobes
Spain
The most beautiful part of the city of Cimannis—a name which the local scholars interpreted as a shortened form of City Magnificent—the first thing that they showed to foreign visitors was the clubhouse; and the most...
Batrachophiles and Batrachophobes
Miguel de Unamuno
7 min
Upturned Face
USA
“What will we do now?” said the adjutant, troubled and excited.   “Bury him,” said Timothy Lean. The two officers looked down close to their toes where lay the body of their comrade. The face was...
Upturned Face
Stephen Crane
5 min
The Mark on the Wall
UK
Perhaps it was the middle of January in the present year that I first looked up and saw the mark on the wall. In order to fix a date it is necessary to remember what one...
The Mark on the Wall
Virginia Woolf
12 min

Get the Full Story!

Subscribe and enjoy unlimited access to the library. Listen to audio editions and playlists.
Support writers, translators and editors.

Get Full Access

Skip to content