Our Collection | The Short Story Project

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

New Zealand

And after all the weather was ideal. They could not have had a more perfect day for a garden-party if they had ordered it. Windless, warm, the sky without a cloud. Only the blue was veiled...

The Garden Party

Katherine Mansfield

21 min

USA

Dr. Spencer looked up from his misery to the long, winding lines— dark eyes, brown clothes, the occasional red and yellow native costume—and each day before this and after seemed a wretched sameness to him, as...

Goldene Medene

Amy Gustine

18 min

Israel

On the night before her last spell in the hospital, Dawn was haunted again by that old dream about the stone men. As always, she woke the moment she couldn’t stand being terrorized any longer. She...

Heart of Stone

Nir Yehudai

26 min

Italy

There was always, in the square, a curious and ancient rentable stagecoach that no one ever rented. The dozing coachman would shake himself awake at the striking of the hours from the bell tower, then his...

The Secret Game

Elsa Morante

20 min

USA

Raggedy Ann had been away all day. Marcella had come early in the morning and dressed all the dolls and placed them about the nursery. Some of the dolls had been put in the little red...

Raggedy Ann And The Kittens

Johnny Gruelle

5 min

UK

The King’s son was going to be married, so there were general rejoicings. He had waited a whole year for his bride, and at last she had arrived. She was a Russian Princess, and had driven...

The Remarkable Rocket

Oscar Wilde

17 min

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

USA

David stared at Mimi’s picture, taken at his bar mitzvah twenty-five years ago. She was his cousin, a second cousin, and she and her family had come out to Milwaukee from Brooklyn for the occasion. He...

Seeing Miles

Steven Schwartz

13 min

UK

Between the silver ribbon of morning and the green glittering ribbon of sea, the boat touched Harwich and let loose a swarm of folk like flies, among whom the man we must follow was by no...

The Blue Cross

G.K. Chesterton

29 min

USA

Lena was patient, gentle, sweet and german. She had been a servant for four years and had liked it very well. Lena had been brought from Germany to Bridgepoint by a cousin and had been in...

The Gentle Lena

Gertrude Stein

54 min

Israel

Søren Kierkegaard was a young university student who lived in the city of Copenhagen, Denmark in the nineteenth century. He enjoyed his university studies, but he felt that they were missing something. His professors taught the...

Søren Kierkegaard Confounds the City

Tom Baikin-O'hayon

5 min

Iraq

This vinegar is exactly ninety-nine years old, if the calculations I jotted down on my calendar of motivational quotes are correct, because the perfume was produced exactly a week before the enormous concrete head of Saddam...

The Day By Day Mosque

Mortada Gzar

6 min

Trinidad and Tobago

The best laid schemes o’ mice an’ men Gang aft a-gley, An’ lea’e us nought but grief and pain, For promis’d joy. —Robert Burns, “To a Mouse, on Turning Her Up in Her Nest with the...

The Best Laid Plans

Darby Maloney

17 min

USA

One day the dolls were left all to themselves. Their little mistress had placed them all around the room and told them to be nice children while she was away. And there they sat and...

Raggedy Ann Learns a Lesson

Johnny Gruelle

5 min

Guatemala

On the silt and pebble-covered floor of the lagoon lay the body of a man. His open eyes seemed to be looking at the sun of a lower, liquid sky. A small black and yellow fish...

Still Water

Rodrigo Rey Rosa

8 min

Mexico

Sunshine crept into the room, forming a white frame around the short dark curtain that barely covered the window. The glow around the darkened window reminded him of Malevich’s black square. He sighed. Vera would have...

The Square

Elisa R.V. García

1 min

USA

Raggedy Ann watched with interest the preparations. A number of sticks were being fastened together with strings and covered with light cloth. Raggedy Ann heard some of the boys talk of “The Kite,” so Raggedy...

Raggedy Ann and the Kite

Johnny Gruelle

5 min

USA

Day had broken cold and grey, exceedingly cold and grey, when the man turned aside from the main Yukon trail and climbed the high earth-bank, where a dim and little-travelled trail led eastward through the fat...

To Build a Fire

Jack London

28 min

USA

Upon the half decayed veranda of a small frame house that stood near the edge of a ravine near the town of Winesburg, Ohio, a fat little old man walked nervously up and down. Across a...

Hands

Sherwood Anderson

9 min

Argentina

A moral romance The restaurant, which offered simple but excellent fare, was lit by a large artificial moon augmented by some weak recessed lighting in the walls. The owner oversaw proceedings from the till. At...

You Have to Pay

Marcelo Cohen

11 min

Ireland

According to the Style and Manner of the Hon. Robert Boyle’s Meditations. This single stick, which you now behold ingloriously lying in that neglected corner, I once knew in a flourishing state in a forest....

A Meditation Upon a Broomstick

Jonathan Swift

1 min

Uruguay

Alicia’s entire honeymoon gave her hot and cold shivers. A blonde, angelic, and timid young girl, the childish fancies she had dreamed about being a bride had been chilled by her husband’s rough character. She loved...

The Feather Pillow

Horacio Quiroga

5 min

Russia

Yasha Hein woke up while it was still dark – long before the alarm clock rang – because of a strange quietness that was filling him up from within. During the evening of the previous day...

Yasha’s Eternity

Anna Starobinets

17 min