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# shortsonline

... showcasing the world's best short stories for learning and reading pleasure

## Sitemaps

- [XML Sitemap](https://xpressenglish.com/sitemap.xml): Contains all public & indexable URLs for this website.

## Posts

- [Usher II](https://xpressenglish.com/usher-2/) - Set in the future, a wealthy book-lover takes extreme action when the government destroys of his extensive library of classical books. Text, PDF, mp3, Video
- [Little Red Riding Hood](https://xpressenglish.com/red-riding-hood/) - Charles Perrault story about a girl who pays a heavy price for not doing as she was told. There are no woodcutters around to save her here! Text, PDF, mp3
- [The Man in the Well](https://xpressenglish.com/man-in-the-well/) - A group of children find a man trapped in a well and, despite his pleas for help, reach an unspoken agreement to leave him there. Text, PDF, mp3
- [The Giving Tree](https://xpressenglish.com/the-giving-tree/) - A children's story about a boy/man who takes everything that a tree has to give and never so much as says "thank you". Text, PDF, Video
- [Shooting an Elephant](https://xpressenglish.com/shooting-an-elephant/) - A story in which a young British Colonial Police officer describes an experience with an elephant that had killed a villager. Text, PDF,mp3
- [The Last Night of the World](https://xpressenglish.com/last-night-of-the-world/) - A story about a how a husband and wife prepare for what they believe will be the last night of the world. Text, PDF, mp3, Quiz
- [Ripe Figs](https://xpressenglish.com/ripe-figs/) - A reflection of different perspectives of the young and old on maturity, patience and the role of nature in the marking and passage of time. Text, PDF, Video
- [The Sacrificial Egg](https://xpressenglish.com/the-sacrificial-egg/) - A story about life, superstition and culture clash among the people of southeastern Nigeria under British colonial rule. Text, PDF
- [A Horse and Two Goats](https://xpressenglish.com/horse-two-goats/) - A humorous account of the trials and tribulations of life in a remote Indian village, and how miscommunication can sometimes pay off handsomely. Text, PDF, Video
- [Letter From an Unknown Woman](https://xpressenglish.com/unknown-woman/) - A playboy writer receives a letter from a dying woman. She has worshipped him all her life and borne his son, yet he has no idea who she is. Text, PDF, Video
- [Unto Dust](https://xpressenglish.com/unto-dust/) - A humorous story which takes a sarcastic look at different attitudes to death and the treatment of our bodies after the event. Text, PDF, mp3, Quiz
- [The Romance of a Busy Broker](https://xpressenglish.com/busy-broker/) - A story about a New York stockbroker who is so busy that he forgets one of the most important days in his life. Text, PDF, mp3, Quiz
- [Idyll](https://xpressenglish.com/idyll/) - A story about two people on a train trip. A wet-nurse has a painful problem and the young man who helps her also helps himself. Text, PDF, Quiz, Video
- [Eleven](https://xpressenglish.com/eleven/) - A coming of age story in which an ugly red sweater teaches a lesson about the difficult concepts of vanity and timidity. Text, PDF, mp3, Quiz, Video
- [Cat in the Rain](https://xpressenglish.com/cat-in-the-rain/) - A couple in an empty relationship find themselves stuck in an Italian hotel room while it is raining outside. Analysis, Text, PDF, mp3, Quiz, Video
- [The Looking-Glass](https://xpressenglish.com/the-looking-glass/) - A story about a woman whose dreams of marriage become a nightmare as she sees the reality of life in rural Russia. Text, PDF, Quiz, mp
- [The Doll's House / The Washerwoman's Children](https://xpressenglish.com/the-dolls-house/) - Two sisters are cruelly treated by other children at school. One achieves great success in life and is guest of honor at its centenary. Text, PDF, Quiz, mp3
- [The Butler](https://xpressenglish.com/the-butler/) - A story about a newly rich man who tries to buy his way up the social ladder by hosting lavish dinner parties. Text, PDF, Quiz
- [The Story of an Hour](https://xpressenglish.com/story-of-an-hour/) - After thinking for an hour about her husband's reported death, a woman feels "free, free, free" and has a look of triumph in her eyes. Text, PDF, mp3, Quiz
- [Hermann the Irascible (Story of the Great Weep)](https://xpressenglish.com/hermann-the-irascible/) - A story about the fight for women's rights that provides a classic example of the use of reverse psychology to achieve a desired result. Text, PDF
- [The Artist / Painter](https://xpressenglish.com/the-artist/) - A dying man puts his wife and son under his parsimonious brother's care. The mother must take desperate action to foster the boy's talent in art. Text, PDF
- [Born of Man and Woman](https://xpressenglish.com/born-of-man-and-woman/) - A child of monstrous shape and size has been locked in the family basement for eight years. He/she is not going to take it for much longer. Text, PDF, mp3
- [Vision out of the Corner of One Eye](https://xpressenglish.com/corner-of-one-eye/) - A woman traveling on a crowded bus has the last laugh after turning the tables on a perverted fellow passenger who repeatedly groped her. Text, PDF
- [The Censors](https://xpressenglish.com/censors/) - A man is worried the government will misinterpret a letter he wrote to a friend. To save himself, he gets a job at the censorship office. Text, PDF, mp3
- [All Summer in a Day](https://xpressenglish.com/all-summer-in-a-day/) - A story about life on a rainy planet where people see the sun only once every seven years. Text, PDF, mp3, Quiz, Literary Analysis
- [There Will Come Soft Rains](https://xpressenglish.com/soft-rains/) - The last day in the ‘life’ of an automated, empty house that has survived a nuclear war and continues its daily cycle of programmed activity. Text, PDF, mp3
- [The Last Question](https://xpressenglish.com/the-last-question/) - A powerful story that spans trillions of years of human history and tries to answer mankind's last unanswered question. Analysis, Text, PDF, mp3
- [The First Law](https://xpressenglish.com/first-law/) - A group of scientists are astounded when they learn why a new model robot disobeyed the first and most fundamental of the Three Laws of Robotics. Text, PDF, mp3
- [God Sees the Truth, But Waits](https://xpressenglish.com/god-sees-the-truth/) - A story about injustice, acceptance, forgiveness and redemption. A man’s fall in worldly terms is matched by a growth in spiritual grace. Text, PDF, mp3
- [The Fall of the House of Usher](https://xpressenglish.com/house-of-usher/) - An strange bond exists between a troubled man, his twin sister and their family mansion, which ends in the downfall of all three. Text, PDF, mp3
- [Marriage Is a Private Affair](https://xpressenglish.com/marriage-is-private/) - A city-based Nigerian man’s decision to marry a woman from a different ethnic group causes tension with his village-based father. Text, PDF, mp3
- [Dr Heidegger’s Experiment](https://xpressenglish.com/dr-heideggers-experiment/) - An ageing scientist invites four friends to participate in an experiment to test the efficacy of waters from the famed fountain of youth. Text, PDF, mp3
- [Diary of a Madman](https://xpressenglish.com/diary-of-a-madman-gogol/) - A government clerk slowly descends into insanity. His delusions include understanding the language of dogs, and being crowned the King of Spain. Text, PDF, mp3
- [Ruthless](https://xpressenglish.com/ruthless/) - In setting a trap for a thief, a ruthless man tells his wife: "No one is going to get hurt who hasn’t got it coming to him." He is proved correct. Text, PDF
- [The Door in the Wall](https://xpressenglish.com/door-in-the-wall/) - A successful politician is obsessed with finding a mysterious door in a London wall leading to an enchanted garden he once visited as a child. Text, PDF, mp3
- [Odour of Chrysanthemums](https://xpressenglish.com/odour-of-chrysanthemums/) - A woman living in a coal-mining village feels trapped in an unhappy world of her husband’s making. His death gives her a new perspective on life. Text, PDF, mp3
- [A Conversation With My Father](https://xpressenglish.com/conversation-with-father/) - A seriously ill old man asks his author daughter to write “a simple story just once more”. The tale she relates is not what he was expecting. Text, PDF, mp3
- [The Prisoner Who Wore Glasses](https://xpressenglish.com/prisoner-wore-glasses/) - A group of political prisoners trying to survive the South African penal system must adapt as a new warder makes their life very difficult. Text, PDF
- [Here We Aren't, So Quickly](https://xpressenglish.com/here-we-arent/) - A series of short, seemingly random recollections and observations about a couple’s past, often in the form of negative declarations. Text, PDF, mp3
- [Daughter of Invention](https://xpressenglish.com/daughter-of-invention/) - Conflict arises over a teen’s inspired but controversial Teacher’s Day speech when her father demands a traditional, more respectful approach. Text, PDF, mp3
- [The Company of Wolves](https://xpressenglish.com/company-of-wolves/) - An erotic adaption of Charles Perrault's Little Red Riding Hood that ends with the girl sleeping soundly between the paws of the "tender" wolf. Text, PDF
- [The False Prince and True](https://xpressenglish.com/false-prince-and-true/) - A young noble is sentenced to death for striking a prince in an argument. The only way he can save himself is to marry a very ugly, very old woman. Text, PDF, Quiz
- [Passing Wind](https://xpressenglish.com/passing-wind/) - A hostess is unsure whether her guest or dog passed wind. She must find a polite way to tell him that if he didn’t do it, it certainly wasn’t her! Text, PDF
- [Dirk the Protector](https://xpressenglish.com/dirk-the-protector/) - For a lonely street kid, relief from a gang of bullies comes in the form of a “big, rangy, right on the edge of ugly” dog. Text, PDF, mp3
- [They're Made Out Of Meat](https://xpressenglish.com/made-of-meat/) - Terry Bisson's very short story about what visiting explorers from across the universe might think of life on Earth . Text, PDF
- [Contents of the Dead Man's Pockets](https://xpressenglish.com/dead-mans-pockets/) - A man climbs onto the ledge outside his eleventh floor apartment to retrieve a piece of paper that has blown through an open window. Text, PDF, mp3
- [A Brief Moment in the Life of Angus Bethune](https://xpressenglish.com/angus-bethune/) - A self-proclaimed “fat kid with perverted parents” who suffers major self-image problems wins the heart of the long-term girl of his dreams. Text, PDF
- [Sonny's Blues](https://xpressenglish.com/sonnys-blues/) - An African-American teacher reaches out to his musically gifted estranged brother after his arrest and imprisonment for drug trafficking. Text, PDF, mp3
- [The Golden Nugget](https://xpressenglish.com/golden-nugget/) - Two friends find a golden nugget on a forest path and decide to leave it where it is so that it doesn't cause trouble between them. Text, PDF, mp3, Quiz
- [City of Specters](https://xpressenglish.com/specters/) - A patriotic North Korean family find themselves banished to the countryside because of the 'unpatriotic behavior' of their two-year-old child. Text, PDF
- [Snow](https://xpressenglish.com/snow/) - A woman fondly remembers spending a romantic winter in the snow-covered countryside, and a subsequent visit to where it took place. Text, PDF, mp3
- [The Tractor and the Corn Goddess](https://xpressenglish.com/corn-goddess/) - A progressive Indian landowner comes up with an ingenious way to encourage villagers to accept a tractor he bought to improve their lives. Text, PDF
- [Bullet in the Brain](https://xpressenglish.com/bullet-in-the-brain/) - An obnoxious book critic's snide comments get him shot by a bank robber. His moment-of-death memory is about an obscure event in his childhood. Text, PDF, mp3
- [The Shawl / Rosa](https://xpressenglish.com/the-shawl/) - Two women, having experienced the worst of man’s inhumanity towards man, are still suffering in different ways over thirty years later. Text, PDF, mp3
- [The Things They Carried](https://xpressenglish.com/things-they-carried/) - A war story about the equipment the soldiers carried, the emotional burdens they brought from home, and those they added during the fighting. Text, PDF, mp3
- [May Day Eve](https://xpressenglish.com/may-day-eve/) - Thanks to a "magic mirror" a wealthy, controlling, vindictive man marries a beautiful, feisty, free-spirited woman. What could possibly go wrong? Text, PDF
- [The Distance of the Moon](https://xpressenglish.com/distance-of-the-moon/) - A love triangle within a group of people who collect lunar milk leaves one of them stranded on the moon as it moves further away from earth. Text, PDF, mp3
- [The Loaded Dog](https://xpressenglish.com/loaded-dog/) - A very funny story about a pup that chases three men around the Australian goldfields trying to give back a lighted bomb. Text, PDF, mp3
- [Seibei and His Gourds (The Artist)](https://xpressenglish.com/seibei/) - A narrow-minded father forbids his son to pursue his passion for decorative gourds, little knowing that this may have cost him a lucrative career. Text, PDF
- [Annie's Day](https://xpressenglish.com/annies-day/) - Annie is a bad girl who likes to play nasty pranks on people. She sleeps with a much older man, but has plans to spend the night with his teenage son. Text, PDF
- [Grandad's Gifts](https://xpressenglish.com/grandads-gifts/) - When a curious boy is told never to open a locked cupboard, there is only one likely result. When he looks inside, he discovers a spooky secret. Text, PDF, mp3
- [Minutes of Glory](https://xpressenglish.com/minutes-of-glory/) - A young woman, unhappy with her life as a hostess in a beer bar, steals money from a customer in order to experience a few minutes of glory. Text, PDF
- [He-y, Come On Ou-t!](https://xpressenglish.com/come-on-out/) - A parable which reminds us about the potential disastrous consequences of not disposing of toxic waste properly. Text, PDF
- [Born Worker](https://xpressenglish.com/born-worker/) - A teenage boy learns that there is honor in honest hard work and disgrace in trying to lie and cheat your way into an easy life. Text, PDF, mp3
- [Bears Discover Fire](https://xpressenglish.com/bears-discover-fire/) - Bears have not only caught up with man in discovering fire, but appear well ahead of us in consideration, compassion, sharing and inclusiveness. Text, PDF, mp3
- [Stop the Sun](https://xpressenglish.com/stop-the-sun/) - A boy worried about his father's behavior comes to understand a little of the brutality of war and its traumatic after-effects on veterans. Text, PDF, mp3
- [A Face in the Dark](https://xpressenglish.com/face-in-the-dark/) - A teacher walking through some woods late at night comes across a crying student. When the boy lifts his face, he runs away calling for help. Text, PDF, mp3
- [The New Food](https://xpressenglish.com/new-food/) - A comedy (if you have a warped sense of humor) in which heavily processed convenience foods lead to the gruesome death of an imaginary baby. Text, PDF
- [Nothing Ever Breaks Except the Heart](https://xpressenglish.com/nothing-ever-breaks/) - A harried man working in an airline ticket office befriends and shares his greatest regret with a woman trying to reach America from war-torn Europe. Text, PDF
- [The Lagoon](https://xpressenglish.com/the-lagoon/) - A man who risked all to abduct a woman of the court is haunted by the memory that he left his brother to die as they made their escape. Text, PDF, mp3
- [Safety of Numbers](https://xpressenglish.com/safety-of-numbers/) - A high-school student has difficulty dealing with the pressure her Chinese-American mother is placing on her to do well in the SAT Exam. Text, PDF, mp3
- [Snow, Glass, Apples](https://xpressenglish.com/snow-glass-apples/) - What you might call a "reverse Snow White", where the much-maligned Queen is no match for her evil, vampiric, sexually depraved stepdaughter. Text, PDF, mp3
- [The Wave](https://xpressenglish.com/the-wave/) - A short vignette about the power of the sea, which could also be looked upon as an allegory of Ireland's struggle to become an independent republic. Text, PDF
- [Liberty](https://xpressenglish.com/liberty/) - As a family prepares to flee to America, their dog "Liberty" becomes a symbol of both freedom and the trouble that can come with trying to win it. Text, PDF
- [Fairy Ointment](https://xpressenglish.com/fairy-ointment/) - A curious nurse learns a costly secret when she tries eye ointment meant for the baby of a strange family on one of her own eyes. Text, PDF, mp3, Quiz
- [A Horseman in the Sky](https://xpressenglish.com/horseman-in-the-sky/) - A father tells his son going off to war that he must always do his duty. The boy faithfully follows this advice, but at a terrible cost. Text, PDF, mp3
- [Searching for Summer](https://xpressenglish.com/searching-for-summer/) - A simple act of kindness by a newlywed couple in search of “a bit of sun” leads them to more sunlight than they many people see in their lives. Text, PDF, mp3
- [In the Night](https://xpressenglish.com/in-the-night/) - A girl finds comfort in the arms of a loving, motherly figure after a dreamlike walk through a night filled with mystical creatures and other dangers. Text, PDF
- [Her Hands That Held the Stars](https://xpressenglish.com/hands-that-held-the-stars/) - After “borrowing” a roof-top key to gaze at the night sky, a disobedient but determined twelve-year-old learns that she has a special destiny. Text, PDF
- [Janus](https://xpressenglish.com/janus/) - A decorative, “lucky” bowl symbolizes the difficult decisions modern women must face in choosing between career, family and relationships. Text, PDF
- [Hunted Down](https://xpressenglish.com/hunted-down/) - A witty, detective-style story in which the sleuth on the killer’s trail is one of his intended victims! Text, PDF, mp3, Radio Play
- [The Busker](https://xpressenglish.com/busker/) - A boy learns a lesson from the sad tale of how a lonely Busker's attempt to "buy" friendship destroyed his and his loyal, loving dog's life. Text, PDF, mp3
- [The Egg](https://xpressenglish.com/the-egg-weir/) - An alternative view of Man's place in the universe that reinterprets the biblical teaching "treat others as you wish to be treated". Text, PDF, mp3, Video
- [The Adulterous Woman](https://xpressenglish.com/adulterous-woman/) - The vast expanse of the Algerian desert emphasizes the emptiness of the protagonist's marriage and the fact that life could offer so much more. Text, PDF
- [Suzy and Leah](https://xpressenglish.com/suzy-leah/) - A girl's insensitive attempts at kindness cause friction between herself and an orphaned holocaust survivor she is assigned to help at school. Text, PDF, mp3.
- [The District Doctor](https://xpressenglish.com/district-doctor/) - A Russian country doctor acts unprofessionally by professing his love to a beautiful dying patient and then lying about it to her family. Text, PDF, mp3
- [Everyday Use](https://xpressenglish.com/everyday-use/) - An argument over a family heirloom (a hand-stitched quilt) highlights a two sister's different attitudes towards their African-American heritage. Text, PDF
- [The American Embassy](https://xpressenglish.com/american-embassy/) - The wife of a wanted journalist is advised to seek asylum with him in America. She decides to stay because she has more important things to do. Text, PDF
- [The Minister's Black Veil](https://xpressenglish.com/ministers-black-veil/) - A church minister frightens and intrigues his parishioners by spending most of his life hiding his face behind a black veil. Text, PDF, mp3
- [Sweet Potato Pie](https://xpressenglish.com/potato-pie/) - A close-knit family works together to survive poverty, with the older children caring for the young and only one able to compete his education. Text, PDF, mp3
- [Anxiety](https://xpressenglish.com/anxiety/) - An elderly woman worries about everything from the imminent destruction of the world to the well-being of two children being walked home from school. Text, PDF
- [The Bloody Chamber](https://xpressenglish.com/bloody-chamber/) - A nobleman marries an innoce seventeen-year-old girl. He takes her away to his secluded castle, and lays a deadly trap to end the marriage. Text, PDF, mp3
- [All the King's Horses](https://xpressenglish.com/all-the-kings-horses/) - Sixteen plane crash survivors captured by a rebel group are forced to play a game of human chess in which only those left standing will live. Text, PDF
- [Roman Fever](https://xpressenglish.com/roman-fever/) - The lifelong friendship between two women is tested when one reveals a cruel secret from the past, and the other reveals an even crueler one. Text, PDF, mp3
- [The Parsley Garden](https://xpressenglish.com/parsley-garden/) - An eleven-year-old boy spends a day plotting how to redeem himself after being caught stealing a hammer from a department store. Text, PDF
- [The Waving Rye](https://xpressenglish.com/waving-rye/) - A prose poem that paints a powerful word-picture of Scadinavian rye fields through the seasons and the magic of the Danish “light nights”. Text, PDF
- [Did They catch the Ferry?](https://xpressenglish.com/did-they-catch-the-ferry/) - A young couple on a motorcycle speed through the Danish countryside, racing against a car heading in the same direction that refuses to let them pass. Text, PDF
- [Lost Forests](https://xpressenglish.com/lost-forests/) - A freed slave returns to his former master after learning that his home forest has disappeared and there is no place for him in the outside world. Text, PDF
- [Absit](https://xpressenglish.com/absit/) - A child molester is planning to have his way with a young girl he found playing alone in her garden. Fortunately, she manages to turn the tables. Text, PDF
- [Games at Twilight](https://xpressenglish.com/games-at-twilight/) - A boy playing ‘tag’ is shattered when he emerges from hiding to claim the glory and finds the other children have forgotten about him and moved on. Text, PDF
- [Ann and the Cow](https://xpressenglish.com/ann-and-cow/) - Potential buyers become confused and angry when an old woman standing beside her cow at a Danish fair repeatedly says it is not for sale. Text, PDF
- [On the Way to Solomon’s Pools](https://xpressenglish.com/solomons-pools/) - A Palestinian schoolteacher/National Guardsman whose son is shot as they flee an Israeli attack on his village loses his soul to hatred. Text, PDF
- [The Red Bow](https://xpressenglish.com/red-bow/) - Paranoia following the fatal mauling of a child leads to a local law requiring the killing of every dog and other family pet in a small American town. Text, PDF
- [A Guide to Berlin](https://xpressenglish.com/guide-to-berlin/) - Not a "tourist guide", but rather a series of vignettes describing the narrator’s observations of some everyday aspects of Berlin life. Text, PDF
- [The World Goes On](https://xpressenglish.com/world-goes-on/) - A narrator attributes the 2001 World Trade Center collapse to a vast destructive power that releases itself in cycles of destruction and renewal. Text, PDF
- [A Christmas Story](https://xpressenglish.com/christmas-story/) - An old woman teaches a policeman an important lesson about the new neighborhood in which he works by inviting his family to Christmas dinner. Text, PDF, mp3
- [The Nail](https://xpressenglish.com/the-nail/) - Two friends learn that a woman they both love and know by different names killed her husband by driving a nail through the top of his head. Text, PDF
- [The Tall Woman](https://xpressenglish.com/tall-woman/) - A man’s childhood phobia about meeting an unaccompanied woman on a deserted street in the early hours of the morning appears well-founded. Text, PDF
- [In the Great Walled Country](https://xpressenglish.com/great-walled-country/) - The king of a country of children living near the North Pole causes problems when he tries to change the way his people celebrate Christmas. Text, PDF, Quiz
- [An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge](https://xpressenglish.com/occurrence-at-owl-creek/) - Union troops are about to hang a man for trying to destroy a bridge. As the man falls to his death, he senses that the rope breaks. Text, PDF, mp3, Videos.
- [Sweet Porridge](https://xpressenglish.com/sweet-porridge/) - Brothers Grimm story about a magic porridge pot that won't stop cooking, with links to Sorcerer's Apprentice resources and Video. Text, PDF, mp3, Quiz
- [Federigo's Falcon](https://xpressenglish.com/federigos-falcon/) - A poor noble serves up his prized hunting bird in a meal for the woman he loves, little knowing that she wanted it as a gift for her dying son. Text, PDF
- [The Emperor's New Clothes](https://xpressenglish.com/emperor/)
- [A Sound of Thunder](https://xpressenglish.com/sound-of-thunder/) - A rich man comes back to a different world after traveling back in time. The last thing he hears is a sound of thunder. Text, PDF, mp3, Video, Literary Analysis
- [Flowers and Freckle Cream](https://xpressenglish.com/freckle-cream/) - A twelve-year-old girl tries freckle cream with disastrous results. Her grandfather teaches her that she has the wrong idea about beauty. Text, PDF, mp3, Video
- [The Enormous Radio](https://xpressenglish.com/enormous-radio/) - A seemingly contented couple’s life changes when a new radio begins to pick up conversations from people in surrounding apartments. Text, PDF, mp3
- [A Haunted House](https://xpressenglish.com/haunted-house/) - A living couple share their home with two ghostly lovers who continuously search the house and garden for a lost or hidden treasure. Text, PDF, mp3
- [The Sea of Lost Time](https://xpressenglish.com/sea-of-lost-time/) - A dying town polluted by the sea comes back to life along with a smell of roses and a strange gringo who 'gives' money away. Text, PDF
- [The Garden Party](https://xpressenglish.com/garden-party/) - A rich family enjoy a noisy, ostentatious garden party, well aware that the father of a poor family living nearby died earlier in the day. Text, PDF, mp3, Video
- [The Judgment (The Verdict)](https://xpressenglish.com/the-judgment/) - A troubled man tries to justify himself to his frail father, but can't compete with a 'friend' who is a 'son after his father's heart'. Text, PDF, mp3, Videos
- [Crossing the Zbrucz / My First Goose / Salt](https://xpressenglish.com/red-cavalry/) - Crossing the Zbrucz / My First Goose / Salt: Entries from the diary of a journalist attached to a unit of the Red Army during the Polish-Soviet War. Text, PDF
- [The Killers](https://xpressenglish.com/the-killers/) - A story about two "hit men" who come to a small town restaurant to shoot a man as a favor to a friend. Text, PDF, mp3
- [A Dead Woman's Secret](https://xpressenglish.com/dead-womans-secret/) - The family standing around a dead woman reflect on her 'saintly' life. They later learn that she was hiding a scandalous secret. Text, PDF, mp3
- [The Ghost upon the Rail](https://xpressenglish.com/ghost-upon-the-rail/) - John Lang's Australian Gothic story about how a sighting of John Fisher's ghost led to discovery of his murder. Text, PDF, Quiz
- [Landscape with Flatiron](https://xpressenglish.com/flatiron/) - Two troubled people bond over a beach bonfire and contemplate life, death, art and suicide. When the fire goes out, they plan to die together. Text, PDF
- [Cell One](https://xpressenglish.com/cell-one/) - A pampered university student finds himself in a Nigerian prison. What he sees there changes his outlook on life. What he does there makes him a man. Text, PDF
- [Cinderella](https://xpressenglish.com/cinderella/) - Charles Perrault's version of the world's most popular folktale, including comments on its history and copies of several alternative versions. Text, PDF
- [The Legend of Nai Raeng](https://xpressenglish.com/nai-raeng/) - A man who was such a big child his parents couldn't feed him makes good. He then orders that his own head be cut off to guard a buried treasure. Text, PDF, Quiz
- [Three Elephant Power](https://xpressenglish.com/three-elephant-power/) - A story about the adventures of some boys and their toys (men and their cars) as they speed through the Australian bush in the early 1900s. Text, PDF
- [Prey](https://xpressenglish.com/prey/) - What is the ideal birthday gift for a new boyfriend? A Zuni fetish doll of course... just keep it locked up until you give it to him! Text, PDF, mp3, Video
- [Rikki-Tikki-Tavi](https://xpressenglish.com/rikki-tikki-tavi/) - A British family adopts a young Indian mongoose that has been separated from its family. He repays their kindness by saving their lives. Text, PDF, mp3, Video
- [In a Grove](https://xpressenglish.com/in-a-grove/) - A young Samurai is dead. Three people confess to killing him, but none of their stories is convincing. It is left to readers to decide who did it. Text, PDF
- [The Bus Driver Who Wanted To Be God](https://xpressenglish.com/bus-driver-god/) - A story that brings together the lives of two men: a bus driver who believes in social justice over mercy, and the world's nicest loser. Analysis, Text, PDF
- [The Veldt](https://xpressenglish.com/the-veldt/) - A story that shows how relying only on technology for entertainment can lead to tragic results. Text, PDF, mp3, Quiz, Video, Radio Plays
- [Tam and Cam](https://xpressenglish.com/tam-cam/) - A "Cinderella-type" folktale with an added piece that could only happen in a country where people believed in reincarnation in non-human form. Text, PDF
- [The Monkey's Paw](https://xpressenglish.com/the-monkeys-paw/) - A classic horror story about fate, and what can happen if you try to change it by making wishes using black magic. Text, PDF, mp3, Video
- [Toads and Diamonds (The Fairies)](https://xpressenglish.com/toads-and-diamonds/) - Charles Perrault story about two girls who receive very different rewards for their responses to an old lady who asks them for a drink. Text, PDF, mp3, Quiz
- [The Luck of Roaring Camp](https://xpressenglish.com/roaring-camp/) - Strange things happen when a Californian gold prospecting camp “adopts” an orphaned baby born to its only woman resident, the camp prostitute. Text, PDF, mp3
- [Girl](https://xpressenglish.com/girl/) - A sample of the 'life advice' a caring mother gives to her daughter during her childhood and adolescent years. Text, PDF, mp3, Video, Literary Analysis
- [The Selfish Giant](https://xpressenglish.com/selfish-giant/) - A children's story in which a giant learns some important lessons about greed vs sharing and Christian love. Text, PDF, mp3, Quiz, Video
- [The Secret Sharer](https://xpressenglish.com/secret-sharer/) - A young sea captain preparing for his first command learns some valuable lessons from a fugitive killer he allows to hide in his cabin. Text, PDF, mp3
- [The Open Window](https://xpressenglish.com/the-open-window/) - A story in which a young woman plays a cruel joke on an unfortunate man visiting her village for a stress-free holiday. Text, PDF, mp3, Videos
- [The Sky is Gray](https://xpressenglish.com/sky-is-gray/) - Set in the American South, an eight-year-old African-American boy "comes of age" during a trip to see a dentist one freezing winter morning Text, PDF, Video
- [Diamond Cuts Diamond](https://xpressenglish.com/diamond-cuts-diamond-thai/) - A poor man enjoys his plain rice meal thanks to the curry smell coming from a rich man's kitchen. The rich man thinks he should pay for it. Text, PDF, Quiz
- [Zero Hour](https://xpressenglish.com/zero-hour/) - A feisty seven-year-old girl is leading her friends in a construction game following instructions she receives from an "imaginary" friend. Text, PDF, mp3, Video
- [The Catbird Seat](https://xpressenglish.com/catbird-seat/) - After failing to murder a woman who threatens his job, a man proves that there are other ways to deal with someone in a "Catbird Seat". Text, PDF, mp3, Video
- [The Landlady](https://xpressenglish.com/landlady/) - The "motherly" landlady of a young man starting a new job decides that he should join two other long-term guests and stay forever. Text, PDF, mp3, Videos
- [The Heart of a Monkey](https://xpressenglish.com/heart-of-a-monkey/) - After escaping from a shark trying to take its heart, a monkey explains the Swahili proverb "Don’t make a washerman’s donkey of me". Text, PDF, mp3, Quiz
- [Mr Know-All](https://xpressenglish.com/mr-know-all/) - A story that can be summed up by the English proverb "You should not judge a book by its cover". Text, PDF, Quiz, Video, Literary Analysis
- [Donkey Skin](https://xpressenglish.com/donkey-skin/) - Charles Perrault story about a princess who runs away because her father says they must marry to keep a promise he made to her dying mother. Text, PDF, Quiz
- [The Life You Save May Be Your Own](https://xpressenglish.com/life-you-save/) - A manipulative, one-armed drifter leaves his handicapped bride to an uncertain future at a roadside diner and drives on alone. Text, PDF, mp3, Video
- [Wasps' Nest](https://xpressenglish.com/wasps-nest/) - Thanks to some very unlikely coincidences and skills learned from a grateful pickpocket, Hercule Poirot prevents a murder and a suicide. Text, PDF, mp3, Video
- [Mowgli's Brothers](https://xpressenglish.com/mowglis-brothers/) - An abandoned “man cub” adopted by a family of wolves grows up as a member of the Pack until old enough to begin to think for himself. Text, PDF, mp3, Video
- [A Mystery of Heroism](https://xpressenglish.com/mystery-of-heroism/) - A reckless soldier ponders the meaning of heroism as he makes an unnecessary dash across a battlefield to collect water from a well. Text, PDF, mp3
- [The Interlopers](https://xpressenglish.com/the-interlopers/) - The heads of two families feuding for years over the use of a poor piece of forest land decide too late that they should become friends. Text, PDF, mp3, Videos
- [In the Penal Colony](https://xpressenglish.com/in-the-penal-colony/) - A psychopathic officer on an isolated prison island acts as judge, jury and executioner while making use of a gruesome torture machine. Text, PDF, mp3, Video
- [The Chaser](https://xpressenglish.com/chaser/) - A young man buying a love potion falls for a cruel ploy that may force him to return later and buy some expensive "glove cleaner". Text, PDF, mp3, Video
- [The Star](https://xpressenglish.com/the-star-clarke/) - Space explorers discover a burnt out planet at the edge of the galaxy that holds a secret which will change mankind’s view of God. Text, PDF, mp3, Video
- [The Beautiful People](https://xpressenglish.com/beautiful-people/) - In this dystopian word, people must adopt uniform male and female appearances by undergoing an operation upon turning nineteen. Text, PDF, mp3, Video
- [First Confession](https://xpressenglish.com/first-confession/) - A young priest’s double standards in “rewarding” a boy for confessing murderous thoughts sends he and his sister confusing messages. Text, PDF, mp3, Video
- [The Revolt of "Mother"](https://xpressenglish.com/revolt-of-mother/) - A devoted wife, takes a stand against her insensitive, authoritarian husband over an unfulfilled promise made forty years earlier. Text, PDF, Video
- [Markheim](https://xpressenglish.com/markheim/) - A hitherto petty thief murders an antique dealer. A mysterious stranger offers to help him find the dealer's money and get away with the crime. Text, PDF, mp3
- [Long Walk to Forever](https://xpressenglish.com/long-walk-to-forever/) - A single expression of love and two kisses causes a woman to question her plans to marry another man and fall into a friend's arms. Text, PDF, mp3, Video
- [Counterfeit Bills](https://xpressenglish.com/counterfeit-bills/) - Bill created a ‘double’ to carry out the boring tasks in his life so he could spend all his time having fun. Things didn't go as planned. Analysis, Text, PDF
- [Kate Crackernuts](https://xpressenglish.com/kate-crackernuts/) - A story about a prince who dances all night with fairies and two princesses, one with a sheep's head and the other who steals from babies. Text, PDF, mp3, Quiz
- [Barn Burning](https://xpressenglish.com/barn-burning/) - A ten-year-old boy rises above the intimidation and bullying of his embittered father, and tries to prevent him doing something wrong. Text, PDF, mp3, Video
- [The Fly](https://xpressenglish.com/the-fly/) - Two old men handle their sons’ wartime deaths differently. One, who is still grieving, demonstrates his true character by cruelly killing a fly. Text, PDF
- [Cap O' Rushes](https://xpressenglish.com/cap-o-rushes/) - A misunderstanding about salt leads to a girl's banishment from her rich father's house and a Cinderella-type ending. Text, PDF, mp3, Quiz, Video
- [The Moustache](https://xpressenglish.com/the-moustache/) - A young man visits his grandmother in a nursing home and learns a sad secret she has kept since before he was born. Text, PDF
- [The Star](https://xpressenglish.com/the-star-wells/) - Earth is being observed from afar to see what happens as a huge planetary fragment from outside the solar system hurtles towards it. Analysis, Text, PDF, Audio
- [What the Old Man Does is Always Right](https://xpressenglish.com/always-right/) - H. C. Andersen story about an old man and his loving wife who always seems delighted with the results of anything he does. Text, PDF, mp3, Quiz, Video
- [Death by Scrabble](https://xpressenglish.com/death-by-scrabble/) - A man who hates his wife wishes for her death over a game of scrabble. Unfortunately, she has the same idea and only one of them can win. Text, PDF, mp3, Video
- [Button, Button](https://xpressenglish.com/button-button/) - A couple argue over whether to press a button in a mysterious box. It may earn them a lot of money, but also cause someone to die. Text, PDF, mp3, Video
- [Four O'clock](https://xpressenglish.com/four-oclock/) - A seemingly ordinary man is given “special powers”. When he tries to expose all the evil people in the world, things don't go as planned. Text, PDF, mp3, Video
- [Animal Farm](https://xpressenglish.com/animal-farm/) - An allegory of the 1917 Russian Revolution and rise of Stalinism, highlighting the corrupting effect of the lust for power. Text, PDF, mp3, Video
- [Ringing the Changes](https://xpressenglish.com/ringing-the-changes/) - A couple honeymoon in a small English village. Things are not as they should be. Church bells begin ringing, heralding a macabre annual festival. Text, PDF, mp3
- [The Gilded Six-Bits](https://xpressenglish.com/gilded-six-bits/) - Two young newlyweds have what appears to be an almost prefect relationship until a deceitful newcomer from Chicago tries to come between them. Text, PDF
- [Skin](https://xpressenglish.com/skin/) - A destitute man is tempted by two offers to help him capitalize on the value of a picture a now famous artist once tattooed on his back. Text, PDF, mp3, Video
- [The Whisperer](https://xpressenglish.com/whisperer/) - A girl visiting a friend’s house hears strange whispering that she later learns comes from a ghost that has been following the family for years. Text, PDF
- [A Woman on the Roof](https://xpressenglish.com/woman-on-the-roof/) - Three construction workers repairing the roof of an apartment building make demeaning catcalls to a woman sunbathing on a nearby rooftop. Text, PDF
- [The Nightingale](https://xpressenglish.com/the-nightingale/) - A children's story about a Chinese Emperor who learns the meaning of the proverb "Beauty is only skin deep." Text, PDF, mp3, Quiz, Video, Radio Play
- [The Boogeyman](https://xpressenglish.com/the-boogeyman/) - A story about a mysterious monster who hides in closets and kills young children at night. Analysis, Text, PDF, mp3, Quiz, Video
- [Poison](https://xpressenglish.com/poison/) - A story about two colonial businessmen, a deadly snake, a dedicated doctor and some very unkind words. Text, PDF, mp3, Quiz, Videos
- [Misery / The Lament](https://xpressenglish.com/misery/) - A story about how grief can turn into misery when you feel alone in the world and have no one to talk to about it. Analysis, Text, PDF, mp3, Quiz
- [The Ant and The Grasshopper](https://xpressenglish.com/ant-grasshopper/) - A twist on the Aesop fable of the same name, providing a more balanced view of the world we live in. Text, PDF, mp3, Quiz, Video
- [The End of Something / Three-Day Blow](https://xpressenglish.com/the-end-of-something/) - Two stories about the end of a romance. Is the boy really bored with the girl, or could there be another reason? Analysis, Text, PDF, mp3, Quiz
- [A Good Man is Hard to Find](https://xpressenglish.com/a-good-man/) - A dysfunctional family on holiday come across a crazed killer called 'The Misfit' who is certainly not one of these hard to find men. Text, PDF, mp3, Quiz
- [The Secret Life of Walter Mitty](https://xpressenglish.com/walter-mitty/) - A meek, middle-aged man deals with his nagging wife by escaping into imaginary worlds and acting out his fantasies . Text, PDF, mp3, Quiz
- [Lamb to the Slaughter](https://xpressenglish.com/lamb-to-the-slaughter/) - A story in which it is unclear if the English idiom in the title fits the husband, the wife, or both. Analysis, Text, PDF, mp3, Quiz, Videos
- [Looking for a Rain-God](https://xpressenglish.com/looking-for-a-rain-god/) - A story about culture clash and a family forces to make a frightening decision in the face of a deadly drought. Analysis, Text, PDF, Quiz
- [The Rocking-Horse Winner](https://xpressenglish.com/rocking-horse-winner/) - D.H. Lawrence's story about a boy whose parents love money and their social position more than their children. Text, PDF, mp3, Quiz, Videos
- [The Gift of the Magi](https://xpressenglish.com/gift-of-the-magi/) - A story about a poor couple who sell the thing they love most to buy a suitable gift for their partner. Text, PDF, mp3, Quiz, Videos, Literary Analysis
- [Oysters](https://xpressenglish.com/oysters/) - A story about a boy's love for his unemployed father and how as a starving child he is introduced to oysters. Text, PDF, mp3, Quiz
- [A Hanging](https://xpressenglish.com/a-hanging/) - A narrative essay which uses the description of a hanging to argue that the taking of a human life in any circumstances is wrong. Text, PDF, mp3, Quiz
- [The Way Up to Heaven](https://xpressenglish.com/way-to-heaven/) - A story in which a woman whose husband plays cruel jokes on her helps him find the way UP to Heaven. Text, PDF, mp3, Quiz, Video
- [The Moonlit Road](https://xpressenglish.com/moonlit-road/) - A story in which the ghost of a murdered woman accidentally ruins the lives of both her husband and their only son. Text, PDF, mp3, Quiz
- [The Celebrated Jumping Frog](https://xpressenglish.com/celebrated-jumping-frog/) - Mark Twain's story about how a man who will bet on almost anything is outsmarted by a stranger and his frog. Text, PDF, mp3, Quiz
- [The 13-Carat Diamond](https://xpressenglish.com/13-carat-diamond/) - A humerous story about a poor Burmese couple who dream of becoming rich by finding a 13-carat diamond that is for sale. Text, PDF, Quiz
- [The Fir Tree](https://xpressenglish.com/the-fir-tree/) - A fir tree with an unrealistic view of life comes to an end that may turn children off real Christmas trees forever. Text, PDF, mp3, Quiz, Video
- [Indian Camp](https://xpressenglish.com/indian-camp/) - A story about a boy's coming of age as he witnesses the saving of a life, the birth of a baby, and a death in a single night. Text, PDF, mp3, Quiz
- [2 B R 0 2 B](https://xpressenglish.com/2br02b/) - Everything is perfect in this future world where people live forever... unless of course you want to have children. Text, PDF, mp3, Quiz, Video
- [A Vendetta](https://xpressenglish.com/a-vendetta/) - A story about a frail old widow who swears a vendetta against the murderer of her only son. Text, PDF, Quiz, Literary Analysis
- [Teenage Wasteland](https://xpressenglish.com/teenage-wasteland/) - A story about how a dysfunctional family and tutor with questionable motives destroy the life of a young man. Analysis, Text, PDF, Quiz
- [There is a Reaper](https://xpressenglish.com/reaper/) - A story about a dying man who tries to find out "what comes after" by asking a dead men. The frightening answer is not what he expected. Text, PDF, mp3, Quiz
- [Can-Can](https://xpressenglish.com/can-can/) - Remembering his wife dancing the can-can causes a man to regret an afternoon tryst with a woman he doesn't even love. Text, PDF, Quiz
- [That Evening Sun (Go Down)](https://xpressenglish.com/that-evening-sun/) - A man remembers his parents' lack of concern for the fate of an African-American woman who had washed their clothes for many years. Text, PDF, mp3, Quiz
- [Last Night](https://xpressenglish.com/last-night/) - A story about how a husband and wife deal with ending one of their lives. One bravely; the other by heartlessly committing adultery. Text, PDF, Quiz
- [The Bet](https://xpressenglish.com/the-bet/) - A wealthy banker bets a young lawyer a small fortune that he couldn't survive being locked up for fifteen years with no outside contact. Text, PDF, mp3, Quiz
- [The (Diamond) Necklace](https://xpressenglish.com/the-necklace/) - Maupassant's story about a once beautiful woman who comes to regret ever being unhappy with her earlier life. Text, PDF, mp3, Quiz
- [The Return](https://xpressenglish.com/the-return-sorrentino/) - A story about a dead beggar who returns in the form of a young boy to take revenge on the mean old man who caused his accidental death. Text, PDF, Quiz
- [Man from the South](https://xpressenglish.com/man-from-the-south/) - A story about gambling, greed, and a young sailor who wanted to look 'cool' in front of a pretty girl. Text, PDF, mp3, Quiz, Videos
- [Guests of the Nation](https://xpressenglish.com/guests-of-the-nation/) - Two soldiers are permanently affected after being ordered to take part in the execution of two prisoners they have befriended. Text, PDF, Quiz, Video
- [The Drover's Wife](https://xpressenglish.com/the-drovers-wife/) - A story about the loneliness and hardships faced by a mother living in outback Australia in the late 1800s. Text, PDF, mp3, Quiz
- [Farewell to a Ghost](https://xpressenglish.com/farewell-to-a-ghost/) - A boy recalls his village's relationship with its resident ghost and the role of superstition in traditional Indian life. Text, PDF, Quiz
- [Hills Like White Elephants](https://xpressenglish.com/hills-like-white-elephants/) - Ernest Hemingway's story about a man and woman who have reached a crisis point in their relationship. Text, PDF, mp3, Quiz
- [The Green Door](https://xpressenglish.com/the-green-door/) - A story about how a man out looking for adventure seizes an opportunity and knocks on a door that could change his life. Text, PDF, mp3, Videos, Quiz
- [The Little Match Seller](https://xpressenglish.com/the-little-match-seller/) - One of the saddest Festive Season stories ever told about how a cruel father forces his little girl to sell matches in the snow. Text, PDF, mp3, Quiz
- [Thongproi the Rich Girl](https://xpressenglish.com/thong-proi/) - A story about a woman who had everything she could wish for but still could not find happiness in her life. Text, PDF, Quiz
- [The Chosen Vessel](https://xpressenglish.com/the-chosen-vessel/) - A graphic story about the isolation and dangers faced by women living in outback Australia during the 19th century. Text, PDF, mp3, Quiz
- [Harrison Bergeron](https://xpressenglish.com/harrison-bergeron/) - A story about a future world where everyone is forced to become equal; unless of course you are one of the "H-G" men. Text, PDF, mp3, Quiz
- [Yellow Moepels](https://xpressenglish.com/yellow-moepels/) - A humorous story about a promise made to his fiancé by a young South African soldier riding off to fight the British. Text, PDF, Quiz
- [The Verger](https://xpressenglish.com/the-verger/) - A church verger loses his job because he can't read or write. He turns adversity into opportunity and becomes rich. Text, PDF, Quiz, Video, Literary Analysis
- [Christmas Every Day](https://xpressenglish.com/christmas-every-day/) - A children's horror fairytale that takes a humorous look at what the world would be like if we had Christmas every day of the year. Text, PDF, mp3, Quiz
- [A Clean Well-Lighted Place](https://xpressenglish.com/a-clean-well-lighted-place/) - A man sitting alone in a cafe highlights the loneliness and despair that sometimes comes with growing old. Text, PDF, mp3, Quiz, Literary Analysis
- [The Pale Man](https://xpressenglish.com/the-pale-man/) - A story about a man who is puzzled by a fellow hotel guest with strange ways. When he asks about it, he is told there is no such guest. Text, PDF, mp3, Quiz
- [Toy Shop](https://xpressenglish.com/toy-shop/) - A story about some scientists who are tricked into trying to find out why a toy rocket breaks an important law of nature. Text, PDF, mp3, Quiz
- [The Challenge](https://xpressenglish.com/the-challenge/) - A boy looking for romance learns how NOT to impress girls. Had he asked about the new girl's nickname, he may have spared himself some pain. Text, PDF, mp3
- [Old Aeson](https://xpressenglish.com/old-aeson/) - A story about a rich man who rescues a very ill old man from the cold and has the life sucked out of him for his trouble. Text, PDF, Quiz
- [Haircut](https://xpressenglish.com/haircut/) - A small-town barber gives a disturbing account of local life; especially a dead customer who liked to play cruel jokes on people. Text, PDF, Quiz, mp3
- [A Municipal Report](https://xpressenglish.com/municipal-report/) - In what was thought to be a quiet, boring city, a torn dollar bill that keeps coming back to its original owner leads to murder. Text, PDF, mp3, Quiz
- [Just Before the War with the Eskimos](https://xpressenglish.com/before-the-eskimo-war/) - A schoolgirl’s outlook on life changes after meeting a classmate’s troubled older brother and his effeminate best friend. Text, PDF
- [A Sunrise on the Veld](https://xpressenglish.com/veld-sunrise/) - Life changes for the hubristic son of an Afrikaner farmer when he comes across a young buck with a broken leg being devoured by ants. Text, PDF
- [A Mild Attack of Locusts](https://xpressenglish.com/attack-of-locusts/) - An African farming family's struggle against locusts contrasts the richness and beauty of the land with the destructive power and beauty of nature. Text, PDF
- [No Witchcraft for Sale](https://xpressenglish.com/no-witchcraft/) - A greedy scientist tries to learn the secret of a traditional treatment an African cook used to save the eyesight of his employer's son. Text, PDF
- [American History](https://xpressenglish.com/american-history/) - A teenage Puerto Rican girl and the boy to whom she is attracted are outsiders among their peers. Sadly, their friendship plans are cruelly thwarted. Text, PDF
- [A Work of Art](https://xpressenglish.com/work-of-art/) - The mother of a man too poor to pay for treatment sends his doctor a gift featuring two not safe for work or home statuettes of naked women. Text, PDF, mp3
- [Everything Is Nice](https://xpressenglish.com/everything-is-nice/) - An American woman alone in Morocco becomes uncomfortable when a group of Moslem women begin to ask probing questions about her life. Text, PDF
- [Busy Lines](https://xpressenglish.com/busy-lines/) - A woman who has lived alone for fifteen years following her husband’s death copes by imagining him as a star watching over her at night. Text, PDF, mp3
- [Waywaya](https://xpressenglish.com/waywaya/) - A young Filipino warrior who yearns for the freedom to determine his own destiny kidnaps and enslaves a girl from a rival tribe. Text, PDF
- [The Tale](https://xpressenglish.com/the-tale/) - An English naval captain sinks a potentially innocent trading ship he suspects of supplying fuel to enemy U-boats without firing a shot. Text, PDF
- [Mahesh / The Drought](https://xpressenglish.com/mahesh/) - An exploited Indian farmer does the unthinkable when, after years of drought, his beloved bull escapes and raids his cruel zamindar’s garden. Text, PDF
- [The Well](https://xpressenglish.com/the-well/) - After a family visit to a supposed witch, a six-year-old girl develops a series of severe phobias that make it difficult to leave her house. Text, PDF
- [Between Earth and Sky](https://xpressenglish.com/between/) - An indigenous New Zealand farmer’s wife describes the day’s events and life’s frustrations as she bonds in hospital with her eighth newborn. Text, PDF
- [The Cheater's Guide to Love](https://xpressenglish.com/guide-to-love/) - A man who slept with fifty other women over the course of a relationship belatedly realizes that the fiancé who dumped him was “the one”. Text, PDF
- [The Thakur’s Well / Thakur Ka Kuan](https://xpressenglish.com/thakurs-well/) - A low-caste Indian woman whose well is contaminated risks a severe beating by secretly drawing water from the well of the high-caste Thakur. Text, PDF
- [The Tale of the Two Oxen / Do Bailon Ki Katha](https://xpressenglish.com/two-oxen/) - Friendship and faith see two run-away oxen endure an attack by a raging bull, beatings and starvation before a miracle sees them return home. Text, PDF
- [The Daring Young Man on the Flying Trapeze](https://xpressenglish.com/trapeze/) - Too weak to complete "An Application for Permission to Live”, an aspiring writer dying of starvation surrenders himself to a final dream. Text, PDF
- [Tong](https://xpressenglish.com/tong/) - Cultural division and a debt that must be repaid doom a courtship between a Filipino accountant and young Chinese woman. Text, PDF
- [A Distant Episode](https://xpressenglish.com/distant-episode/) - A Western linguist kidnapped by a nomadic Moroccan tribe is beaten and dehumanized by having to perform clown-like antics to entertain them. Text, PDF, mp3
- [Because My Father Always Said He Was the Only Indian Who Saw Jimi Hendrix Play 'The Star-Spangled Banner' at Woodstock](https://xpressenglish.com/my-father-always-said/) - A Native-American boy recalls the good and not-so-good times before his father rode off on his motorcycle, never to be seen again. Text, PDF
- [A Lifestyle](https://xpressenglish.com/lifestyle/) - A man relates how being trapped inside his tenth-floor apartment for years with the telephone, power and water cut off changed his outlook on life. Text, PDF
- [Clean Sweep Ignatius](https://xpressenglish.com/clean-sweep-ignatius/) - A Nigerian government minister is asked to find out the names of all corrupt government officials with large amounts hidden in Swiss bank accounts. Text, PDF
- [Old Man at the Bridge](https://xpressenglish.com/old-man-at-the-bridge/) - An old man forced by war to set his beloved pets free and flee fears for their safety. He sits alone on a bridge, having lost the drive to go on. Text, PDF, mp3
- [Mechanopolis](https://xpressenglish.com/mechanopolis/) - A man dying of thirst in a desert stumbles upon a mysterious train station and is whisked off to a deserted, fully functioning city of the future. Text, PDF
- [I'm Your Horse in the Night](https://xpressenglish.com/horse-in-the-night/) - A woman questions whether a night of passion with her lover, an Argentinian resistance leader, was real, a dream, or with the dead man’s spirit. Text, PDF
- [The Disk](https://xpressenglish.com/the-disk/) - An exiled king pays a high price for showing a woodcutter his symbol of power... the only object of its kind in the universe. Text, PDF, mp3
- [A Night in the Hills](https://xpressenglish.com/night-in-the-hills/) - After a single night in the jungle, a man who had always dreamed of living “in the hills” decides that city life suits him better. Text, PDF
- [A Vermont Tale](https://xpressenglish.com/vermont-tale/) - A man tells his grandchildren a tale about two Arctic loons. The story is an allegory of his marriage. Sadly, its happy ending does not match reality. Text, PDF
- [Il Colore Ritrovato](https://xpressenglish.com/ritrovato/) - An impresario has doubts about signing up a young street performer he thinks could become the greatest opera singer in the world. Text, PDF
- [Forty-Five a Month](https://xpressenglish.com/forty-five-a-month/) - A working-class father is tortured by guilt over his inability to spend time with his young daughter and provide the luxuries other children enjoy. Text, PDF
- [The Delicate Prey](https://xpressenglish.com/delicate-prey/) - Two leather merchants and their nephew cross the Algerian desert to sell their wares. All are brutally murdered, but tribal justice prevails. Text, PDF, mp3
- [The Spirit of Emulation](https://xpressenglish.com/emulation/) - Rivalry among residents of a multi-story apartment building over who has the most exotic pet gets seriously out of hand. Text, PDF
- [Meeting Mrinal](https://xpressenglish.com/meeting-mrinal/) - An Indian-American woman struggles to come to terms with the failure of her arranged marriage and her teenage son’s increasing withdrawal. Text, PDF
- [Good Country People](https://xpressenglish.com/good-country-people/) - A condescending, highly educated woman who lost a leg in a childhood accident learns a hard lesson when she tries to seduce a young bible salesman. Text, PDF
- [Let the Old Dead Make Room for the Young Dead](https://xpressenglish.com/make-room/) - After a chance encounter with a much younger man she had seduced fifteen years earlier, an “almost old” widow considers reliving the experience. Text, PDF
- [Nobody Will Laugh](https://xpressenglish.com/nobody-will-laugh/) - A Czechoslovakian college lecturer goes to great lengths to avoid telling the truth about a substandard paper an amateur researcher has sent him. Text, PDF
- [Old Woman Magoun](https://xpressenglish.com/magoun/) - An old woman takes drastic action to prevent her granddaughter’s father from trafficking the innocent fourteen-year-old to settle a gambling debt. Text, PDF
- [The Horla](https://xpressenglish.com/horla/) - A man slowly descends into madness, convinced that an invisible, vampire-like being is feeding on his life force. Text, PDF. mp3
- [Silver Water](https://xpressenglish.com/silver-water/) - A deeply moving story that examines the impact on a loving family when a daughter is unexpectedly afflicted with a serious mental illness. Text, PDF, mp
- [The Switchman](https://xpressenglish.com/switchman/) - A retired switchman gives a man waiting for a train in Mexico a long list of absurd reasons why he has little chance of reaching his destination. Text, PDF, mp3
- [The Snows of Kilimanjaro](https://xpressenglish.com/snows-of-kilimanjaro/) - A bitter, failed writer evaluates his adventurous, hedonistic life as he lies dying in a safari camp on the plains below Mt Kilimanjaro. Text, PDF, mp3
- [La Grande Bretèche](https://xpressenglish.com/la-grande-breteche/) - An elderly French doctor entertains guests at a dinner party by relating how he solved the mystery of a dilapidated, abandoned mansion. Text, PDF
- [Wolf](https://xpressenglish.com/wolf/) - In this take on the Red Riding Hood fairy tale, a girl flees to her grandmother’s house after her stepfather repeatedly rapes her over several years. Text, PDF
- [How Suan Became Rich](https://xpressenglish.com/how-suan-became-rich/) - A poor man becomes rich after a wise king finds creative ways for him to "make good" losses claimed by people trying to take advantage of him. Text, PDF, Quiz
- [A Woman’s Help](https://xpressenglish.com/womans-help/) - A man enlists a woman’s help to escape from his loveless marriage to a rich, bed-ridden woman who makes his life a misery. Text, PDF
- [The Teacher](https://xpressenglish.com/teacher/) - A Singapore English teacher frustrated by the lack of progress in one of his students misses clues that may indicate problems at home. Text, PDF
- [Homecoming](https://xpressenglish.com/homecoming-bulosan/) - A young Filipino man who had immigrated to America at fifteen returns home to find his family destitute. Sadly, he cannot help them. Text, PDF
- [Grandfather’s Story](https://xpressenglish.com/grandfathers-story/) - An old man relates a story about how the fates of himself, his estranged wife, and lifetime lover were predestined a thousand years previously. Text, PDF
- [Monster](https://xpressenglish.com/monster/) - An “old, rickety, bug-infested” four-poster bed treasured by a frail woman in her seventies is despised by her daughter-in-law. Text, PDF
- [The Lumber Room](https://xpressenglish.com/lumber-room/) - A clever but mischievous boy comes up with an elaborate plan to explore the wonders of his house’s off-limits-to-children lumber-room. Text, PDF, mp3
- [Filboid Studge](https://xpressenglish.com/filboid-studge/) - A sarcastic spoof on modern advertising that shows you can sell almost anything by making people feel guilty for not buying it. Text, PDF, mp3
- [The Storyteller](https://xpressenglish.com/storyteller-saki/) - As well as teaching a moral, this story-within-a-story satirizes the "sanitation" of children's stories in late Victorian England. Text, PDF, mp3
- [The Mouse](https://xpressenglish.com/the-mouse/) - A story about a prudish young man who finds himself with an embarrassing and potentially painful problem during a train journey. Text, PDF, mp3
- [Tobermory](https://xpressenglish.com/tobermory/) - A scientist teaches Tobermory, a house-cat, to speak perfect English. Unfortunately, he doesn't tell the cat that the truth can sometimes hurt. Text, PDF, mp3
- [Sredni Vashtar](https://xpressenglish.com/sredni-vashtar/) - A caged polecat-ferret named Sredni Vashtar takes revenge on an oppressive woman who thwarts every pleasure of a sickly ten-year-old boy. Text, PDF. mp3
- [In the Region of Ice](https://xpressenglish.com/region-of-ice/) - A nun teaching at a Jesuit university is unable to meet the emotional support needs of a brilliant but mentally disturbed graduate student. Text, PDF
- [Three Girls](https://xpressenglish.com/three-girls/) - Two college girls encounter a woman they believe to be a heavily disguised Marilyn Monroe browsing in a used bookstore. Text, PDF
- [Shopping](https://xpressenglish.com/shopping/) - A lonely mother hopes that a trip to the mall with her 17-year-old daughter will help resolve problems between them. Analysis, Text, PDF
- [Heat](https://xpressenglish.com/heat/) - A confronting story in which mischievous eleven-year-old twin girls are brutally murdered by a supposedly harmless, mentally challenged man. Text, PDF
- [How I Contemplated the World from the Detroit House of Correction and Began My Life Over Again](https://xpressenglish.com/how-i-contemplated-the-world/) - Starved of affection by her wealthy parents, a sixteen-year-old girl’s acts of rebellion escalate from shoplifting to prostitution. Text, PDF
- [Four Summers](https://xpressenglish.com/four-summers/) - A woman’s coming of age and the lives of those around her are portrayed through experiences over four summers at the same lakeside bar. Text, PDF
- [Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?](https://xpressenglish.com/where-are-you-going/) - A psychological thriller / horror story in which a predatory psychopath becomes infatuated with an attractive, rebellious teenage girl. Text, PDF, mp3
- [Where Is Here?](https://xpressenglish.com/where-is-here/) - A man behaves very strangely as he confronts pleasant and unpleasant childhood memories during a visit to his previous family home. Text, PDF, mp3
- [Pigs is Pigs](https://xpressenglish.com/pigs-is-pigs/) - A customer has problems with a freight agent who claims that two guinea pigs he has been sent should be charged as common pigs rather than pets. Text, PDF
- [The Conversion of the Jews](https://xpressenglish.com/conversion-of-the-jews/) - A Jewish boy makes a stand by proclaiming, against his Rabbi's teachings, that God has the power to impregnate a woman without intercourse. Text, PDF
- [Goodbye, Columbus](https://xpressenglish.com/goodbye-columbus/) - A twenty-three-year-old man from a working class Jewish family falls for a spoiled college student from a wealthy one. Text, PDF
- [Defender of the Faith](https://xpressenglish.com/defender-of-the-faith/) - A Jewish-American army sergeant returning from fighting in World War 2 is assigned to a training unit in which there is an entitled Jewish recruit. Text, PDF
- [Punishment](https://xpressenglish.com/punishment/) - A lie comes back to haunt an Indian farmer when his wife pleads guilty and is sentenced to hang for a murder she did not commit. Text, PDFThe central theme of this story by Rabindranath Tagore is the dehumanization of women under India’s patriarchal social structure. When a farmer murders his wife in a fit of rage, his brother asks his wife to take the blame, promising to testify that she did it in self-defence. In court she denies this, pleads guilty,
- [The Lighthouse](https://xpressenglish.com/the-lighthouse/) - A man recovering from a troubled marriage begins a passionate affair with a married woman working at beach-side café. Text, PDF
- [New York Day Woman](https://xpressenglish.com/day-woman/) - A Haitian woman secretly follows her mother through the streets of central Manhattan after coming across her window shopping in expensive stores. Text, PDF
- [Subha](https://xpressenglish.com/subha/) - The father of a deaf Indian girl ostracized by her mother and most in her village tricks a man from a distant village into an arranged marriage. Text, PDF
- [Kabuliwallah](https://xpressenglish.com/kabuliwallah/) - An unlikely friendship develops between the precocious five-year-old daughter of a middle-class Bengali writer and an Afghani fruit-seller. Text, PDF
- [The Home-Coming](https://xpressenglish.com/home-coming/) - A rebellious country teen who jumps at an offer to live with his uncle’s family in Calcutta finds city life unbearable. Text, PDF
- [The Hungry Stones](https://xpressenglish.com/hungry-stones/) - While waiting for a delayed train, a passenger tells a frightening story about the time he stayed alone in a deserted, seemingly haunted palace. Text, PDF, mp3
- [My Lord, the Baby / The Child’s Return](https://xpressenglish.com/my-lord-the-baby/) - A servant discharged after his master’s son disappears has a son of his own and comes to believe that his boy is the lost child reincarnate. Text, PDF
- [The Postmaster](https://xpressenglish.com/postmaster-tagore/) - A village postmaster develops a strong bond with his young housekeeper. The devoted girl is shattered with her treatment when he decides to leave. Text, PDF
- [The Babus of Nayanjore](https://xpressenglish.com/babus-of-nayanjore/) - Despite living in poverty, the last male descendent of a once wealthy Indian noble family maintains his dignity and aristocratic bearing. Text, PDF
- [Night Talkers](https://xpressenglish.com/night-talkers/) - A conversation with a new friend causes a Haitian man to rethink his plans of revenge against the person the believes killed his parents. Text, PDF
- [Caroline's Wedding](https://xpressenglish.com/carolines-wedding/) - A Haitian-American mother is uneasy about a daughter's coming marriage to a non-Haitian. Even her best traditional magic fails to separate the couple! Text, PDF
- [Children of the Sea](https://xpressenglish.com/children-of-the-sea/) - Gripping journal entries from a student activist forced to flee Haiti during a violent military coup and the young woman he left behind. Text, PDF, mp3
- [Ghosts](https://xpressenglish.com/ghosts/) - A young man's experiences provide a glimpse of what gang life is like in Haitian slums, and how the only way out for many is a bullet. Text, PDF
- [Testimonial](https://xpressenglish.com/testimonial/) - A woman must take her dead mother's place in a bizarre sisterhood and, if she ever has a male child, face having to sacrifice it to the gods. Text, PDF
- [The Invention of Morel](https://xpressenglish.com/invention-of-morel/) - A group of “tourists” treat a fugitive hiding on a deserted island as if he doesn’t exist. In reality, they don’t exist and he tries to join them. Text, PDF
- [Mitya’s Love](https://xpressenglish.com/mityas-love/) - A young Russian’s jealousy stifles his relationship with the woman he loves. They separate to test their feelings, but things don’t end well. Text, PDF
- [In Memory of Pauline](https://xpressenglish.com/in-memory-of-pauline/) - A man is shattered when his childhood lover marries another. Two years later, she visits and falls into his arms. The next day he hears shocking news. Text, PDF
- [Scent of Apples](https://xpressenglish.com/scent-of-apples/) - For a Filipino apple farmer who has lived in America for twenty years, the omnipresent scent of the fruit is a constant reminder of home. Text, PDF, mp3
- [Pumpkin Seed and the Snake](https://xpressenglish.com/pumpkin-seed/) - Three times a widow breaks a promise that whoever removes a large rock from her field can marry one of her daughters. Text, PDF, mp3
- [The Kimono](https://xpressenglish.com/kimono/) - A fifty-year-old man looks back on his life from the day he had an unexpected sexual encounter with a woman in an orange and green kimono. Text, PDF, mp3
- [The Daffodil Sky](https://xpressenglish.com/daffodil-sky/) - A man sent to prison for killing a love rival returns to the scene of the crime. His intent is to confront the woman they were fighting over. Text, PDF
- [The Station](https://xpressenglish.com/the-station/) - An eighteen-year-old truck driver’s assistant is spellbound by an attractive woman in her twenties working in an all-night café. Text, PDF
- [The Mill](https://xpressenglish.com/the-mill/) - A young servant is raped by her employer on an almost daily basis. Used, abused, and heavy with child, she is sent back to her parents in tears. Text, PDF
- [The Near Departed](https://xpressenglish.com/near-departed/) - A man emphasises that cost is unimportant as he visits a mortician to arrange an elaborate funeral for his wife. Text, PDF, mp3
- [Slaughter House](https://xpressenglish.com/slaughter-house/) - An old house is haunted by the lustful spirit of a young woman that enchants, has its way with, and then tries to kill two brothers. Text, PDF, Audio
- [In the Middle of the Fields](https://xpressenglish.com/middle-of-the-fields/) - An inappropriate advance from a long-grieving neighbor highlights the need for a recently widowed farmer’s wife to “move on” with her life. Text, PDF
- [The Living](https://xpressenglish.com/the-living/) - An encounter with death at a wake brings a boy closer to his parents and highlights the grim significance of his family’s nightly prayer. Text, PDF
- [The Old Aunt / Boodhi Kaki](https://xpressenglish.com/old-aunt/) - A Hindu woman is overcome with pity and fear when she sees her husband’s incapacitated aunt foraging for food among banquet leftovers. Text, PDF
- [Big Brother / Bade Bhai Sahab](https://xpressenglish.com/elder-brother/) - The younger of two Indian brothers attending boarding school learns the importance of listening to those with more life experience. Text, PDF
- [The Old Demon](https://xpressenglish.com/old-demon/) - With help from her “Old Demon” (the Yellow River), the matriarch of a small Chinese village single-handedly stops the advance of a Japanese army. Text, PDF
- [The Salt Inspector / Namak Ka Daroga](https://xpressenglish.com/salt-inspector/) - An Indian tax inspector refuses a huge bribe and arrests a wealthy land baron for smuggling salt. Later, the land baron offers him a highly paid job. Text, PDF
- [Festival of Eid / Idgah](https://xpressenglish.com/festival-of-eid/) - A young boy foregoes pleasures at a festival to buy a pair of tongs to prevent his poverty-stricken grandmother from burning her hands when cooking. Text, PDF
- [The Voice of God / Holy Panchayat](https://xpressenglish.com/voice-of-god/) - A life-long friendship is broken when one rules against the other at a village council meeting. The two reunite after the roles are reversed. Text, PDF
- [A January Night / Poos Ki Raat](https://xpressenglish.com/january-night/) - A blanketless Indian farmer watches over his crops one night in freezing temperatures. He manages to survive the night, but his crops do not. Text, PDF
- [The Shroud / Kafan](https://xpressenglish.com/the-shroud/) - A poor father and son go to buy a funeral shroud for the son’s deceased wife, but end up spending the donated money on a boozy night in town. Text, PDF
- [Poovan Pazham](https://xpressenglish.com/poovan-pazham/) - A man calmly puts up with his nagging, ill-tempered wife until a quest to find poovan pazham (dessert bananas) proves too much. Text, PDF
- [Interpreter of Maladies](https://xpressenglish.com/interpreter-of-maladies/) - An Indian translator who moonlights as a tour guide fantasizes that the wife in a family he takes sightseeing has a romantic interest in him. Text, PDF, mp3
- [The Day the Dancers Came](https://xpressenglish.com/day-the-dancers-came/) - An aging Filipino expatriate feeling cut off from his culture is ignored in his efforts to act as host to a group of visiting Filipino folk dancers. Text, PDF
- [Immigration Blues](https://xpressenglish.com/immigration-blues/) - A Filipino widower has two unexpected visitors. When he hears what they want he thanks God for allowing lightning to strike the same person twice. Text, PDF
- [Titanic Survivors Found in Bermuda Triangle](https://xpressenglish.com/titanic-survivors/) - A Titanic survivor “wakes up” in a lifeboat off the Miami coast in the 1990s. However, adjusting to life in the modern world proves rather difficult. Text, PDF
- [A Good Scent from a Strange Mountain](https://xpressenglish.com/a-good-scent/) - With help from Ho Chi Minh, an aging Vietnamese-American immigrant makes ready to meet his wife and other dead loved-ones in the “village square”. Text, PDF
- [This Is Earle Sandt](https://xpressenglish.com/earle-sandt/) - A small town banker’s ordered world is shaken when he witnesses the crash that killed pioneer American aviator Earle Sandt. Text, PDF
- [Jealous Husband Returns in Form of Parrot](https://xpressenglish.com/jealous-parrot/) - A jealous husband who did not communicate his love or concerns enough is resurrected as a parrot and purchased as a pet by his recently widowed wife. Text, PDF
- [The Verb to Kill](https://xpressenglish.com/verb-to-kill/) - After years of fantasizing over the imaginary depraved, murderous activities of a seemingly harmless man a young woman borrows her father's gun. Text, PDF
- [All About Suicide](https://xpressenglish.com/about-suicide/) - A man unhappy with life goes into his office, puts a hidden gun to his head, and pulls the trigger. But is this what really happened? Text, PDF
- [The Pose](https://xpressenglish.com/the-pose/) - An attractive Indian college student makes a spur-of-the-moment decision to exchange places with a mannequin in a shop window. Text, PDF
- [Examination Day](https://xpressenglish.com/examination-day/) - A twelve-year-old boy must take a government intelligence test. He does well at school and, to his parents’ horror, aces the exam. Text, PDF, mp3
- [The Right Kind of House](https://xpressenglish.com/right-kind-of-house/) - A man is left with a bitter taste in his mouth after agreeing to pay over seven times a fair asking price for a dilapidated house he wants to buy. Text, PDF
- [The Golden Kite, the Silver Wind](https://xpressenglish.com/golden-kite-silver-wind/) - The Mandarins of two Chinese cities learn that they can accomplish more by talking and working cooperatively than by trying to outdo each other. Text, PDF
- [The Crowd](https://xpressenglish.com/the-crowd/) - A man injured in a car accident senses something ominous about some of the onlookers in the crowd that gathers around him. Text PDF, mp3
- [When the Mice Failed to Arrive](https://xpressenglish.com/mice-failed-to-arrive/) - A storm breaking as a father waits for his son to come home from school triggers a stream of consciousness journey through the troubled man's life. Text, PDF
- [Heavy-Set](https://xpressenglish.com/heavy-set/) - A story about a Halloween that goes wrong for a mentally and socially challenged young man and his aging mother. Analysis, Text, PDF, mp3
- [The Pedestrian](https://xpressenglish.com/the-pedestrian/) - A story about a man living in a TV dominated world who likes to do the unthinkable: go for a long evening walk every day! Text, PDF, mp3
- [The Drummer Boy of Shiloh](https://xpressenglish.com/drummer-boy/) - A drummer boy who has no gun or means of protecting himself is very frightened on the night before his first battle Text, PDF, mp3
- [The Flying Machine](https://xpressenglish.com/flying-machine/) - When a Chinese Emperor learns that one of his subjects has invented a “flying machine”, he has the man executed and the kite destroyed. Text, PDF, mp3
- [The Good Deed](https://xpressenglish.com/good-deed/) - The life of an elderly Chinese woman changes when she decides to help a kind-hearted but “ugly” friend of her American family find a husband. Text, PDF
- [Christmas Day in the Morning](https://xpressenglish.com/christmas-day-morning/) - An old man remembers a Christmas when, as a boy, he realized how much his father loved him and learnt that 'love alone awakens love'. Text, PDF, mp3
- [The Enemy](https://xpressenglish.com/the-enemy/) - A Japanese surgeon faces a dilemma when he finds a badly wounded escaped prisoner of war washed up on the beach in front of his house. Text, PDF, mp3
- [The Chance](https://xpressenglish.com/the-chance/) - A man desperately tries to prevent his attractive lover from making herself uglyf in a genetic lottery run by alien invaders. Text, PDF
- [Exotic Pleasures](https://xpressenglish.com/exotic-pleasures/) - A woman travels the country selling time with a brightly coloured exotic bird that gives a rush of pleasure to those who stroke it. Text, PDF
- [Heart is Where the Home Is](https://xpressenglish.com/where-the-home-is/) - An Australian aboriginal woman desperately tries to save her baby from being forcefully removed and placed in a missionary school by authorities. Text, PDF
- [The Assignment](https://xpressenglish.com/the-assignment/) - Set during shortly after India’s Partition, a Muslim judge underestimates the religious rioting to come and insists on staying in India. Text, PDF
- [Footnote to Youth](https://xpressenglish.com/footnote-to-youth/) - A Filipino couple’s teenage marriage provides little fulfilment amid the daily grind of farm life and the responsibilities of raising a family. Text, PDF
- [The Bread of Salt](https://xpressenglish.com/bread-of-salt/) - A popular Filipino food symbolizes the divide between a working-class teen and the Spanish plantation owner’s niece with whom he is infatuated. Text, PDF
- [The Sea Beyond](https://xpressenglish.com/the-sea-beyond/) - A Philippine passenger-cargo ship transports a critically injured stevedore to the next port for medical treatment. Text, PDF
- [Children of the Ash-Covered Loam](https://xpressenglish.com/ash-covered-loam/) - A description of life, ritual and coming of age in a Philippine subsistence farming family during the planting season. Text, PDF
- [The Daemon Lover](https://xpressenglish.com/daemon-lover/) - A woman wakes on what was to be her wedding day to realize that she may have been used and duped by the promise of marriage. Text, PDF, mp3
- [Pillar of Salt](https://xpressenglish.com/pillar-of-salt/) - A woman visiting New York with her husband has a nervous breakdown after falsely believing a building they were in was on fire. Text, PDF, mp3
- [Open It / Khol Do](https://xpressenglish.com/open-it/) - A father searches for his daughter in a refugee camp for “Indian” Muslims in Pakistan. When found, her corpse displays a shocking conditioned reflex. Text, PDF
- [The Witch](https://xpressenglish.com/the-witch/) - A young boy on a train with his mother and infant sister encounters a strange man who relates how he killed and dismembered his own sister. Text, PDF, mp3
- [One Ordinary Day, With Peanuts](https://xpressenglish.com/ordinary-day-with-peanuts/) - A seemingly ordinary man walks the streets of New York helping strangers and being kind to people. Unfortunately, things aren't what they seem. Text, PDF, mp3
- [The Lottery](https://xpressenglish.com/the-lottery/) - A story about how people can be influenced by herd or mob mentality to do inhuman things they would never consider individually. Text, PDF, mp3,
- [The Possibility of Evil](https://xpressenglish.com/possibility-of-evil/) - A haughty old woman sends anonymous, hurtful letters to various people in her community, thinking she is doing them a good turn. Text, PDF, mp3
- [Showdown](https://xpressenglish.com/showdown/) - Young Billy’s Saturdays were once quiet and uneventful. When Tom Harper’s death breaks the pattern, a mystical power puts him into a time loop. Text, PDF
- [Charles](https://xpressenglish.com/charles/) - A naughty boy tries to gain attention by misbehaving during his first weeks at kindergarten. Was it Laurie, Charles or someone / something else? Text, PDF
- [You’ll Learn Soon Enough](https://xpressenglish.com/soon-enough/) - A young Thai girl’s first bus-trip to a nearby town to sell vegetables is cut short by the greedy owner/concessionaire of a newly built highway. Text, PDF
- [As If It Had Never Happened](https://xpressenglish.com/as-if/) - A busload of Bangkok students descend upon a poor, isolated rice farming village to build a Community Hall they neither asked for or need. Text, PDF
- [The Gold-legged Frog](https://xpressenglish.com/gold-legged-frog/) - A Thai farmer leaves his dying son in the hands of faith-healers and herbalists to grovel in front of local officials for a government handout. Text, PDF, mp3
- [The Disappearance](https://xpressenglish.com/disappearance/) - A woman suffering repression and sexual abuse in an arranged marriage faces a hard decision, which may mean leaving her young son behind. Text, PDF
- [The Metaphor](https://xpressenglish.com/metaphor/) - Inspired by a flamboyant English teacher, a seventh-grade girl learns to endure problems in life by writing metaphors. Text, PDF
- [Be-ers and Doers](https://xpressenglish.com/be-ers-and-doers/) - A boy rebels after years of maternal pressure to change from being a "be-er" into a “do-er”, someone driven by success and always on the go. Text, PDF, mp3
- [A Family Supper](https://xpressenglish.com/family-supper/) - A young Japanese man returns home following a falling out with his parents. The supper served by his father could be their last meal. Text, PDF
- [Come Rain or Come Shine](https://xpressenglish.com/come-rain-or-shine/) - A man trying to save his stagnating marriage manipulates a mutual friend into providing company for his wife while he is away on business. Text, PDF
- [A Village After Dark](https://xpressenglish.com/village-after-dark/) - An elderly man returns to a village he left many years ago. Older villagers are uneasy about his return; to younger ones he is a hero. Text, PDF, mp3
- [Daisy Miller: A Study in Two Parts](https://xpressenglish.com/daisy-miller/) - The behaviour of an American socialite traveling through Southern Europe is scandalous in the eyes of the American expat community. Text, PDF, mp3
- [Paste](https://xpressenglish.com/paste/) - A cousin gives a young woman a box of old jewellery. Hidden among the pieces is a valuable necklace. She is unsure whether to keep or return it. Text, PDF, mp3
- [The Beast in the Jungle](https://xpressenglish.com/beast-in-the-jungle/) - A man is obsessed with the feeling that an evil “beast” of some kind will come into his life. In the end, the Beast destroys two lives. Text, PDF, mp3
- [The Jolly Corner](https://xpressenglish.com/jolly-corner/) - A wealthy but disillusioned man stalks his empty, supposedly haunted family mansion looking for the ghost of the person he might have become. Text, PDF, mp3
- [The Year of Spaghetti](https://xpressenglish.com/year-of-spaghetti/) - A reclusive man buys the necessary equipment and ingredients and sets out to cook spaghetti every day for a year. Text, PDF
- [A Shinagawa Monkey / Confessions of a Shinagawa Monkey](https://xpressenglish.com/shinagawa-monkey/) - Two stories about a talking monkey who steals part of the identity of women he is attracted to. As a result, the women begin to forget their names. Text, PDF
- [The Bakery Attack / Second Bakery Attack](https://xpressenglish.com/bakery-attack/) - A couple decide to remove a curse by repeating the botched robbery of a bakery, but settle for stealing 30 Big Macs from an all-night McDonald's. Text, PDF
- [The New Constitution / Naya Qanun](https://xpressenglish.com/new-constitution/) - An illiterate tongawala [coachman] lands in jail after misinterpreting news of a new “India Act” to infer a coming end to British rule. Text, PDF
- [Toba Tek Singh](https://xpressenglish.com/toba-tek-singh/) - Following their Partition in 1947, India and Pakistan decide to exchange institutionalized lunatics. Achieving this isn't as easy as they had thought. Text, PDF
- [The Dog of Tithwal](https://xpressenglish.com/tithwal/) - The treatment of an over-friendly dog that “refuses” to take sides in the first Indo-Pakistan war is symbolic of the suffering of innocent civilians. Text, PDF
- [The End](https://xpressenglish.com/the-end/) - An elderly man released from an institution against his wishes desperately tries to survive despite declining physical and mental health. Text, PDF, mp3
- [Young Archimedes](https://xpressenglish.com/young-archimedes/) - Tragedy strikes when a childless, status-seeking woman tricks a father into letting her take his gifted son away for musical instruction. Text, PDF, mp3
- [First Love](https://xpressenglish.com/first-love/) - A reclusive, homeless man recalls how he became infatuated with and moved in with a prostitute he met on a canal-side bench. Text, PDF
- [Dante and the Lobster](https://xpressenglish.com/dantes-lobster/) - A solitary, eccentric student struggling with his studies is fanatical about unimportant things and apathetic towards the things that matter. Text, PDF, mp3
- [Secret Worship](https://xpressenglish.com/secret-worship/) - A man decides to visit his old boarding school. When he arrives, he is welcomed with open arms. However, leaving is not so easy. Text, PDF, mp3
- [The Glamour of the Snow](https://xpressenglish.com/glamour-of-the-snow/) - A writer holidaying in the Swiss Alps encounters a spectral woman who lures him to her snow-covered mountain “home” and tries to make him hers. Text, PDF, mp3
- [The Willows](https://xpressenglish.com/the-willows/) - Two canoeists camp on a small island among idyllic, willow-lined channels. Hidden among the trees is a malevolent, blood-thirsty presence. Text, PDF, mp3
- [The Wendigo](https://xpressenglish.com/wendigo/) - Two hunters and their guides encounter a malevolent being said by Native Indian folklore to haunt the wilds of Eastern Canada. Text, PDF, mp3
- [The Olive](https://xpressenglish.com/the-olive/) - A man dreams about a girl who rolled an olive towards him across a restaurant floor. Later, she repeats things she said and did in the dream. Text, PDF, mp3
- [The Empty House](https://xpressenglish.com/empty-house/) - One of literature's most famous haunted house stories, in which two people spend a night in an empty house to investigate a local legend. Text, PDF, mp3
- [Life in the Iron-Mills](https://xpressenglish.com/in-the-iron-mills/) - A deformed woman whose love for an iron-mill worker is not reciprocated destroys both of their lives by stealing money to try to help him. Text, PDF, mp3
- [The Secret Source](https://xpressenglish.com/secret-source/) - In a future world, river and ground water is undrinkable and tap water is manufactured. A couple set off to find a source of pure water. Text, PDF, mp3
- [Johnny Mnemonic](https://xpressenglish.com/johnny-mnemonic/) - To escape a cyborg assassin the protagonist, a data courier, must decode a message stored in a secure storage device implanted in his brain. Text, PDF, mp3
- [The Sheriff's Children](https://xpressenglish.com/sheriffs-children/) - A sheriff protects an alleged murderer from a vigilante mob. He later learns that the prisoner, a mixed race former slave, is his son. Text, PDF, mp3
- [The Goophered Grapevine](https://xpressenglish.com/goophered-grapevine/) - A story abou the sad fate of a slave who "sampled" grapes off a vine, unaware that the owner had paid a sorceress to put a curse on them. Text, PDF, mp3
- [The Madness of Doctor Montarco](https://xpressenglish.com/doctor-montarco/) - When a respected physician begins to publish increasingly bizarre short stories as a pastime, his patients desert him and question his sanity. Text, PDF
- [Eraser Tattoo](https://xpressenglish.com/eraser-tattoo/) - When about to be separated, a controlling girl insists on burning her initial into her teenage lover’s arm as a token of his enduring devotion. Text, PDF, mp3
- [The Ingredients](https://xpressenglish.com/ingredients/) - Four boys try to outdo one another with descriptions of the exotic sandwiches they would like to eat. What they are served is very different. Text, PDF
- [Wicked Girl](https://xpressenglish.com/wicked-girl/) - An eleven-year-old girl tries to sexually arouse her mother’s lover. He rejects her, but develops an unhealthy attraction towards young girls. Text, PDF
- [Gimpel the Fool](https://xpressenglish.com/gimpel/) - A meek man whose trusting and accommodating nature results in him being branded a fool finds peace and wisdom through religious faith. Text, PDF, mp3
- [Oliver's Evolution](https://xpressenglish.com/olivers-evolution/) - A young man who has led a troubled life transforms into a responsible, loving husband and father after marrying an equally troubled girl. Text, PDF
- [Solitude](https://xpressenglish.com/solitude/) - Predicting what her baby daughter’s future will hold, the dying wish of a woman married to a selfish, uncaring man is that she be named Solitude. Text, PDF
- [Saint Manuel Bueno, Martyr](https://xpressenglish.com/saint-manuel-bueno/) - A woman from a remote Spanish village reflects on her close connection with a saintly priest who harbors an astonishing secret. Text, PDF
- [The Goose Father](https://xpressenglish.com/goose-father/) - Sexual tension builds between a South Korean “goose father” and an enigmatic young man he rents a room to after six months’ living alone. Text, PDF
- [Drifting House](https://xpressenglish.com/drifting-house/) - Two starving, malnourished North Korean boys abandoned by their mother struggle across a snow-covered mountain to try to join her in China. Text, PDF
- [Youth](https://xpressenglish.com/youth-asimov/) - Two boys capture some strange "animals" and, having no idea how important they are to the future of the world, plan to display them in a circus. Text, PDF, mp3
- [The Fun They Had](https://xpressenglish.com/fun-they-had/) - In the year 2157 a boy finds something he has never seen before. It's a book! And it is about a school that's unlike any he knows of. Text, PDF
- [The Dead Past](https://xpressenglish.com/dead-past/) - The government unsucestries to suppress an invention that would allow home users to look back in time up to one hundred and fifty years. Text, PDF
- [The Machine That Won the War](https://xpressenglish.com/machine-that-won-the-war/) - The war is over, Earth is safe. But what/who won it? The machine, its Chief Programmer, the Project Leader, or the Head of the Solar Federation? Text, PDF, mp3
- [Key Item](https://xpressenglish.com/key-item/) - A supercomputer crucial to the world economy will not respond to commands. A scientist finds a solution by doing something he learned as a child. Text, PDF, mp3
- [Nightfall](https://xpressenglish.com/nightfall/) - A group of forward-thinking scientists prepare for the end of a world with eternal sun as is about to be plunged into darkness and madness. Text, PDF, mp3
- [A Cold Autumn](https://xpressenglish.com/cold-autumn/) - A Russian woman reflects on a cold autumn morning thirty years earlier when she saw her fiancé off to war, never to return. Text, PDF
- [Cleansing Monday](https://xpressenglish.com/cleansing-monday/) - A young Russian man is surprised when, after a long, chaste relationship, his lover gives herself to him. The same day, she leaves him forever. Text, PDF
- [In Paris](https://xpressenglish.com/in-paris/) - A well-to-do, middle-aged Russian exile becomes “animated” for the first time in years when he encounters a Russian waitress in a Paris restaurant. Text, PDF
- [The Gentleman from San Francisco](https://xpressenglish.com/gentleman-from-san-francisco/) - An overweight, fifty-eight-year-old industrialist treats himself and his family to a two-year trip around the world. He doesn’t get far. Text, PDF, mp3
- [Shhhh](https://xpressenglish.com/shhhh/) - A Zimbabwean girl is full of hatred when her father returns home terminally ill with AIDS after years of no contact or family support. Text, PDF
- [Hitting Budapest](https://xpressenglish.com/hitting-budapest/) - Six hungry children from an African slum cross town to steal fruit from the guava trees of a rich neighborhood. Text, PDF
- [The Big True](https://xpressenglish.com/big-true/) - Following his wife’s death and his daughter’s graduation from Harvard, a once famous Iranian sitar player chooses the simple life of a drifter. Text, PDF
- [A Ride Out of Phrao](https://xpressenglish.com/ride-out-of-phrao/) - A woman working for the United Stated Peace Corps in Northern Thailand is excited about a visit by her estranged daughter. Text, PDF
- [Valediction](https://xpressenglish.com/valediction/) - Two boys who have been friends for years shoplift together several times. Guilt and fear cause one stop, but the other continues and is caught. Text, PDF, mp3
- [Two Words](https://xpressenglish.com/two-words/) - A feared bandit/rebel leader becomes obsessed with two “secret” words a woman he forced to write a political speech whispered in his ear. Text, PDF, mp3
- [The Soft Touch of Grass](https://xpressenglish.com/touch-of-grass/) - A misunderstanding by a young girl causes a lonely man spending his day watching children play in a park to return home in misery. Text, PDF
- [Absalom’s Hair](https://xpressenglish.com/absaloms-hair/) - After her dominating husband’s death, a woman spends the next ten years trying to control every aspect of their then twelve-year-old son’s life. Text, PDF
- [The Railroad and the Churchyard](https://xpressenglish.com/railroad-and-churchyard/) - Ex-friends clash over a proposal to allow a new railway to follow the only route possible, which includes part of an old, disused cemetery. Text, PDF
- [One Day](https://xpressenglish.com/one-day/) - A woman in a loveless marriage is enlivened when her teenage idol pays her special attention, only to be crushed when he reveals his true self. Text, PDF
- [The Bridal March](https://xpressenglish.com/bridal-march/) - A bridal march composed for the daughter of a Norwegian peasant links the stories of four generations of his descendants. Text, PDF
- [The Mezzotint](https://xpressenglish.com/mezzotint/) - A university don is shocked when the image on an 1800s mezzotint changes several times over a day, finally revealing a heinous crime. Text, PDF, mp3
- [The Father](https://xpressenglish.com/the-father/) - The tragic death of a prideful man’s son leaves him devasted and humbled, bringing about a major change in his outlook on life. Text, PDF, mp3
- [Gombei and the Wild Ducks](https://xpressenglish.com/gombei/) - A man who had made a good living by snaring one wild duck a day decides to trap a hundred at a time and relax for the next ninety-nine days. Text, PDF, mp3
- [Aunty Misery](https://xpressenglish.com/aunty-misery/) - A wish granted by a travelling sorcerer helps an old woman cheat Death when he comes for her and force him to grant her immortality. Text, PDF
- [The Story of a Disappearance and an Appearance](https://xpressenglish.com/disappearance-and-appearance/) - The mystery of a missing, presumed dead clergyman is solved when a traveling Punch and Judy show comes to town. Text, PDF, mp3
- [The Treasure of Abbot Thomas](https://xpressenglish.com/treasure-of-abbot-thomas/) - A British antiquary decodes a hidden message to find an Abbot’s treasure but encounters problems dealing with its monstrous guardian. Text, PDF, mp3
- [Oh, Whistle and I'll Come To You, My Lad](https://xpressenglish.com/whistle/) - A university professor investigating some monastic ruins finds an ancient bronze whistle and “whistles up” a terrifying personage. Text, PDF, mp3
- [In Search of Epifano](https://xpressenglish.com/epifano/) - An aging woman leaves her loveless marriage and unfulfilling life in California to search for her familial, ethnic and spiritual roots in Mexico. Text, PDF
- [Dead End](https://xpressenglish.com/dead-end/) - A high-school senior faces a decision: to keep a promise made to her dying mother, or end a budding romance with the most popular boy in school. Text, PDF, mp3
- [The Indian and the Hundred Cows](https://xpressenglish.com/hundred-cows/) - A priest poorly explains the biblical concept of a hundredfold return. A parishioner gives him a cow, and takes a hundred of the his cattle in return. Text, PDF
- [The Two Brothers and the Gold](https://xpressenglish.com/two-brothers-and-the-gold/) - Two brothers react differently to finding a heap of gold. One runs away. The other uses it to help the needy, but is told that this was wrong. Text, PDF, mp3
- [After the Ball / Dance](https://xpressenglish.com/after-the-ball/) - A man in love with a beautiful woman is impressed when he meets her father, a senior military officer, at a ball. Everything changes the next morning. Text, PDF
- [The Death of Ivan Ilyich](https://xpressenglish.com/ivan-ilyich/)
- [How Much Land Does a Man Need?](https://xpressenglish.com/how-much-land/) - A greedy Russian farmer hears of a place where for almost nothing you can buy all the land you can walk around in a day. Text, PDF, mp
- [The Coffee-house of Surat](https://xpressenglish.com/coffee-house-of-surat/) - Customers in an Indian coffeehouse debate which religion is God’s favorite. The answer is found in an allegorical tale from a Confucian scholar. Text, PDF, mp3
- [The Three Hermits](https://xpressenglish.com/three-hermits/) - A bishop tries to change the way three devout hermits seeking salvation by living alone on a deserted island pray to God. Text, PDF, mp3
- [What Men Live By](https://xpressenglish.com/what-men-live-by/) - A disobedient angel must learn the answers these questions: What dwells in man? What is not given to man? and What (do) men live by? Text, PDF, mp3
- [The Three Questions](https://xpressenglish.com/three-questions/) - A king believes he would never fail in a task if he always knew three things. A forest hermit and injured assassin teach him the answers. Text, PDF, mp3
- [And of Clay Are We Created](https://xpressenglish.com/of-clay/) - A story of the futile efforts to save a girl half buried alive after a volcanic eruption, and a reporter who stayed by her side until the end. Text, PDF, mp3
- [The Gold of Tomás Vargas](https://xpressenglish.com/tomas-vargas/) - The mistreated wife of a miserly, lecherous, cruel, drunkard has the last laugh when her husband can't find his hidden gold to pay a gambling debt. Text, PDF
- [The Happiest I've Been](https://xpressenglish.com/happiest-ive-been/) - Observing "the party he had been going to all his life" teaches the shy protagonist that he has out-grown childhood and needs to move on with his life.
- [Separating](https://xpressenglish.com/separating/) - A self-absorbed father weeps as he tells his children that he and his wife are separating, but can't answer the most obvious question about it. Text, PDF, mp3
- [Pigeon Feathers](https://xpressenglish.com/pigeon-feathers/) - A young boy's crisis of faith and fear there is no life after death are resolved by an epiphany that follows an act of bloody violence. Text, PDF, Video
- [A&P](https://xpressenglish.com/a-and-p/) - A young supermarket employee resigns when his manager rudely asks three girls he thinks aren't dressed appropriately to leave the store. Text, PDF, mp3, Video
- [The Slump](https://xpressenglish.com/the-slump/) - A professional baseball player tries to analyze why he is no longer hitting the ball as well as he used to. Text, PDF
- [In the Shadow of War](https://xpressenglish.com/in-the-shadow-of-war/) - A boy, curious about a mysterious woman who walks through his village every day wearing a black veil, follows her to her destination. Text, PDF
- [Prayer for the Living](https://xpressenglish.com/prayer-for-the-living/) - Amid the mass starvation caused by the Nigerian Civil War, a man who hasn’t eaten for weeks walks among corpses looking for his loved ones. Text, PDF, mp3
- [The Sisters](https://xpressenglish.com/the-sisters/) - A boy who was friends with and mentored by a Catholic priest feels “freed” after his death, presumably because he can resume a normal boyhood. Text, PDF, mp3
- [The Dead](https://xpressenglish.com/the-dead/) - An Irish intellectual realizes the need to be more positive in life, and how the lives of the dead can have a major influence on the living. Text, PDF, mp3
- [A Painful Case](https://xpressenglish.com/painful-case/) - A man who lives an orderly, spartan, solitary life drives the one woman who could have made his life complete to drink and possible suicide. Text, PDF, mp3
- [Eveline](https://xpressenglish.com/eveline/) - A young woman who lives a dull life caring for her abusive father meets a loving man who wants to take her away from it all. She refuses to go. Text, PDF, mp3
- [Araby](https://xpressenglish.com/araby/) - A story about desire, obsession, reality and disappointment... all brought about by a pubescent boy's infatuation with an older girl. Text, PDF
- [Circular Ruins](https://xpressenglish.com/circular-ruins/) - An ascetic mystic “dreams” a man into existence, initiates him into the riddles of the universe, and sends him to inhabit a ruined temple. Text, PDF
- [The Other](https://xpressenglish.com/the-other/) - An alternative reality story where an old teacher meets and talks with a younger man who proves to be himself at an earlier age. Text, PDF
- [The Book of Sand](https://xpressenglish.com/book-of-sand/) - A story about a man who comes across a strange book that has a never-ending number of pages which he cannot understand. Text, PDF, mp3
- [The Garden of Forking Paths](https://xpressenglish.com/garden-of-forking-paths/) - A sinologist discovers the hidden meaning of an ancient book. A path that led to it results in his death and the capture of a German spy. Text, PDF, mp3
- [The Library of Babel](https://xpressenglish.com/library-of-babel/) - A story about an endless library full of books that don't make sens,e and the search for a special book that may be the key to them all. Text, PDF, mp3
- [Baby H.P.](https://xpressenglish.com/baby-h-p/) - An advertisement targeting 1940s housewives, promoting a device that transforms the energy of a child’s movements into stored electricity. Text, PDF
- [A Horse in the Moon](https://xpressenglish.com/horse-in-the-moon/) - A medical episode, and a vision a newly married man has as the moon rises behind a dying horse, solves a problem for his young bride. Text, PDF
- [The Higgler](https://xpressenglish.com/higgler/) - A higgler’s life gets complicated when a wealthy widow in poor health asks him to marry her beautiful, well-educated daughter. Text, PDF
- [Mrs. Frola and Mr. Ponza, Her Son-in-Law](https://xpressenglish.com/frola-and-ponza/) - Gossip rages when a respected civil servant doesn’t allow his wife to leave their apartment, or her mother to visit. Text, PDF, mp3
- [The Wreath](https://xpressenglish.com/the-wreath/) - A middle-aged doctor is disturbed to learn that his much younger wife has secretly ordered a wreath for a former lover’s grave. Text, PDF
- [A Day Goes By](https://xpressenglish.com/day-goes-by/) - A metaphorical day begins with a disoriented man being cast out of a “train carriage”, and ends with him lying on his deathbed surrounded by family. Text, PDF
- [War](https://xpressenglish.com/war/) - Passengers sharing a train carriage discuss a common link: all are parents of men who are going or have gone off to war, some never to return. Text, PDF, mp3
- [MS. Found in a Bottle](https://xpressenglish.com/found-in-a-bottle/) - After a series of misadventures at sea, a man finds himself on a huge ghost galleon speeding under full sail towards the South pole. Text, PDF, mp3
- [The Tell-Tale Heart](https://xpressenglish.com/tell-tale-heart/) - A story about a murderer who is clearly mad but goes to great lengths to try to prove that he or she is not insane. Text, PDF, mp3
- [The Cask of Amontillado](https://xpressenglish.com/amontillado/) - A Gothic horror story in which an insult is avenged at a wine-tasting that adds new meaning to someone (the victim) getting "plastered". Text, PDF, mp3
- [The Oval Portrait](https://xpressenglish.com/oval-portrait/) - A portrait of a beautiful woman that seems a little too lifelike leads to a story of rare beauty, love, obedience, obsession and death. Text, PDF, mp3
- [The Imp of the Perverse](https://xpressenglish.com/imp-of-the-perverse/) - A man facing execution for murder blames his actions the “Imp of the Perverse”, an urge that drives people to do things they know to be wrong. Text, PDF, mp3
- [Eleonora](https://xpressenglish.com/eleonora/) - Two cousins grow up together in an idyllic, secluded valley. They become lovers and, after one of them dies, both accept that life must go on. Text, PDF, mp3
- [The Man of the Crowd](https://xpressenglish.com/man-of-the-crowd/) - A man people-watching from a London coffee shop is fascinated by a “decrepid old man” with a fiendish, unreadable expression. Text, PDF, mp3
- [The Pit and the Pendulum](https://xpressenglish.com/pit-and-pendulum/) - A man sentenced to death by the Spanish Inquisition is tied to a wooden frame in a chamber housing several forms of horrific death. Text, PDF, mp3
- [The Purloined Letter](https://xpressenglish.com/purloined-letter/) - A detective helps police find an important stolen letter for which the thief had found the perfect hiding place... in plain sight of everyone! Text, PDF, mp3
- [The Masque of the Red Death](https://xpressenglish.com/red-death/) - A prince tries to escape a deadly plague known as the “Red Death” by locking himself and a large entourage inside a secluded abbey. Text, PDF, mp3
- [The Black Cat](https://xpressenglish.com/black-cat/) - A psychopathic man struggling with alcoholism takes is cruel towards family pets. When his wife tries to stop him, she pays a high price. Text, PDF, mp3
- [The Murders in the Rue Morgue](https://xpressenglish.com/rue-morgue/) - A locked-room mystery in which the wrong man is arrested for two violent murders and an “Ourang-Outang” makes a monkey out of the police. Text, PDF
- [The Half-Skinned Steer](https://xpressenglish.com/half-skinned-steer/) - Foolish mistakes see a healthy octogenarian finish a 4-day road-trip a frail, disoriented figure facing a ghostly “half-skinned steer” in a blizzard. Text, PDF
- [Brokeback Mountain](https://xpressenglish.com/brokeback-mountain/) - A sexual encounter between two ranch-hands leads to a twenty-year love affair and an incomplete life of frustration for the two men involved. Text, PDF, mp3
- [The Hack Driver](https://xpressenglish.com/hack-driver/) - A young lawyer enjoys his time with a helpful hack driver who drives him around all day trying to find a witness needed for an important case. Text, PDF, mp3
- [Moths in the Arc Light](https://xpressenglish.com/in-the-arc-light/) - A successful 1920s businessman becomes infatuated with a secretary he sees from his twelfth story window working in an office across the street. Text, PDF, mp3
- [The Willow Walk](https://xpressenglish.com/willow-walk/) - A skilled actor pulls off an elaborate bank heist by alternating between the roles of himself and a fictional twin brother. Text, PDF, mp3
- [Things](https://xpressenglish.com/things/) - A young woman’s life is turned upside down when her father becomes instantly rich, buys a mansion, and fills it with expensive “things”. Text, PDF, mp3
- [Ashes for the Wind](https://xpressenglish.com/ashes-for-the-wind/) - A corrupt mayor and police, aided by a local informer, are systematically expelling residents who voted against the incumbent government. Text, PDF
- [Lather and Nothing Else](https://xpressenglish.com/lather-and-nothing-else/) - A barber who supports a revolutionary cause has a dilemma when an army captain who has been brutal in putting down the revolt asks for a shave. Text, PDF, mp3
- [The Weeping Fig](https://xpressenglish.com/weeping-fig/) - After coming into possession of his great-grandfather’s diary, a man visits the cattle station on which his forefathers had settled. Text, PDF
- [The Ant-Lion](https://xpressenglish.com/ant-lion/) - A brother and sister watch in silent horror as an ant-lion larvae severs the abdomen of a meat-ant the boy had dropped into its pit. Text, PDF
- [The Holiday](https://xpressenglish.com/the-holiday/) - An Australian Jewish couple who survived the holocaust is understandably obsessive about security and the welfare of their only daughter. Text, PDF
- [Luba](https://xpressenglish.com/luba/) - An Australian couple who survived the holocaust is understandably obsessive about security and the welfare of their only daughter. Text, PDF
- [My Father Goes to Court](https://xpressenglish.com/father-goes-to-court/) - A rich man files a legal complaint against his poor neighbors for standing outside his house and enjoying the aroma of his food. Text, PDF
- [The Story of a Letter](https://xpressenglish.com/story-of-a-letter/) - A young, illiterate Filipino man flees the harshness and unpredictability of life in his own country for the promise of a new life in America. Text, PDF
- [Why Had I Left Home?](https://xpressenglish.com/why-had-i-left-home/) - A young Filipino man who experiences exploitation and racial violence after immigrating to America asks himself: “Why Had I Left Home?” Text, PDF
- [The Wedding Reception](https://xpressenglish.com/wedding-reception/) - On the day of a Mandalay wedding the groom, his new wife, and others go the great lengths to help his seriously ill father have an enjoyable day. Text, PDF
- [Neighbours](https://xpressenglish.com/neighbours-moe/) - After a brief period living in the suburbs, a couple move into an apartment closer to the city. They find the “neighborliness” vastly different. Text, PDF
- [Luck](https://xpressenglish.com/luck/) - How can an army officer who doesn’t seem to know his right from his left win a major battle and achieve greatness? The answer is in the title. Text, PDF
- [Smell / Bu](https://xpressenglish.com/smell/) - A refined Indian man is enchanted by the “at once foul and sweet-smelling” odour emitted by a factory worker he sleeps with. Text, PDF
- [The Homemaker / Gharwali](https://xpressenglish.com/homemaker/) - Things change for a woman whose body was her only asset when a friend suggests that a respectable shopkeeper employ her as a housemaid. Text, PDF
- [Sacred Duty / Mugaddas Farz](https://xpressenglish.com/sacred-duty/) - Two sets of manipulative parents are put in their place after a Muslem girl opts out of an arranged marriage and elopes with a Hindu boy. Text, PDF
- [The Quilt / Lihaaf](https://xpressenglish.com/the-quilt/) - A young girl is left in the care of an aunt who spends her day being “attended to” by a personal servant/masseuse who also shares her bed. Text, PDF
- [The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven](https://xpressenglish.com/lone-ranger-and-tonto/) - A Spokane Indian recalls his constant fights and arguments, often over his excessive drinking, with a white kindergarten teacher he loved. Text, PDF
- [This is What It Means to Say Phoenix, Arizona](https://xpressenglish.com/phoenix-arizona/) - A Native-American man enlists the help of a former friend to go on a road trip to bring back his father’s ashes. Text, PDF
- [What You Pawn I Will Redeem](https://xpressenglish.com/what-you-pawn/) - A homeless, alcoholic Native American sets off on a 24-hour quest to redeem his grandmother’s stolen ceremonial regalia from a pawn shop. Text, PDF
- [In the Cemetery Where Al Jolson Is Buried](https://xpressenglish.com/al-jolson/) - A woman has difficulty coming to grips with a friend’s terminal illness. Her one and only hospital visit is full of tension for both. Text, PDF, mp3
- [The Voter](https://xpressenglish.com/the-voter/) - After a Nigerian politician appoints canvassers to bribe influential villagers, their leader is offered of a huge bribe to vote for the opposition. Text, PDF
- [What I Saw from Where I Stood](https://xpressenglish.com/what-i-saw/) - Told from the husband’s point of view, a couple struggles to keep their marriage together after the miscarriage of their first child. Text, PDF
- [Gren's Ghost](https://xpressenglish.com/grens-ghost/) - A usually timid boy sneaks out of his house at midnight to help a classmate with a task he says needs two to pull off. Text, PDF
- [A Man Who Had No Eyes](https://xpressenglish.com/no-eyes/) - A blind peddler tells the wrong person a sob story about how his blindness was caused by poison gas released during a factory explosion. Text, PDF
- [The Homecoming Stranger](https://xpressenglish.com/homecoming-stranger/) - A young woman in 1970s China has difficulty dealing with her father’s homecoming after being falsely convicted and spending twenty years in prison. Text, PDF
- [The Management of Grief](https://xpressenglish.com/management-of-grief/) - A fictional account of how families of Canadian-Indian passengers coped in the aftermath of the 1985 bombing of Air India Flight 182. Text, PDF, mp
- [Victory](https://xpressenglish.com/victory/) - A casual chess game between a Russian grandmaster and a chance acquaintance comes to represent both a class struggle and the struggle for life. Text PDF
- [Snowstorm](https://xpressenglish.com/snowstorm/) - A Brazilian college student studying in Vermont receives warnings about every possible danger from her anxious mother. Text, PDF
- [Sunanda](https://xpressenglish.com/sunanda/) - After dreaming about a life of power and prestige, a young Indian woman wakes to the grim reality of her miserable existence . Text, PDF
- [Little Whale, Varnisher of Reality](https://xpressenglish.com/little-whale/) - Returning home after a difficult day, a weak-willed man would rather spend time in the fantasy world of his son than make a dreaded phone call. Text, PDF
- [Papa, What Does that Spell?](https://xpressenglish.com/what-does-that-spell/) - A Russian factory worker reviews his life and relationships as he spends a day with his six-year-old daughter while his wife is at a “meeting”. Text, PDF
- [The Cop and the Anthem](https://xpressenglish.com/cop-and-the-anthem/) - A homeless man who lives on the streets in the warmer months tries in vain to commit a petty crime so he can spend the winter in prison. Text, PDF, mp3
- [Halfway to the Moon](https://xpressenglish.com/halfway-to-the-moon/) - A hard-drinking, Russian logging-truck driver becomes infatuated with a stylish stewardess he meets on a flight to Moscow. Text, PDF
- [Borrowing a Match](https://xpressenglish.com/borrowing-a-match/) - A simple request to borrow a match from a stranger causes so much trouble that the man who made it wishes he hadn't asked. Text, PDF
- [How Sweet It Is to Die in the Sea](https://xpressenglish.com/to-die-in-the-sea/) - A novelist becomes rich and has a good plot for a new book when a “friend” kills a negative critic, his second wife, and her two lovers. Text, PDF
- [The Minority Report](https://xpressenglish.com/minority-report/) - A Police Chief thinks he is being "set-up" when he finds his name is on a list of people about to commit murders they haven't even thought of yet. Text, PDF
- [Karma](https://xpressenglish.com/karma/) - Karma strikes a high-ranking Indian official who rejects his heritage and aspires to identify with the British ruling class. Text, PDF
- [The Boarded Window](https://xpressenglish.com/boarded-window/) - A sense of shame and/or guilt over his part in his wife's death results in a man shutting himself off from the rest of the world. Text, PDF, mp3
- [The Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas](https://xpressenglish.com/ones-who-walk-away/) - A "perfect" city with beautiful parks, delightful music and mostly happy people harbors a dark secret that all but a few are prepared to ignore. Text, PDF, mp3
- [The Man from Mars](https://xpressenglish.com/man-from-mars/) - A "big-boned", athletic Canadian university student becomes anxious when a creepy-looking “Oriental” student begins to stalk her. Text, PDF
- [Here We Are](https://xpressenglish.com/here-we-are/) - As a couple travel to their honeymoon destination, the bride claims that several things her new husband says prove he doesn’t really love her. Text, PDF, mp3
- [The Feathered Ogre](https://xpressenglish.com/feathered-ogre/) - A dying king is told that his only hope for a cure is a magical feather from a feared ogre known to kill any human it sees. Text, PDF
- [Jacklighting](https://xpressenglish.com/jacklighting/) - Three people who, having gathered each year on the birthday of a friend, gather once more on the birthday immediately following his death. Text, PDFIn this story by Ann Beattie, a troubled couple who have travelled from New York to Virginia each year to visit a free-spirited friend and his brother on his birthday, make the trip once more on the birthday following his death. The trip is ostensibly to comfort the friend’s brother. Ironically, although each of them
- [The Scarlet Ibis](https://xpressenglish.com/scarlet-ibis/) - A tragic story contrasting the innocent outlook of a physically challenged boy with the pride and cruelty of his older brother. Text, PDF, mp3
- [A Scandal in Bohemia](https://xpressenglish.com/scandal-in-bohemia/) - Sherlock Holmes is full of respect after being out-smarted by a female adversary and failing to complete an assignment. Text, PDF, mp3
- [Stones in My Passway, Hellhound on My Trail](https://xpressenglish.com/stones-in-my-passway/) - A fictionalized account of the mysterious death of American blues musician Robert Johnson, who was rumoured to have sold his soul to the devil. Text, PDF
- [The Cow of the Barricades](https://xpressenglish.com/barricades/) - Set during India’s struggle for independence, a revered cow is martyred after preventing fighting by leading peaceful protesters to the barricades. Text, PDF
- [Beware of the Dog](https://xpressenglish.com/beware-of-the-dog/) - A severely injured World War 2 fighter pilot wakes up in hospital. Over the next twenty-four hours, he gradually realizes that something is wrong. Text, PDF
- [The Harvest](https://xpressenglish.com/the-harvest/) - When a farm worker walks alone into the fields each afternoon, refusing to allow anyone to follow, rumors start to fly about buried treasure. Text, PDF
- [The Man with the Rose](https://xpressenglish.com/man-with-the-rose/) - A man claiming to have “black magical” powers tells a priest that, if locked in a room for an hour, he can retrieve any distant object he nominates. Text, PDF
- [Gooseberries](https://xpressenglish.com/gooseberries/) - A junior public servant dreams of owning a farm and goes to great lengths to get one. Sadly, becoming a landowner changes him for the worse. Text, PDF, mp3
- [Gorilla, My Love](https://xpressenglish.com/gorilla/) - Hazel, a feisty African-American girl growing up in New York City, is angry about two acts of deceit; one was deliberate, the other well-meaning. Text, PDF, mp3
- [The Old Man and the Sea](https://xpressenglish.com/old-man-and-the-sea/) - An old fisherman struggles for three days to catch a giant marlin longer than his boat, only to see it “stolen” on the way back to shore. Text, PDF, mp3
- [Where I'm Calling From](https://xpressenglish.com/where-im-calling-from/) - A friendship that develops between two strangers attending an alcohol drying-out retreat puts both on the road to recovery. Text, PDF
- [Aftermath](https://xpressenglish.com/aftermath/) - In the aftermath of WW2, a young Japanese mother struggles to deal with the loss of her husband and the effects on society of American occupation. Text, PDF
- [The Canal](https://xpressenglish.com/the-canal/) - Two men at a cocktail party learn that their army divisions fought alongside each other during a bloody World War 2 canal crossing. Text, PDF
- [Last Courtesies](https://xpressenglish.com/last-courtesies/) - A widow struggling to cope alone following the death of her aunt and long-time companion falls prey to a vicious serial killer. Text, PDF
- [To the Man On the Trail](https://xpressenglish.com/man-on-the-trail/) - A group of Alaskan miners celebrating Christmas greet a stranger warmly. When they later learn he is wanted for a crime, they drink to his good luck. Text, PDF
- [The Guilty Party – An East Side Tragedy](https://xpressenglish.com/guilty-party/) - A young woman makes good her promise to kill her fiancée if he takes another girl to a dance. Strangely, a heavenly court absolves her of the crime. Text, PDF
- [The Pig That Went to Market](https://xpressenglish.com/pig-to-market/) - Children's Story by Enid Blyton about a forgetful man who tries hard but can't manage to sell his pet pig at the village market. Text, PDF
- [A Tiger in the House](https://xpressenglish.com/tiger-in-the-house/) - A man finds a tiger cub in the jungle and raises it at home. When it gets older he gives it to a zoo, and is shocked when he later visits it. Analysis, Text, PDF
- [Through the Tunnel](https://xpressenglish.com/through-the-tunnel/) - An eleven-year-old boy on a seaside holiday is determined to swim through a dangerous underwater tunnel. to prove he is no longer a child. Text, PDF, mp3
- [Almost No Memory](https://xpressenglish.com/almost-no-memory/) - A woman has such a bad memory that she has to take notes about whatever she reads, and then make notes about the notes to think about it. Text, PDF
- [Clean Sweep](https://xpressenglish.com/clean-sweep/) - Dust mites, a child’s book that brings a stony-faced old woman to tears, and a simple phone call help restore relationships between estranged sisters. Text, PDF
- [Zoo](https://xpressenglish.com/zoo/) - Earth people agree that a visiting space zoo is the best yet. Thie same is said soon afterwards on a distant planet, but with a different meaning. Text, PDF, mp3
- [The Storm / At the 'Cadian Ball](https://xpressenglish.com/the-storm/) - As a wild storm rages outside, a farmer’s wife and wealthy plantation-owner who had stopped for shelter engage in wild, stormy sex inside. Text, PDF, mp3
- [Stories of the Bad & Good Little Boys](https://xpressenglish.com/bad-little-boy/) - Two very different characters show that each of us has a bad or selfish side, and people don’t always get the punishment/reward they deserve. Text, PDF, mp3
- [Dead Stars](https://xpressenglish.com/dead-stars/) - A young lawyer about to get married falls in love with another woman. He keeps his word, marries the fiancé, and dreams of the other. Text, PDF, mp3
- [Boule de Suif / Ball of Fat](https://xpressenglish.com/boule-de-suif/) - A kind and patriotic prostitute is humiliated by the callous treatment of fellow coach passengers fleeing the Franco-Prussian War . Text, PDF, mp3
- [A Spinster's Tale](https://xpressenglish.com/spinsters-tale/) - A phobia about and encounter with the town drunk leaves a teenaged girl isolated and in fear of the masculine world. Text, PDF
- [Jeffty is Five](https://xpressenglish.com/jeffty-is-five/) - A boy retains the body and mind of a five-year-old as those around him age, and has the seemingly magical power to be able to "live" in the past. Text, PDF, mp3
- [The Diamond Mine](https://xpressenglish.com/diamond-mine/) - A famous opera singer derives pleasure from “giving” to her husbands and extended family, most of whom ruthlessly exploit the poor woman. Text, PDF, mp3.
- [Yellow Fish](https://xpressenglish.com/yellow-fish/) - A grieving mother rescues a discarded fish dying on the sand because its struggles remind her of those of her premature baby before she died. Text, PDF
- [Faith, Love, Time and Dr. Lazaro](https://xpressenglish.com/faith-love-time/) - A disillusioned doctor has lost faith in religion and become detached from his family. A late night house call leads to a momentary epiphany. Text, PDF
- [Poonek](https://xpressenglish.com/poonek/) - A young Malaysian man becomes “Poonek” (likely to suffer a disaster) after refusing a father’s offer of his beautiful daughter in marriage. Text, PDF
- [The Fisherman and His Wife](https://xpressenglish.com/fisherman-and-wife/) - Folktale about a fisherman with a wife who is so greedy that when granted a wish by an enchanted fish she asks for more and more until... Text, PDF. mp3
- [The Outsider](https://xpressenglish.com/outsider/) - A man who has grown up alone in a decaying castle learns a frightening truth when he tries to escape into the outside world. Text, PDF, mp3
- [Bartleby the Scrivener: A Tale of Wall Street](https://xpressenglish.com/bartleby/) - A lawyer shows tolerance and compassion towards a disturbed scrivener (scribe) who is offering passive resistance to his duties at work. Text, PDF, mp3
- [The News from Ireland](https://xpressenglish.com/news-from-ireland/) - Set during the Irish Potato Famine of the 1840s, the lives of those living in a large English estate are contrasted with the misery of the rural poor. Text, PDF
- [The Fifty-first Dragon](https://xpressenglish.com/fifty-first-dragon/) - When cowardly Gawaine fails almost everything else at “Knight School”, the headmaster comes up with a plan to make him a dragon slayer. Text, PDF, mp3
- [The Young Man Who Flew Past](https://xpressenglish.com/man-who-flew-past/) - A husband throws his wife’s lover from the sixth floor window of their apartment building. What the man sees on the way down makes him happy to die. Text, PDF
- [The Bear](https://xpressenglish.com/the-bear/) - A story of a ten-year-old’s boy’s growth into manhood. He becomes a skilled woodsman, has several encounters with a mystical bear. Text, PDF, mp
- [The Ring](https://xpressenglish.com/the-ring/) - A nineteen-year-old woman’s view of the world is shattered by a chance encounter with a man covered in blood, who is on the run for theft and murder Text, PDF
- [Henne Fire](https://xpressenglish.com/henne-fire/) - Small fires tend to pop up around a seemingly deranged woman described as “not a human being but a fire from Gehenna [hell]”. Text, PDF
- [In the Zoo](https://xpressenglish.com/in-the-zoo/) - A sorry-looking polar bear in a zoo reminds adult sisters of a "gentle alcoholic ne’er-do-well" who befriended them during their traumatic childhood. Text, PDF
- [A Day in the Dark](https://xpressenglish.com/day-in-the-dark/) - A woman recalls when, as a fifteen-year-old girl “platonically” in love with her uncle, she was forced to re-examine their relationship. Text, PDF
- [The Fortune-Teller](https://xpressenglish.com/fortune-teller/) - A love triangle exists between life-long best friends and the wife of one of them. The wife and lover both find temporary comfort in a fortune-teller. Text, PDF
- [The Pearl of Love](https://xpressenglish.com/pearl-of-love/) - An Indian prince, devastated by the death of his young wife, builds a magnificent shrine to her that the names the “Pearl of Love”. Text, PDF, mp3
- [With the Photographer](https://xpressenglish.com/with-the-photographer/) - A professional photographer humiliates a customer by criticizing and trying to manipulate every aspect of his facial features and posture. Text, PDF
- [The Master Thief](https://xpressenglish.com/the-master-thief/) - A poor boy joins a group of robbers, and is so good at stealing that he becomes their leader and returns home a rich man. Text, PDF, mp3
- [Why Don't You Dance?](https://xpressenglish.com/why-not-dance/) - A young couple stop at a yard sale to look at furniture. The girl is troubled for weeks by their experience with the householder. Text, PDF, mp3
- [The Return](https://xpressenglish.com/the-return-bolano/) - A man’s ghost seems delighted at the prospect of spending its time on earth with a fashion designer who had paid to have sex with the man’s corpse. Text, PDF
- [Drying Out](https://xpressenglish.com/drying-out/) - A "feel good" story about how some tiny, unexpected visitors helped an ex-soldier to overcome a drinking problem that almost destroyed his life. Text, PDF
- [The Jilting of Granny Weatherall](https://xpressenglish.com/granny-weatherall/) - A feisty but disoriented eighty-year-old recalls the trials and achievements of her life as she lies dying in the house of one of her daughters. Text, PDF, mp3
- [With All Flags Flying](https://xpressenglish.com/all-flags/) - An eighty-two-year-old man is ashamed of his growing weakness. He refuses to be cared for by family, and insists on moving into an "old folks' home". Text, PDF
- [Dominoes](https://xpressenglish.com/dominoes/) - A game of street dominoes illustrates two aspects of the life of Puerto Rican immigrants living in the USA: fate vs. free will, and machismo. Text, PDF
- [Journey into a Dark Heart](https://xpressenglish.com/journey-into-a-dark-heart/) - A man on an African train journey learns that one fellow passenger is a rebel leader, another a gunrunner, and a bridge ahead has been sabotaged. Text, PDF
- [Exchanging Glances](https://xpressenglish.com/exchanging-glances/) - A unique perspective on the final days of World War II, as later recalled by a displaced German teenager fleeing the Russians with her family. Text, PDF
- [Boys and Girls](https://xpressenglish.com/boys-and-girls/) - The outlook of a girl who grew up as a tomboy changes as she grows older. In a single rebellious act, she is forever dismised as "only a girl". Text, PDF, mp3
- [Proper Library](https://xpressenglish.com/proper-library/) - A gay, academically challenged African-American boy faces a conflict between doing well at school and his feelings for a former lover. Text, PDF, mp3
- [Thus Were Their Faces](https://xpressenglish.com/thus-were-their-faces/) - Teachers at a boarding school are puzzled when students begin to act “as if they want to become equal” and increasingly lose their individuality. Text, PDF
- [Theft](https://xpressenglish.com/theft/) - A struggling writer realizes that if she doesn’t do more to take charge of her life and stop “letting things go”, she will end up with nothing. Text, PDF, mp3
- [The Model Millionaire](https://xpressenglish.com/model-millionaire/) - A chance visit to an artist friend and the generous gift of his last sovereign to a beggar he was painting changes a man’s life. Text, PDF, mp3
- [The Snake and the Mirror](https://xpressenglish.com/snake-and-the-mirror/) - A humorous tale about a tense encounter between a young doctor and a cobra that becomes taken with its own beauty. Text, PDF
- [Five-Twenty](https://xpressenglish.com/five-twenty/) - As a woman’s aging husband wastes away, she becomes obsessed with a strange-looking man who drives by their house at five-twenty every day. Text, PDF
- [A Home near the Sea](https://xpressenglish.com/home-near-the-sea/) - A homeless Indian woman tells a fellow beggar how her husband, a lazy drunkard, lost a secure job and caused them to be evicted from their hut. Text, PDF
- [The Guest](https://xpressenglish.com/the-guest/) - A teacher from a remote Algerian school is very unhappy when a policeman orders him to escort an alleged murderer to a nearby city. Text, PDF.
- [The Open Boat](https://xpressenglish.com/open-boat/) - An inspiring story of the real-life ordeal of four men whose ship sinks, leaving them alone in a small life-boat to face a stormy sea. Text, PDF, mp3
- [The English Pupil](https://xpressenglish.com/english-pupil/) - The dying scientist Carl Linnaeus reminisces about his life and the fate of the “apostles” he sent around the world collecting biological specimens. Text, PDF
- [The White Umbrella](https://xpressenglish.com/white-umbrella/) - A young girl learns that having a loving family is more important than what others think and having flashy possessions. Text, PDF
- [A Boy and His Dog](https://xpressenglish.com/boy-and-dog/) - Set in a dystopic, post-apocalyptic world an attractive woman tries to come between a young man and his loyal, telepathic dog. Text, PDF, mp3
- [Waldo](https://xpressenglish.com/waldo/) - When Earth’s power systems start to fail, engineers seek help from an eccentric genius living in a gravity-free home in orbit above the planet. Text, PDF
- [Once Upon a Time](https://xpressenglish.com/once-upon-a-time/) - A well-to-do family in the South African apartheid era is so paranoid with fear that they add fortifications to their house which end in tragedy. Text, PDF
- [The Signal-man](https://xpressenglish.com/signal-man/) - A railway signal-man describes a ghostly vision to a passer-by. The truth of his story remains a mystery as he is soon lying dead on the tracks. Text, PDF, mp3
- [The Three-Century Woman](https://xpressenglish.com/three-century-woman/) - A normally sleepy and forgetful “three-century” woman has prepared an elaborate prank to play on any press who turn up for her 102nd birthday. Text, PDF
- [Supper](https://xpressenglish.com/supper/) - A high-schooler who "doesn't like" boys is confused when she finds a kissing and petting ‘practice session’ with her best friend sexually stimulating. Text, PDF
- [Arabesque: The Mouse](https://xpressenglish.com/arabesque-mouse/) - The sight of a mouse sitting before a trap with its forepaws torn off send a depressed man to the brink of madness. Text, PDF
- [The Balloon](https://xpressenglish.com/the-balloon/) - A huge balloon appears unexpectedly one night, covering 20 city blocks of central Manhattan. The response of the townspeople is rather surprising. Text, PDF
- [How My Brother Leon Brought Home a Wife](https://xpressenglish.com/brother-leon/) - Before he even meets her, a concerned father tests how well his son's city-based bride will cope with life in the countryside. Text, PDF
- [The Frog](https://xpressenglish.com/the-frog/) - A mother sets some tests for the women her sons want to marry. One son doesn't have a girlfriend, but knows a frog that proves to be better. Text, PDF, mp3
- [There's a Man in the Habit of Hitting Me on the Head with an Umbrella](https://xpressenglish.com/hitting-me-with-umbrella/) - A man gets so used to a stranger constantly hitting him lightly on the head with an umbrella that he doesn't think he can live without it. Text, PDF
- [Zebra](https://xpressenglish.com/zebra/) - A young boy is struggling to recover both physically and mentally after being hit by a car. An unlikely friendship provides a healing pathway. Text, PDF, mp3
- [A Night in the Life of the Mayor](https://xpressenglish.com/night-of-the-mayor/) - Karma strikes when a cow runs off with an Indian mayor’s half-eaten clothes and car keys as he is taking a naked dip in a river. Text, PDF
- [The Magic Barrel](https://xpressenglish.com/magic-barrel/) - A rabbinical student questioning his faith finds a path to possible redemption in the photograph of woman whose face carries an “impression of evil”. Text, PDF
- [Silent Snow, Secret Snow](https://xpressenglish.com/silent-snow/) - Imaginary snowfalls and a growing fascination with snow cause a young boy to lose touch with reality and eventually withdraw into himself. Text, PDF, mp3
- [The Water of Life](https://xpressenglish.com/water-of-life/) - A princess vows to marry whoever brings her water from the “Fountain of Life”. A king sends a servant to get some, and falsely claims the prize. Text, PDF, mp3
- [The Erlking](https://xpressenglish.com/erlking/) - A magical being living in harmony with nature exerts a strange power over animals and seduces young women traveling through his forest domain Text, PDF
- [The Last Rung on the Ladder](https://xpressenglish.com/last-rung/) - A boy saves his sister when she falls from a broken ladder. Later in life, he is too busy climbing a different ladder to be there when needed. Text, PDF, mp3
- [The Medicine Bag](https://xpressenglish.com/medicine-bag/) - A Native American boy begins to take true pride in his heritage after friends meet and express admiration for his great-grandfather. Text, PDF, mp3
- [The Yellow Wallpaper](https://xpressenglish.com/yellow-wallpaper/) - A psychological horror story about a woman suffering from post-natal depression who becomes obsessed with the creepy wallpaper in her bedroom. Text, PDF, mp
- [An Unsound Sleep](https://xpressenglish.com/an-unsound-sleep/) - Set during the Vietnamese Buddhist Crisis of 1963, an old man is shocked to learn that his daughter is involved in anti-government activities. Text, PDF
- [Smart Ice-cream](https://xpressenglish.com/smart-ice-cream/) - A haughty boy who always comes top of his class suspects that 'magic' ice-cream helped another boy score a hundred in a Math test. Text, PDF, mp3
- [Lajwanti](https://xpressenglish.com/lajwanti-bedi/) - Set in the violent upheaval of British India’s 1947 partition, the story follows a Hindu activist whose wife, Lajwanti, is abducted into Pakistan. Text, PDF
- [The Age of Lead](https://xpressenglish.com/age-of-lead/) - A frozen 150-year-old body highlights the dangers of consumerism and modern technology such as soil and water pollution, toxic waste and acid rain. Text, PDF
- [King Thrushbeard](https://xpressenglish.com/thrushbeard/) - Brothers Grimm story about how a spoiled, haughty princess learns humilty through the trials of being married to a 'royal' street musician. Text, PDF, mp3
- [Death in the Woods](https://xpressenglish.com/death-in-the-woods/) - A woman who has been cruelly exploited since being put to work as an indentured child finds peace in a snow-covered clearing in the woods. Text, PDF, mp3
- [The Lifted Veil](https://xpressenglish.com/lifted-veil/) - When an illness leaves a man with psychic powers such that he can see into the future and read the thoughts of others, his life becomes a misery. Text, PDF, mp3
- [The Devil and Tom Walker](https://xpressenglish.com/tom-walker/) - A poverty-stricken man accepts an offer from the Devil of riches for his soul. Upon becoming extremely wealthy, he tries to change his fate. Text, PDF, mp3
- [The Lady With the Dog](https://xpressenglish.com/lady-with-the-dog/) - An engaging love story that, according to Vladimir Nabokov, broke all the traditional rules but is one of the greatest stories ever written. Text, PDF, mp3
- [Taking Care](https://xpressenglish.com/taking-care/) - An understandably distracted parish priest goes through the motions of fulfilling his duties as his wife wastes away in hospital. Text, PDF
- [Last Day at School](https://xpressenglish.com/last-day-at-school/) - A story describing the feelings of a teacher on the last day of the school year, which is also his last day as a teacher. Text, PDF
- [Twenty Minutes](https://xpressenglish.com/twenty-minutes/) - A woman horse-riding in the countryside is paralyzed in a fall. She knows that she will die if help doesn’t arrive within twenty minutes. Text, PDF
- [Birthday Box](https://xpressenglish.com/birthday-box/) - A young girl is puzzled by her dying mother’s final birthday gift – an elaborately wrapped empty box. A year later, she discovers its meaning. Text, PDF
- [In the Garden](https://xpressenglish.com/in-the-garden/) - Set during the Philippine’s Marcos dictatorship, a group of soldiers appears and begins remove the vegetables from a school garden. Text, PDF
- [The Philanthropist's Christmas](https://xpressenglish.com/the-philanthropists-christmas/) - A children's story by J. W. Linn about a very rich man who learns an important lesson when he becomes part of a poor family's Christmas. Text, PDF, mp3
- [The Other Wife / Woman](https://xpressenglish.com/other-wife/) - A chance encounter with her husband's ex-wife causes a newly wed woman to question her situation and ask: “What more did she want from him?” Text, PDF
- [Private Lies](https://xpressenglish.com/private-lies/) - A " happily" married man is obsessed with finding the soon-to-be eighteen-year-old woman he and his previous wife gave up for adoption at birth. Text, PDF
- [Letter to a Young Lady in Paris](https://xpressenglish.com/letter-to-paris/) - A man housesitting a friend’s apartment vomits up eleven tiny rabbits. As they grow and begin to trash the place, he contemplates drastic action. Text, PDF
- [The Goodness of Matt Kaizer](https://xpressenglish.com/matt-kaizer/) - The "baddest” member of a small group of troublesome sixth graders takes on a dare that changes his life forever. Text, PDF, mp3
- [Babycakes](https://xpressenglish.com/babycakes/) - A disturbing satire about a world where animals have disappeared and babies are used to provide the protein and other things we get from them. Text, PDF, mp3
- [Tell Them Not to Kill Me](https://xpressenglish.com/tell-them-not-to-kill-me/) - A poor farmer viciously kills a neighbor. Thirty-five years later the murdered man's son, who is now a senior policeman, exacts a cruel revenge. Text, PDF
- [The Night of the Ugly Ones](https://xpressenglish.com/ugly-ones/) - A man and woman, each with a serious facial blemish, bond over their shared feeling of social exclusion when others turn away. Text, PDF
- [When Darkness Falls](https://xpressenglish.com/when-darkness-falls/) - A man frightfully disfigured by war is afraid to leave his room by day, and confines himself to creeping phantom-like around an aging hotel by night. Text, PDF
- [Lazy Jack](https://xpressenglish.com/lazy-jack/) - A story which teaches that even to most foolish, lazy child can do well in life if they always do exactly as their mother tells them. Text, PDF, mp3
- [Marjorie Daw](https://xpressenglish.com/marjorie-daw/) - An innocent white lie meant to distract and cheer up a sick friend grows out of proportion, leading to obsession and great disappointment. Text, PDF, mp3
- [Two Friends](https://xpressenglish.com/two-friends/) - After a few drinks, two foolhardy friends set off to go fishing in the “no-man’s land” between two armies. Text, PDF, mp3
- [Barney](https://xpressenglish.com/barney/) - A potential world-wide disaster looms after a scientist conducts experiments designed to increase the intelligence of a very special rat. Text, PDF, mp3
- [A Pilgrim Yankee’s Progress](https://xpressenglish.com/pilgrim-yankee/) - Misunderstandings arise between a Filipino family recovering from the trauma of World War 2 and an American soldier visiting the grave of an uncle. Text, PDF
- [A Defenseless Creature](https://xpressenglish.com/defenseless-creature/) - A persistent, shrew-like woman wears down a sickly banker who pays money she claims to be owed out of his own pocket. Text, PDF, mp3
- [The Last Class / Lesson](https://xpressenglish.com/last-class/) - A boy and his French teacher both have regrets about missed opportunities as their new government requires all future lessons to be in German. Text, PDF, mp3
- [The Faithful Wife](https://xpressenglish.com/faithful-wife/) - A young man is invited to visit the home of a married woman he has never spoken to. When he gets there, she encourages him to “make out”. Text, PDF
- [Thank You, M'am](https://xpressenglish.com/thank-you/) - A teenage thief learns that in addition to it being wrong to rob people, sometimes the person you target is a kindly soul who can ill afford it. Text, PDF, mp3
- [Rain Frogs](https://xpressenglish.com/rain-frogs/) - The naïve wife of a rural businessman is either seduced by or coerced into having sex with a predatory novelist. The couple's reactions surprise. Text, PDF
- [Kitchen](https://xpressenglish.com/kitchen/) - A young woman and man suffer similar feelings of grief and loneliness after being left alone in the world following the death of a loved-one. Text, PDF
- [A Small, Good Thing](https://xpressenglish.com/small-good-thing/) - As their son lies unconscious in hospital, parents receive prank phone calls mentioning his name. After the boy dies, the calls continue. Text, PDF, mp3
- [Old Love](https://xpressenglish.com/old-love/) - Fierce competition between a couple at university spurs them on to topping their class, attaining professorships, and earning royal honors. Text, PDF
- [Inside Out](https://xpressenglish.com/inside-out/) - A man reflects on his first year at school, when his academic progress and relationships with classmates were held back by a complete lack of English. Text, PDF
- [Zlateh the Goat](https://xpressenglish.com/zlateh/) - No longer producing enough milk, an aging goat faces a trip to the town butcher. Fortunately, a bad snowstorm gives her a chance to change things.Text, PDF, mp3
- [The Wives of the Dead](https://xpressenglish.com/wives-of-the-dead/) - Two young women grieving over the recent deaths of their husbands are woken with messages of hope. But are the messages real? Text, PDF, mp
- [The Argentine Ant](https://xpressenglish.com/argentine-ant/) - A young couple with a baby move to a peaceful seaside village in hope of finding work, only to discover that the whole place is crawling with ants. Text, PDF
- [A Conversation from the Third Floor](https://xpressenglish.com/conversation-from-the-third-floor/) - An inmate standing at the third floor window of an Egyptian prison has a brief conversation with his wife standing on the street below. Text, PDF, mp3
- [Youth](https://xpressenglish.com/youth-conrad/) - A young ship’s officer discovers a new side of himself on a voyage in an unseaworthy ship from Britain to the mysterious East. Text, PDF, mp3
- [Magnificence](https://xpressenglish.com/magnificence/) - A mother is magnificent in humiliating a depraved tutor who “lost control” and soiled the dress of her seven-year-old daughter he had sat on his knee. Text, PDF
- [Reunion](https://xpressenglish.com/reunion-clarke/) - Space travelers claiming to be ancient ancestors of man signal their return with a cure for a genetic condition they say almost destroyed humanity. Text, PDF
- [Kissy Face](https://xpressenglish.com/kissy-face/) - A young boy who hates to be kissed by visiting relatives is delighted when a new family member takes his place as the center of attention. Text, PDF
- [Anandi](https://xpressenglish.com/anandi/) - Concerned about the appearance of prostitutes plying their trade, a Pakistani city’s authorities banish them to empty land twelve miles out of town. Text, PDF
- [The Canterville Ghost](https://xpressenglish.com/canterville-ghost/) - A disrespectful American family disrupts the peaceful existence of a ghost that has happily haunted a British house for over three hundred years. Text, PDF, mp3
- [Big Black Good Man](https://xpressenglish.com/big-black-good-man/) - An elderly man working the night desk at a seedy hotel is terrified when the “biggest, strangest, and blackest man he’d ever seen” asks for a room. Text, PDF
- [A Circle in the Fire](https://xpressenglish.com/circle-in-the-fire/) - A widow who runs a large farm is visited by three teenage boys asking for a horse ride. Her refusal results in her greatest fear. Text, PDF
- [The Laughing Man](https://xpressenglish.com/laughing-man/) - The death of the imaginary hero in a youth club leader's story teaches a group of boys that childhood pleasures (and life) don’t last forever. Text, PDF
- [The Feather Pillow](https://xpressenglish.com/feather-pillow/) - A "monster" in a feather pillow slowly drains the lifeblood of a young bride confined to bed after months of isolation and loneliness. Text, PDF, mp3
- [Earthmen Bearing Gifts](https://xpressenglish.com/earthmen-bearing-gifts/) - The people of Earth and Mars can do much to help the other. However Earth sends a “gift" that does not does not bode well for cooperation. Text, PDF, mp3
- [The Learned Adventure of the Dragon's Head](https://xpressenglish.com/dragons-head/) - A badly damaged book leads to an adventure involving attempted robbery, Scotland Yard and a riddle leading to buried pirate treasure. Text, PDF
- [The Beginning of Homewood](https://xpressenglish.com/beginning-of-homewood/) - A man reflects on the legacy of his great-great-great-grandmother who escaped slavery with the son of her owner and their two children. Text, PDF
- [Under the Banyan Tree](https://xpressenglish.com/under-the-banyan-tree/) - At a time when oral tales were the only form of regular entertainment, an aging story-teller has the good sense to make his 'greatest' story his last. Text, PDF
- [The Good Shopkeeper](https://xpressenglish.com/the-good-shopkeeper/) - An affair with a nondescript housemaid teaches an unemployed Nepali accountant that self-worth comes from within and not a fancy job or title. Text, PDF
- [Fish Cheeks](https://xpressenglish.com/fish-cheeks/) - A young Chinese-American girl learns that no matter how much you change outwardly, you should remain true to your heritage on the inside. Text, PDF, mp3
- [Leaving the Yellow House](https://xpressenglish.com/leaving-the-yellow-house/) - A 72 year-old woman reviews her life of lost opportunities after an accident threatens her ability to live independently in her isolated Yellow House. Text, PDF
- [Roselily](https://xpressenglish.com/roselily/) - A Christian African-American from the South daydreams about how her life is about to change as she marries a Muslim man from Chicago. Text, PDF. mp3
- [The Homecoming (A Puja Story)](https://xpressenglish.com/the-homecoming/) - An Indian insurance agent who tries to sell a policy to four fellow passengers in his train compartment realizes they are not who they seem. Text, PDF
- [The House on Mango Street / Those Who Don't / Alicia and I Talking...](https://xpressenglish.com/mango-street/) - The House on Mango Street / Those Who Don't / Alicia & I Talking: Stories about place as seen by a 12-year old Chicana girl living in Chicago. Text, PDF, mp3
- [Mariah](https://xpressenglish.com/mariah/) - The Imam of a Malay village is so love-struck by an attractive young widow with swinging hips and an easy smile that he decides to take a second wife. Text, PDFIn this story by Che Husna Azhari, the men of a Malay village gather in the market square every morning to buy a nasi dish for breakfast. It is not that this nasi is any better than they would get at home, but rather because the vendor is an attractive young widow who mesmerises them
- [Sometimes a Dream Needs a Push](https://xpressenglish.com/push/) - A shared dream comes true when a boy who can't walk following a road accident is given the opportunity to join a wheelchair basketball team. Text, PDF, mp3
- [The Bog Man](https://xpressenglish.com/bog-man/) - An affair between an archaeology professor and his student “assistant” breaks down during a trip to inspect a body preserved in a peat bog. Text, PDF
- [The Voice of Death](https://xpressenglish.com/voice-of-death/) - A rich man, who doesn't like the idea of leaving his money behind when he dies, learns that nothing is certain in life but death and taxes. Text, PDF, mp3
- [The Man That Corrupted Hadleyburg](https://xpressenglish.com/hadleyburg/) - When some people in “the most honest and upright town in all the region" offend a passing stranger, the vindictive man takes sweet revenge. Text, PDF, mp3
- [Mammon and the Archer](https://xpressenglish.com/mammon/) - A self-made millionaire learns there are two things his money can’t buy: love and family recognition among New York High Society. Text, PDF, mp3
- [The Man Who Could Work Miracles (A Pantoum in Prose)](https://xpressenglish.com/man-who-could-work-miracles/) - A man known as a sceptic as far as miracles are concerned suddenly discovers he can make things happen just by thinking about them. Text, PDF, mp3
- [Victory Over Japan](https://xpressenglish.com/victory-over-japan/) - A trilogy of stories following "Rhoda", a willful third-grader, through her rebellious early teens and a fall at age thirty-four. Texts, PDFs
- [The King is Dead, Long Live the King!](https://xpressenglish.com/long-live-the-king/) - A dying king is told he will live on if he can find three subjects who don't want him dead. Finding them is not that as easy as he thinks. Text, PDF, mp3
- [Muffin](https://xpressenglish.com/muffin/) - Set during the Blitz of World War Two, a bullied British schoolgirl makes an unlikely friend who later becomes her protector. Text, PDF
- [Black Boy](https://xpressenglish.com/black-boy/) - When an African-American boy helps a twelve-year-old girl home after a horse riding accident, he doesn’t get the thanks he deserves. Text, PDF
- [The Third Wish](https://xpressenglish.com/the-third-wish/) - A man rescues a magical being in difficulty. He is granted three wishes, but decides that making the third wish might not be a good idea. Text, PDF
- [At the Pitt-Rivers](https://xpressenglish.com/at-the-pitt-rivers/) - A teenaged boy notices a woman of about thirty waiting for someone. He is shocked when she greets a man in his fifties she obviously loves. Text, PDF, mp3
- [The Dinner Party](https://xpressenglish.com/dinner-party/) - A woman's courage in the face of a deadly visitor challenges an army officer claim that "a woman’s unfailing reaction in any crisis is to scream". Text, PDF
- [Eyes of a Blue Dog](https://xpressenglish.com/blue-dog/) - While in a dream state, a man has an ongoing relationship with a woman in which each desires the other but they cannot touch . Text, PDF, mp3
- [Thirst](https://xpressenglish.com/thirst/) - As a gendarme commander sleeps soundly, his young wife listens to a wounded prisoner’s screams and pleas for water throughout the night. Text, PDF
- [Lajwanti](https://xpressenglish.com/lajwanti-anand/) - A young Indian woman suffers at the hands of her husband's family while he is living away from home. Attempts to flee and end her life both fail. Text, PDF
- [Love in the Cornhusks](https://xpressenglish.com/love-in-the-cornhusks/) - A young woman is forced into a marriage of convenience when her boyfriend, the father of her illegitimate child, “disappears.” Text, PDF
- [Bible](https://xpressenglish.com/bible/) - A teacher is car-jacked by a man who is angry about her treatment of his son. She likes the boy but wants to teach him (and the father) a lesson. Text, PDF
- [The Train from Rhodesia](https://xpressenglish.com/train-from-rhodesia/) - As villagers hawking food and crafts swarm an African passenger train during a short stop, a young couple argue over a beautifully carved lion. Text, PDF
- [Hot Ice](https://xpressenglish.com/hot-ice/) - An urban myth about girl encased in a block of ice ties together a story about urban decay and social change in a 1970s Chicago neighborhood. Text, PDF
- [The Devil](https://xpressenglish.com/the-devil/) - An very sick old woman sees the devil and dies of fright. This is good news for the nurse who "took care" of her, but costly for her son. Text, PDF, mp3
- [The Destructors](https://xpressenglish.com/destructors/) - A new member of a London street gang successfully challenges the leader by suggesting they destroy an old man’s stately two-hundred-year-old house. Text, PDF
- [Notes to My Biographer](https://xpressenglish.com/my-biographer/) - A mentally ill seventy-three-year-old who refuses to take his medication comes up with an idea for a revolutionary new bicycle. Text, PDF
- [Where Have You Gone, Charming Billy?](https://xpressenglish.com/charming-billy/) - A young American soldier tries hard to control his fear following a gruesome experience during his very first day fighting in Vietnam. Text, PDF, mp3
- [Islands](https://xpressenglish.com/islands/) - A nine-year-old Bosnian boy’s innocence is shattered by an account of the brutal mistreatment and torture of children in Stalin’s prison camps. Text, PDF
- [The Time Machine](https://xpressenglish.com/time-machine-wells/) - A Victorian scientist who invents a time machine and travels over 800,000 years into the future finds a disintegrating world. Text, PDF, mp3
- [Pomegranate Seed](https://xpressenglish.com/pomegranate-seed/) - After a recently widowed man remarries, he begins to receive a series of disturbing letters addressed in obviously feminine handwriting. Text, PDF, mp3
- [Debbie and Julie](https://xpressenglish.com/debbie-julie/) - A pregnant, runaway teen is taken in by a compassionate call-girl. After a grotesque self-birth, she faces a difficult choice about the baby. Text, PDF
- [The Laugher](https://xpressenglish.com/laugher/) - The rather sad tale of a once aspiring actor whose only talent is laughing convincingly and, where required, infectiously on demand. Text, PDF, mp3
- [Initiation](https://xpressenglish.com/initiation/) - A candidate declines membership of an elite high school sorority after successfully completing its initiation process. Text, PDF, mp3
- [The School Play](https://xpressenglish.com/school-play/) - A boy faces his fears about forgetting his lines in his sixth grade school play. He gets the words right, but not quite in the right order. Text, PDF, mp3
- [The Wife's Story](https://xpressenglish.com/wifes-story/) - A wife's blind love for her 'husband' almost costs the lives of their children and results in the poor man suffering a gruesome death. Text, PDF, mp3
- [Greatness Strikes Where It Pleases](https://xpressenglish.com/greatness-strikes/) - A retarded man, institutionalized for most of his life, uses childhood memories to connect to the world through an imaginary private universe. Text, PDF
- [The Ass, the Table, and the Stick](https://xpressenglish.com/ass-table-stick/) - A man is cheated out of a magic ass and table, wins them back with a magic stick, and then uses the stick to cheat some innocent women. Text, PDF, mp3
- [The Portrait of a Lady](https://xpressenglish.com/portrait-of-a-lady/) - A moving tribute to the author's grandmother, spanning the 20 years from his earliest childhood memories to his return from studying abroad. Text, PDF, mp3
- [The Sparrows](https://xpressenglish.com/sparrows/) - An Indian man whose ill-treatment of his wife and sons has driven them from his home finds solace and redemption through a family of sparrows. Text, PDF
- [Transactions in a Foreign Currency](https://xpressenglish.com/in-a-foreign-currency/) - A twenty-eight-year-old woman decides to end her relationship with a lover she has been seeing on and off for almost ten years. Text, PDF
- [The Leap](https://xpressenglish.com/the-leap/) - A story about a former trapeze artist's relationship with her daughter and three leaps: one failed, one successful, and the other inevitable. Text, PDF, mp3
- [Extra](https://xpressenglish.com/extra/) - After being retrenched by a Chinese garment factory, a middle-aged woman’s next jobs involve “extras”, people who have been cast off by their family. Text, PDFThis story by Yiyun Li highlights the helplessness of the working class in China’s race to modernity. A fifty-one-year-old spinster comes of age after being retrenched by a bankrupt garment factory. Her next two jobs involve “extras”, people who have been cast off by their family. First, as wife/carer to a dying old man; second,
- [The Raft](https://xpressenglish.com/the-raft/) - A black mass floating on the surface of a deserted lake stalks four college students who have swum out to a raft to say good-bye to summer. Text, PDF. mp3
- [The Undertaker / Coffin-Maker](https://xpressenglish.com/undertaker/) - A Russian undertaker threatens to have a party for the corpses he has buried. He wakes to find that his threat has become a reality. Or has it? Text, PDF
- [The Hospice](https://xpressenglish.com/hospice/) - A driver low on petrol is forced to spend the night at a strange, isolated hotel that treats its guests in very unusual ways. He doesn't sleep well! Text, PDF
- [Inem](https://xpressenglish.com/inem/) - An eight-year-old girl is married off to a seventeen-year-old-man. A year later she is divorced, a tainted “woman” facing a miserable future. Text, PDF
- [The All-American Slurp](https://xpressenglish.com/all-american-slurp/) - A light-hearted story about how a Chinese family successfully adapts to life in America and in the process learns that "All Americans Slurp". Text, PDF, mp3
- [The Man to Send Rain Clouds](https://xpressenglish.com/man-to-send-rain-clouds/) - A Native American community deceive a young Catholic priest in order to give an old man who has died a traditional tribal burial. Text, PDF, mp3
- [We Are All One](https://xpressenglish.com/we-are-all-one/) - With help from a centipede and some ants he becomes “One” with, a poor candy peddler earns a large reward and lives happily ever after. Text, PDF
- [Spunk](https://xpressenglish.com/spunk/) - A tragic tale of how there can only be one winner when two men fight over the same woman. Unless of course a ghost pops up to even the score! Text, PDF
- [The Jay](https://xpressenglish.com/the-jay/) - A small bird is looking for a lost chick that has fallen from its nest. A young woman about to enter into an arranged marriage also feels lost. Text, PDF
- [Diary of a Madman](https://xpressenglish.com/diary-of-a-madman-xun/) - A paranoid man thinks the strange looks he is getting from fellow villagers is because they intend to invite him to dinner as the main course. Text, PDF
- [A Change of Aunts](https://xpressenglish.com/change-of-aunts/) - Two children are horrified when their kindly Aunt Janet gets married and is replaced by wicked, cruel Aunt Gertrude. Text, PDF
- [My Sweet Sixteenth](https://xpressenglish.com/my-sweet-sixteenth/) - A school friend helps a young girl deliver her baby in her bedroom while a house-full of guests celebrate her “Sweet Sixteenth” birthday downstairs. Text, PDF
- [Sleeping Beauty](https://xpressenglish.com/sleeping-beauty/) - The three folktales behind the classic children's story we know today: "Briar-Rose", "Sleeping Beauty in the Wood", and "Sun, Moon and Talia". Text, PDFs
- [The Heavenly Christmas Tree](https://xpressenglish.com/heavenly-christmas-tree/) - A poor boy freezes to death one Christmas Eve. He wakes surrounded by other happy children along with his mother around Christ’s Christmas tree. Text, PDF, mp3
- [Happy-Endings](https://xpressenglish.com/happy-endings/) - A meta-fictional narrative suggesting that the denouement of a story is less important than its exposition and the “How and Why” of events in between. Text, PDF
- [The Smoothest Way Is Full of Stones](https://xpressenglish.com/the-smoothest-way/) - A teenage Jewish girl raised in a secular environment spends her school holidays living in the Orthodox community of an aunt. Text, PDF
- [The Jewels / False Gems](https://xpressenglish.com/jewels/) - A recently widowed man comes into unexpected riches after learning that his seemingly perfect wife had been living a decadent secret life. Text, PDF, mp3
- [Flowers for Algernon](https://xpressenglish.com/flowers-for-algernon/) - A touching short story about a mentally handicapped man who undergoes experimental surgery to enhance his intelligence. Text, PDF, mp3
- [Nadia the Willful](https://xpressenglish.com/nadia-the-willful/) - A willful Bedouin girl teaches her grieving father that the best way to get over the death of a loved one is to celebrate your times together. Text, PDF, mp3
- [The Blue Jar](https://xpressenglish.com/blue-jar/) - A lonely woman travels the world looking for a blue porcelain jar through which she hopes to re-unite with the only man she has ever loved. Text, PDF, mp3
- [Witness for the Prosecution](https://xpressenglish.com/witness-for-the-prosecution/) - The solicitor of a man found "not guilty" of murder even though his wife had testified against him is unlikely to be happy with the outcome. Text, PDF, mp
- [To Build a Fire](https://xpressenglish.com/build-a-fire/) - An Alaskan prospector decides to return to his camp in dangerously cold weather conditions, ignoring advice not to travel through the snow alone. Text, PDF, mp3
- [The Eyes Have It / The Girl on the Train](https://xpressenglish.com/eyes-have-it/) - A blind man in an empty train carriage is joined by a young woman. As he initiates a conversation, he decides to conceal the fact that he is blind. Text, PDF
- [What We Talk About When We Talk About Love](https://xpressenglish.com/talk-about-love/) - Two couples discuss 'love' over drinks. Although the topic may initially appear mundane, many critics class the story as a masterpiece in its genre. Text, PDF
- [The Hit Man](https://xpressenglish.com/hit-man/) - A satirical account of the life of an introverted boy who is bullied at school and graduates into the world as a murderer for hire. Text, PDF
- [The Cone](https://xpressenglish.com/the-cone/) - The manager of an iron-works takes a friend who is sleeping with his wife on a tour of the furnaces. Only one of them comes back alive. Text, PDF, mp3
- [Night Driver](https://xpressenglish.com/night-driver/) - A man on his way to apologize to his girlfriend about an argument he caused can't stop thinking about what she and a rival man may be doing. Text, PDF, mp3
- [The Prussian Officer](https://xpressenglish.com/prussian-officer/) - An aristocratic officer's sexual attraction towards his young orderly leads to tension between them, physical and mental abuse and murder. Text, PDF, mp3
- [Fever](https://xpressenglish.com/fever/) - A tribute to the people (mostly free African-Americans) who nursed the sick and buried the dead during the Philadelphia yellow fever epidemic of 1793. Text, PDF
- [The War of the Wall](https://xpressenglish.com/war-of-the-wall/) - Two boys plan sabotage when a strange woman paints a mural on a wall in their neighborhood, but change their minds when they see it. Text, PDF, mp3
- [The Country Husband](https://xpressenglish.com/country-husband/) - A near-death experience results in a “country husband’s” growing awareness of the shortcomings of his way of life. Text, PDF
- [Metamorphosis](https://xpressenglish.com/metamorphosis/) - A man who works hard to support his parents and sister wakes up one morning, having metamorphosed into a giant bug. Text, PDF, mp3
- [Look at All Those Roses](https://xpressenglish.com/all-those-roses/) - Car trouble on a deserted country road results in a woman spending several unsettling hours with a mother and daughter who hold a frightening secret. Text, PDF
- [Civil Peace](https://xpressenglish.com/civil-peace/) - By maintaining a positive attitude and working together, a family finds opportunity amid chaos and lawlessness in the aftermath of war. Text, PDF, mp3
- [The Duchess and the Jeweller](https://xpressenglish.com/duchess-and-jeweller/) - A morally and financially bankrupt duchess tries to sell fake pearls to a jeweller. Her only bargaining tool is marriage to one of her daughters. Text, PDF, mp3
- [The Ambitious Guest](https://xpressenglish.com/ambitious-guest/) - Nature intervenes when a man stops at an inn high on a mountain pass and boasts about his ambition to do something be remembered by. Text, PDF, mp3
- [Dragon, Dragon](https://xpressenglish.com/dragon-dragon/) - After the two older sons son of a wise cobbler attempt to win a rich reward by killing a ravaging dragon, his nervous youngest succeeds. Text, PDF
- [The King of Jazz](https://xpressenglish.com/king-of-jazz/) - A send up of music critics, the way musicians used to judge themselves against one another, and America's perceived standing in world jazz. Text, PDF
- [Ghost of the Lagoon](https://xpressenglish.com/ghost-of-the-lagoon/) - Set on the famed Pacific island of Bora Bora, this tale of adventure, revenge and reward involves a boy, his dog and a monster from the sea. Text, PDF, mp3
- [The Red-Headed League](https://xpressenglish.com/red-headed-league/) - A shop-keeper's unlikely story helps Sherlock Holmes prevent a bank robbery and catch one of England's cleverest criminals. Text, PDF, mp3
- [A Jury of Her Peers](https://xpressenglish.com/jury-of-peers/) - Two women must decide whether to hide evidence that would convict a cruelly treated neighbor for the murder of her abusive husband. Text, PDF, mp3, Videos
- [The Falling Girl](https://xpressenglish.com/falling-girl/) - A young woman falls from a tall skyscraper. She enjoys the attention at first but ages as she falls until becoming a frightened, decrepit old woman. Text, PDF
- [Greyhound People](https://xpressenglish.com/greyhound-people/) - Faced with an inter-city bus commute morning and evening, a timid, insecure woman is awakened to a whole new world. Text, PDF
- [Molly Whuppie](https://xpressenglish.com/molly-whuppie/) - A clever but not very honest girl helps her sisters escape a murderous giant's house, and then returns three times to steal from him. Text, PDF, mp3, Quiz
- [An Astrologer's Day](https://xpressenglish.com/astrologers-day/) - A fake astrologer’s deliberate lie in answering a question eases a tormented man’s mind and brings peace and redemption to himself. Text, PDF, mp3
- [My Name / Geraldo No Last Name](https://xpressenglish.com/my-name/) - What’s in a name? For Esperanza, a link to a proud heritage; for Geraldo, the difference between an unmarked grave and someone to mourn him. Text, PDF, mp3
- [The Stolen Party](https://xpressenglish.com/stolen-party/) - A woman who works as a maid is uneasy when her daughter is invited to the birthday party of her employer’s daughter. Her fears prove well-founded. Text, PDF
- [Mateo Falcone](https://xpressenglish.com/mateo-falcone/) - A Corsican father delivers a brutal punishment when his ten-year-old son accepts money to hide a fleeing criminal and later betrays the man. Text, PDF, mp3
- [Secretary](https://xpressenglish.com/secretary/) - A young woman who begins her first ever job as a secretary in a lawyer’s office learns that her employer is a sadistic sexual predator. Text, PDF
- [Wedding Night](https://xpressenglish.com/wedding-night/) - A Turkish father belatedly registers his sixteen-year-old son as being twenty-four years old because his bride, who he has never seen, is twenty-six! Text, PDF
- [Patriotism](https://xpressenglish.com/patriotism/) - A young Japanese army officer must choose between duty and loyalty to his friends. His only honorable way out is seppuku (harakiri). Text, PDF
- [A Crush](https://xpressenglish.com/crush/) - A socially challenged young man finds peace and purpose in growing flowers. He changes two lives when he shares some with a stranger. Text, PDF, mp3
- [The Ransom of Red Chief](https://xpressenglish.com/red-chief/) - Two men kidnap a hyperactive and uncontrollable boy. Through various persona (including the warrior Red Chief), he drives them to distraction. Text, PDF, mp3
- [Flowering Judas](https://xpressenglish.com/flowering-judas/) - An idealistic American schoolteacher who traveled to Mexico to support the socialist revolution has a sense of impending doom. Text, PDF
- [End of the Game](https://xpressenglish.com/end-of-the-game/) - Three adolescent girls come of age when an innocent role play game highlights the impact a debilitating disability will have on one of their lives. Text, PDF
- [Identities](https://xpressenglish.com/identities/) - A man's spur of the moment decision to take a drive in the countryside to recapture pleasant childhood memories ends fatally. Text, PDF, mp3
- [Mrs. Geni in December](https://xpressenglish.com/mrs-geni/) - An eccentric Indonesian bridal make-up artist believes that marriage is both illogical and “humanity’s most restricting and frightening discovery.” Text, PDF
- [A Problem](https://xpressenglish.com/problem/) - Wealthy family members consider what to do about a nephew who has issued a false promissory note (IOU) in one of their names. Text, PDF, mp3
- [The Stonecutter](https://xpressenglish.com/the-stone-cutter/) - A mountain spririt grants a stone cutter some wishes. He is never truly satisfied until realizing that he was happiest before he started. Text, PDF, mp3, Quiz
- [The Blind Men and the Elephant](https://xpressenglish.com/blind-men-and-elephant/) - A story based on a religious parable from India about the need to keep an open mind when you come across something or someone new. Text, PDF, mp3, Quiz
- [Signs and Symbols](https://xpressenglish.com/signs-and-symbols/) - An elderly couple must decide what to do with their institutionalized, mentally ill son whose moods range between self-harm and harm to others. Text, PDF
- [The Dunwich Horror](https://xpressenglish.com/dunwich-horror/) - An early 19th century practitioner of the black arts summons an “Elder Thing” from another dimension to mate with his daughter. Text, PDF, mp3
- [Filial Sentiments of a Parricide](https://xpressenglish.com/filial-sentiments/) - A philosophical newspaper article discussing a parricide-suicide committed by a highly respected French businessman. Text, PDF
- [Dahong Palay](https://xpressenglish.com/dahong-palay/) - A young man demonstrates resourcefulness, strength and courage after being bitten by a deadly snake to save his prospective girlfriend. Text, PDF
- [The Secret Cause](https://xpressenglish.com/secret-cause/) - A young doctor learns that his business partner is a sadist who finds pleasure in inflicting pain on animals and observing the suffering of others. Text, PDF
- [Paul's Case](https://xpressenglish.com/pauls-case/) - A misunderstood, alienated boy takes drastic action when forced to leave school and give up the only two things that mean anything to him. Text, PDF, mp3
- [Bigfoot Stole My Wife / I Am Bigfoot](https://xpressenglish.com/bigfoot-stole-my-wife/) - Nobody believes a man's story that Bigfoot has abducted his wife. However, things change when Bigfoot issues men of the world with a fearful warning. Text, PDF
- [Priscilla and the Wimps](https://xpressenglish.com/priscilla/) - A school bully is in for a cold, cramped night (or maybe a freezing week!) after being humiliated when his gang picks on the wrong victim. Text, PDF, mp3
- [A Kidnapped Santa Clause](https://xpressenglish.com/kidnapped-santa/) - Five daemons (creatures that thrive on naughtiness) kidnap Santa Clause as he begins his Christmas deliveries. Text, PDF, mp3, Video
- [In Another Country](https://xpressenglish.com/in-another-country/) - An American wounded in World War 1 shares his experiences in an Italian hospital that he visits every day to rehabilitate a wounded knee. Text, PDF, mp3
- [Black Tickets](https://xpressenglish.com/black-tickets/) - An imprisoned drug dealer recalls his obsessive love for and unpredictable, often violent relationship with, his girlfriend and partner in crime. Text, PDF
- [I Have No Mouth and I Must Scream](https://xpressenglish.com/i-must-scream/) - A supercomputer has destroyed all mankind except for five "specimens" it has kept alive and subjected to painful challenges for over 100 years. Text, PDF, mp3
- [I Stand Here Ironing](https://xpressenglish.com/i-stand-ironing/) - A woman trying to help a counsellor understand her nineteen-year-old-daughter realizes that she may be the cause of the girl’s problems. Text, PDF, mp3
- [The Little Things / Tears for Sale](https://xpressenglish.com/little-things/) - A lovestruck college student tries but fails to remain virtuous, and a professional mourner learns that grief is easier to fake than suffer. Text, PDF
- [Other People](https://xpressenglish.com/other-people/) - A man sent to hell finds that the physical torture is the easy part. After untold years of further punishment he becomes something else. Text, PDF, mp3
- [Wise Folks](https://xpressenglish.com/wise-folks/) - Brothers Grimm story about a cruel farmer who is angry that his wife let a man cheat her out of two cows, but quite happy to cheat others. Text, PDF, Quiz
- [A Temporary Matter](https://xpressenglish.com/temporary-matter/) - A young Indian-American couple have drifted apart following the loss of their stillborn first child. The sharing of secrets leaves both in tears.Text, PDF
- [Naming the Names](https://xpressenglish.com/naming-the-names/) - A female IRA operative finds herself perfectly placed to lure the son of a prominent British official into a deadly trap. (The boy is also her lover!) Text, PDF
- [Rip Van Winkle](https://xpressenglish.com/rip-van-winkle/) - A lazy but lovable man goes hunting to escape the wrath of his shrewish wife. He returns to a more peaceful, much freer world. Text, PDF, mp3
- [The Chef](https://xpressenglish.com/the-chef/) - A psychologist reveals the truth about a murderess who claims to be a chef, but doesn't know the difference between a teaspoon and tablespoon. Text, PDF
- [Slave on the Block](https://xpressenglish.com/slave-on-the-block/) - A patronizing, artistic couple seek to improve their social status through paintings and music inspired by their African American servants. Text, PDF, mp3
- [The Bass, the River, and Sheila Mant](https://xpressenglish.com/sheila-mant/) - A 14 year-old boy is infatuated with a self-absorbed 17 year-old girl. A failed date costs him the biggest largemouth bass in the river. Text, PDF
- [Children of the Corn](https://xpressenglish.com/children-of-the-corn/) - A couple who find the body of a murdered boy on the side of a country road make a costly mistake when they stop to report it at the next town. Text, PDF, mp3
- [The Pugilist at Rest](https://xpressenglish.com/pugilist-at-rest/) - A brain damaged ex-Marine must choose between a life of seizures in a drug-induced haze, or risky surgery that could turn him into a vegetable. Text, PDF
- [The Bridegroom](https://xpressenglish.com/bridegroom/) - An Afrikaans overseer must re-think his relationship with his work crew as he brings his new wife to live in their isolated road-building camp. Text, PDF
- [A New England Nun](https://xpressenglish.com/new-england-nun/) - After fourteen years apart, things have changed for an engaged couple. Each has a good reason not to marry, but neither is prepared to admit it. Text, PDF, mp3
- [Blue](https://xpressenglish.com/blue/) - A girl abandoned by her mother finds comfort in stories about how much her mother loved her told by an imaginary creature living in her closet. Text, PDF
- [Licked](https://xpressenglish.com/licked/) - A boy overhears his parents making a pact not to criticize his table manners during an important dinner, and decides to put them to the test. Text, PDF, mp3
- [Resurrection of a Life](https://xpressenglish.com/resurrection-of-a-life/) - A "resurrected" man reflects on how, when ten years old, the carnage of World War 1 and other injustices had made it difficult for him to eccept God. Text, PDF
- [The Fish and the Ring](https://xpressenglish.com/the-fish-and-the-ring/) - A rich man learns that his son's fate is to marry into a poor family. He tries to get rid of the girl, but is thwarted by a hungry fish. Text, PDF, mp3, Quiz
- [Going Fishing](https://xpressenglish.com/going-fishing/) - A plus-sized senior high-schooler who describes herself as “big-footed, big-voiced, big-herself” is having trouble finding her place in the world. Text, PDF
- [If You Sing like That for Me](https://xpressenglish.com/sing-like-that-for-me/) - After an arranged marriage, a young Indian woman who has come to love her husband is shattered to learn that to him, she is a mere commodity. Text, PDF
- [Hands](https://xpressenglish.com/hands/) - A man is so traumatized by false accusations of child molestation that he flees, changes his identity, and shuts himself off from the world. Text, PDF, mp3
- [Parker's Back](https://xpressenglish.com/parkers-back/) - A story about a man who thinks he has found God and tries to win the love of his wife with a tattoo. Text, PDF, Quiz, and more.
- [Solipsist](https://xpressenglish.com/solipsist/) - A solipsist has had a bad week and decides to end it all… not just his life, but the whole universe! The result is not what he was expecting. Text, PDF
- [The Turning](https://xpressenglish.com/the-turning/) - Thanks to a “snow dome”, a mother of two whose hard-drinking husband is increasingly violent towards her finds a way out of her predicament. Text, PDF
- [A Way of Talking](https://xpressenglish.com/way-of-talking/) - A university student teaches her older sister a new “way of talking” when confronted with discriminatory or racist language. Text, PDF
- [Mrs. Bathurst](https://xpressenglish.com/mrs-bathurst/) - Four men discuss the mysterious events surroun an affair between a New Zealand hotel keeper and a mentally unstable naval officer. Text, PDF, mp3
- [The Treasure of Lemon Brown](https://xpressenglish.com/lemon-brown/) - Helping an old homeless man protect his 'treasure' from thugs teaches a boy to better appreciate the value of family and education. Text, PDF, mp3
- [Jeeves Takes Charge](https://xpressenglish.com/jeeves-takes-charge/) - Wonder valet Jeeves saves his employer from losing his inheritance, and helps him avoid what would have been an even worse fate . Text, PDF, mp3
- [Adam and Eve and Pinch Me](https://xpressenglish.com/pinch-me/) - A confused man awakens from a daydream about being a ghost and not being able to communicate with his three children. Text, PDF
- [Train](https://xpressenglish.com/train/) - A sensitive, compassionate girl “comes of age” as she rides a long-distance train with the family of a rude, cynical, self-absorbed friend. Text, PDF
- [After Twenty Years](https://xpressenglish.com/after-twenty-years/) - Sometimes it is best not to keep a promise to meet a friend, especially if there is someone looking for you that you sre trying to hide from. Text, PDF, mp3
- [Blood-Burning Moon](https://xpressenglish.com/blood-burning-moon/) - In the American south a black and white man fight over a woman. The black man is killed after pulling a knife, sparking a vigilante execution. Text, PDF
- [The Golden Windows](https://xpressenglish.com/golden-windows/) - A boy sets out to see a rich man's house and learns the meaning of the proverb "the grass is always greener on the other side of the fence". Text, PDF
- [A White Heron](https://xpressenglish.com/white-heron/) - A young girl living alone with her grandmother in the Maine woods must choose between much needed money and protecting a rare, beautiful bird. Text, PDF, mp3
- [The Sniper](https://xpressenglish.com/the-sniper/) - A story about how an IRA sniper learns a potentially devastating lesson about the horrors of fighting in a civil war. Text, PDF
- [The Lady or the Tiger](https://xpressenglish.com/lady-or-tiger/) - A young man faces two doors. Behind one is death. Behind the other, marriage to a beautiful woman. His only clue is a signal from a jealous lover. Text, PDF, mp3
- [Bluebeard](https://xpressenglish.com/bluebeard/) - Charles Perrault story about a vain, greedy and overly curious woman who marries a violent serial killer. Things go badly for one of them. Text, PDF, mp3
- [A Letter to God](https://xpressenglish.com/letter-to-god/) - After a farmer's crops are destroyed in a hailstorm, he decides the only way to feed his family is to write a letter to God asking for help. Text, PDF, mp3
- [Blackberry Winter](https://xpressenglish.com/blackberry-winter/) - A nine-year-old boy is affected for life when a menacing-looking tramp with a large switchblade in his pocket visits his family farm. Text, PDF
- [Now That April’s Here](https://xpressenglish.com/now-that-aprils-here/) - Two men, obviously lovers, travel to France because America “had nothing to offer them”. A promiscuous female roommate destroys their relationship. Text, PDF
- [Diamond Dust: A Tragedy](https://xpressenglish.com/diamond-dust/) - A puppy of “indecipherable” breed brought home by a conservative Indian public servant causes havoc in his home and neighborhood. Text, PDF
- [Kusum](https://xpressenglish.com/kusum/) - An overweight, physically unattractive young woman’s passions are stirred by an accidental encounter with a cheeky young street hawker. Text, PDF
- [Teacher Tamer](https://xpressenglish.com/teacher-tamer/) - A boy plots revenge against a teacher who unfairly punishes him. His plan fails, but in the process he learns some important life lessons. Text, PDF
- [The Perfect Match](https://xpressenglish.com/perfect-match/) - A powerful cyber system gathers information on almost everyone in the world and uses it to control governments and manipulate user’s lives. Text, PDF
- [Mrs. Spring Fragrance](https://xpressenglish.com/spring-fragrance/) - When a Chinese woman travels to another city to find a suitable match for a man, her husband suspects she is having an affair with him. Text, PDF
- [A Very Old Man With Enormous Wings](https://xpressenglish.com/old-man-with-enormous-wings/) - An out of sorts angel falls to Earth and finds himself competing with a "spider girl" to earn money for the family whose back yard he landed in. Text, PDF, mp3
- [The Budget](https://xpressenglish.com/the-budget/) - On hearing false rumours of an imminent budget increase, the staff of a small government Office go into debt and splurge on luxuries. Text, PDF
- [Day of the Butterfly](https://xpressenglish.com/day-of-the-butterfly/) - A girl who looks and dresses differently is ridiculed at school and unknowingly betrayed in a moment of need by the one friend she has connected with. Text, PDF
- [Do What You Can](https://xpressenglish.com/do-what-you-can/) - A raindrop sees a farmer in distress. His crop of corn is beginning to wither and droop, and it decides to bring him a moment of happiness. Text, PDF
- [Hudden and Dudden and Donald O'Neary](https://xpressenglish.com/hudden-dudden/) - Two well-off but foolish farmers will do anything to get their hands on a small piece of poor land between their two farms. Text, PDF, mp3
- [African Passions](https://xpressenglish.com/african-passions/) - A tale about the end of a dysfunctional relationship is blended with the humorous antics of eight Santería (Cuban-African) gods. Text, PDF
- [Blow-Up](https://xpressenglish.com/blow-up/) - An amateur photographer captures an image (of an adolescent boy with an adult woman) that seemingly comes alive, rewriting its narrative. Text, PDF
- [The Long-Distance Runner](https://xpressenglish.com/long-distance-runner/) - A runner’s surreal journey through the now predominantly African American neighborhood in which she grew up helps her to deal with the future. Text, PDF
- [The Glass of Milk](https://xpressenglish.com/glass-of-milk/) - A penniless, hungry boy, who is too proud to beg for food, decides to order something in a milk bar and accept the consequences. Text, PDF
- [Home](https://xpressenglish.com/home/) - A father having difficulty explaining the dangers of smoking to his seven-year-old son finally gets the message across through a bedtime story. Text, PDF
- [Javni](https://xpressenglish.com/javni/) - Despite being exploited by her employer and treated cruelly by family and fellow villagers, a devout Indian widow makes the most of life. Text, PDF
- [The Spinoza of Market Street](https://xpressenglish.com/spinoza/) - An aging philosopher struggling to complete his life's work regains his youthful virility and passion after marrying a reclusive spinster. Text, PDF, mp3
- [My Lucy Friend Who Smells Like Corn](https://xpressenglish.com/my-lucy-friend/) - A vignette narrated by a young Chicano girl describing her friendship with and desire to have a life more like another Chicano girl of her own age. Text, PDF
- [The Curious Case of Benjamin Button](https://xpressenglish.com/benjamin-button/) - A man born “old” gets “younger” as he ages. He tries to act his chronological age at each stage of life, often with amusing results. Text, PDF, mp3
- [Snapshots of a Wedding](https://xpressenglish.com/snapshots-of-a-wedding/) - Most of the guests at this “modern” Botswanan wedding are wondering if the groom has made the right choice for a bride. Text, PDF
- [The Perfect Murder](https://xpressenglish.com/perfect-murder/) - A man accidentally kills his mistress for having another lover. He frames the other man for her murder, and closely follows the innocent man's trial. Text, PDF
- [Hamadi](https://xpressenglish.com/hamadi/) - A bookish fourteen-year-old Palestinian-American girl develops a strong connection with Saleh Hamadi, an ageing Lebanese immigrant. Text, PDF
- [Fatso](https://xpressenglish.com/fatso/) - A shapeshifting woman becomes a fat, hairy man at night. Her boyfriend makes love to her in the evening, then goes out drinking with him after dark. Text, PDF
- [Seventh Grade](https://xpressenglish.com/seventh-grade/) - A boy starting Middle School learns an important life lesson when he tries to impress a girl: don't try to fake who you are... just be yourself. Text, PDF
- [The Piece of String](https://xpressenglish.com/piece-of-string/) - A frugal farmer’s reputation is forever tarnished after being falsely accused of finding and failing to return a lost pocketbook. Text, PDF, mp3
- [Young Goodman Brown](https://xpressenglish.com/goodman-brown/) - A young Puritan sets out to test his will against the devil. The man's bigotry results in a win for the devil and a life of misery for him. Text, PDF, mp3
- [Astronomer's Wife](https://xpressenglish.com/astronomers-wife/) - An astronomer appears more in love with his work than his wife, treating her purely as someone whose role it is to maintain the household order. Text, PDF
- [The Distance to Andromeda](https://xpressenglish.com/distance-to-andromeda/) - After watching a movie about post-apocalyptic survivors traversing the vastness of space, a boy questions the significance of his existence on Earth. Text, PDF
- [The Last Unicorns](https://xpressenglish.com/last-unicorns/) - A farmer hopes that two unicorns he bought in Africa will make him rich. He will soon learn that these are the last unicorns in the world. Text, PDF
- [Pret in the House / Ghost Trouble](https://xpressenglish.com/ghost-trouble/) - A mischievous pret (ghost) moves into a family’s house. They decide to move away from it, but this does not prove as easy as they had hoped. Text, PDF. mp3
- [Bright and Morning Star](https://xpressenglish.com/bright-morning-star/) - A sheriff and white mob resort to trickery, brutality, torture and murder to obtain the names of local Communist sympathizers. Text, PDF
- [The Decapitated Chicken](https://xpressenglish.com/decapitated-chicken/) - Four idiot brothers watch as their cook decapitates a chicken. Later, they cruelly imitate the act with the only small ‘animal’ available. Text, PDF, mp3
- [A Day's Wait](https://xpressenglish.com/days-wait/) - A boy told that his fever is a simple case of influenza is convinced the doctor and his father are hiding something more serious from him. Text, PDF, mp3
- [LAFFF](https://xpressenglish.com/lafff/) - A girl travels forward in time to get ideas she can use to win the Best Story Award in her school’s annual writing competition. Text, PDF, mp3
- [The Totara Tree](https://xpressenglish.com/totara-tree/) - An old woman Maori woman climbs a sacred totara tree to stop a power company cutting it down. Her tragic death provides a means of saving the tree. Text, PDF
- [Here’s Your Hat What’s Your Hurry](https://xpressenglish.com/heres-your-hat/) - A homeless woman with no family survives by traveling the countryside, staying at the homes of people she claims to be distant relatives. Text, PDF
- [Real Food](https://xpressenglish.com/real-food/) - Traditional food is an important part of cultural identity. In this case, some relatives see a young girl's dislike for it as abandoning her culture. Text, PDF
- [One Thousand Dollars](https://xpressenglish.com/one-thousand-dollars/) - After receiving an inheritance of $1,000 from an uncle and canvassing various options, a spendthrift man reforms and gives it and more away. Text, PDF, mp3
- [The Distant Past](https://xpressenglish.com/distant-past/) - Irish villagers ridicule an elderly brother and sister for 'living in the past' by clinging to their family’s long-held British allegiance. Text, PDF, mp3
- ['If I Forget Thee, Oh Earth...'](https://xpressenglish.com/if-i-forget-thee/) - A ten-year-old boy receives a nasty shock when his father takes him on his first trip outside the protective dome of a moon colony. Text, PDF, mp3
- [The Magic Sweet Shop](https://xpressenglish.com/magic-sweet-shop/) - A story about the adventures of two children who buy candy from a store in a strange village that shouldn't be there. Text, PDF, Quiz
- [The Town Musicians of Bremen](https://xpressenglish.com/bremen-musicians/) - Brothers Grimm story about four cast-off animals that shows how wisdom can help make up for the weakness of the body that comes with age. Text, PDF, mp3, Quiz,
- [Bliss](https://xpressenglish.com/bliss/) - A thirty-year-old wife and mother who marvels at her blissful, upper middle-class life learns the meaning of the proverb "ignorance is bliss". Text, PDF, mp3
- [The Nose](https://xpressenglish.com/the-nose/) - An unlikely story about a Russian municipal official who loses, goes looking for, and is subsequently reunited with his wandering proboscis. Text, PDF, mp3
- [The House Opposite](https://xpressenglish.com/house-opposite/) - An Indian holy man is both offended and titillated by the activities of a prostitute living opposite. He receives a shock when he decides to move. Text, PDF
- [The Rememberer](https://xpressenglish.com/rememberer/) - A man experiences reverse evolution, shedding millions of years a day. He regresses into an ape, then a sea turtle, and finally a salamander. Text, PDF
- [Stone Mattress](https://xpressenglish.com/stone-mattress/) - When a woman on an arctic cruise recognizes a man who had brutally raped her fifty years earlier, she begins to plot the perfect murder. Text, PDF
- [The Great Rat Hunt](https://xpressenglish.com/rat-hunt/) - An asthmatic boy who feels left out because he can't play sport learns some important lessons about life when his father takes him on a rat hunt. Text, PDF, mp3
- [The Master Cat; or, Puss in Boots](https://xpressenglish.com/puss-in-boots/) - Charles Perrault story about a clever cat that saves its skin by helping its slow-witted master win the heart of a princess. Text, PDF
- [The Legend of the Christmas Rose](https://xpressenglish.com/christmas-rose/) - In the hope of getting her husband pardoned, an outlaw's wife leads an Abbot see a miracle garden that emerges from the snow each Christmas Eve. Text, PDF, mp3
- [The Zulu and the Zeide](https://xpressenglish.com/zulu-and-zeide/) - A South African businessman employs a “raw” Zulu from the countryside to keep his senile father out of trouble. Text, PDF
- [The Far and the Near](https://xpressenglish.com/far-and-near/) - A railway engineer is confused and disillusioned after visiting a woman who has has cheerfully waved at his passing train for over twenty years. Text, PDF, mp3
- [Killings](https://xpressenglish.com/killings/) - Haunted by concerns that his son's killer will receive a light sentence at trial, the boy's father makes elaborate plans for a killing of his own. Text, PDF
- [A Father-To-Be](https://xpressenglish.com/father-to-be/) - A man worried for his future children when he notices the resemblance between his wife-to-be and the “dandy” sitting next to him on the subway. Text, PDF
- [Master Jacob](https://xpressenglish.com/master-jacob/) - Three greedy men trick a farmer out of a fat pig he is taking to market. Later, the sly farmer turns the tables with three tricks of his own.Text, PDF, mp3
- [The Werewolf](https://xpressenglish.com/the-werewolf/) - A story about a young girl who either discovers a big problem about her grandmother or comes up with a clever plan to get her house. Text, PDF
- [The Ultimate Safari](https://xpressenglish.com/ultimate-safari/) - Set during the Mozambican Civil War, a displaced family undertake an arduous journey to a South African refugee camp through Kruger Park. Text, PDF
- [Snow](https://xpressenglish.com/snow-adams/) - A middle-aged man initially questions his decision to create a “diversion” for his first meeting with his daughter’s lesbian lover. Text, PDF
- [The Shifty Lad](https://xpressenglish.com/the-shifty-lad/) - A boy wants to become a thief. His mother warns that if he does, he will be hung from Dublin Bridge. He never gets caught, but still hangs. Text, PDF, mp3, Quiz
- [The Bridge on the Žepa](https://xpressenglish.com/bridge-on-the-zepa/) - A Grand Vizier who has emerged victorious from banishment commissions the construction of a bridge as a tribute to his birthplace. Text, PDF
- [All Over the World](https://xpressenglish.com/all-over-the-world/) - A special friendship between a protective young man and eleven-year-old girl is put on hold as they go their separate ways during World War 2. Text, PDF
- [The Last Leaf](https://xpressenglish.com/the-last-leaf/) - A story about a very sick girl and an act of kindness by an old, alcoholic, failed artist that comes at a very high cost. Text, PDF, mp3
- [A Game of Cards](https://xpressenglish.com/game-of-cards/)
- [Autobiography of Irene](https://xpressenglish.com/autobiography-of-irene/) - A young woman with psychic powers, who has accurately foreseen the deaths of her father and lover, now foresees and prepares for her own death. Text, PDF
- [Tickets, Please](https://xpressenglish.com/tickets-please/) - A group of hardened women working as tram conductors join forces and exact sweet revenge on a philandering ticket inspector. Text, PDF, mp
- [A Wife's Story](https://xpressenglish.com/wifes-story-mukherjee/) - The wife of an Indian textile executive undergoes a cultural transformation after moving to New York to complete a doctoral degree. Text, PDF
- [Greyling](https://xpressenglish.com/greyling/) - A baby ‘selchie’ (human/seal shapeshifter) is washed up on a beach and raised by a childless fisherman and his wife. Text, PDF, mp3
- [Don't Look Now](https://xpressenglish.com/dont-look-now/) - A couple’s Venetian holiday takes an eerie turn when a woman who appears to have supernatural powers warns them to leave the city immediately. Text, PDF, mp3
- [Burning in the Rain](https://xpressenglish.com/burning-in-the-rain/) - A Zimbabwean man's life and relationships are disrupted when a monstrous ape begins to look back at him from his bedroom mirror. Text, PDF
- [Popularity](https://xpressenglish.com/popularity/) - A ten-year-old boy wants to hang out at recess with the most popular group in his grade. His wish comes true, but he never feels secure among them. Text, PDF
- [A City of Churches](https://xpressenglish.com/city-of-churches/) - A young woman interested in opening a business finds herself trapped in and unable to leave a strange city where every building is a church. Text, PDF, mp3
- [Bigfoot Cinderrrrella](https://xpressenglish.com/bigfoot-cinderrrrella/) - A big, hairy and very smelly Bigfoot girl wins a prince because she is the only one in the forest with feet big enough to fit a lost shoe. Text, PDF, mp3
- [Storyteller](https://xpressenglish.com/storyteller-silko/) - A Yupic Eskimo woman relates how “Gussick” (American) miners and traders ruined her life and destroyed her village’s traditional customs and values. Text, PDF
- [Cathedral](https://xpressenglish.com/cathedral/) - A disillusioned man with a cynical view of the world learns an important life lesson when a blind man asks him to describe a cathedral. Text, PDF, mp3
- [The Grave](https://xpressenglish.com/the-grave/) - A gold ring found in an open grave and seeing unborn kittens in the womb of a dead rabbit bring about an epiphany in a young girl. Text, PDF
- [In the Family](https://xpressenglish.com/in-the-family/) - An arrogant young woman “holding court” over dinner with her extended family (both living and dead) pays a high price for her hubris. Text, PDF, mp
- [President Cleveland, Where Are You?](https://xpressenglish.com/president-cleveland/) - All the boys in Jerry’s neighborhood are desperate to find a President Cleveland trading card. He is the first, but doesn’t have it for long. Text, PDF, mp3
- [The Crocodile's Lady](https://xpressenglish.com/crocodiles-lady/) - A young woman who was carried off by a crocodile reappears a decade later, claiming to have fallen in love with and lived with it in the river. Text, PDF
- [The Custodian](https://xpressenglish.com/custodian/) - A shared child-minding job for a young woman and her “touchy-feely” college professor husband tears apart two childhood friends. Text, PDF
- [My Jockey](https://xpressenglish.com/my-jockey/) - An emergency room nurse finds “connection” in the broken bodies and needs of the "real" men who come into her care. Her favorites are the jockeys. Text, PDF
- [A Child's Dream of a Star](https://xpressenglish.com/dream-of-a-star/) - A heart-warming children’s story about the wonder of nature, brother & sisterly love, the importance of family, and what comes after death. Text, PDF, mp3
- [The Flight](https://xpressenglish.com/the-flight/) - Upon finding her disabled husband having sex with a nude model she is infatuated with, a successful sculptor “takes flight” into the sea. Text, PDF
- [How Muster-Master Stoneman Earned his Breakfast](https://xpressenglish.com/stonemans-breakfast/) - The cruel and inhuman treatment of convicts in Australia's days as a penal colony leads one prisoner to prefer the hangman's noose to freedom. Text, PDF
- [Flight](https://xpressenglish.com/flight/) - An youth sent to town for supplies faces a life or death struggle after getting drunk, stabbing a man and fleeing into the mountains. Text, PDF
- [The Princess of Nebraska](https://xpressenglish.com/princess-of-nebraska/) - A pregnant Chinese graduate student who has traveled from Nebraska to Chicago for an abortion has second thoughts as the baby begins to move. Text, PDF
- [Cooking Time](https://xpressenglish.com/cooking-time/) - A teenage "Masterchef" contestant in a future dystopian world does something that may either change the world for the better or destroy it. Text, PDF
- [Midsummer](https://xpressenglish.com/midsummer/) - A man driving a bullock cart along an isolated stretch of road has an innocent but sexually charged encounter with a young woman collecting water. Text, PDF
- [The Man Who Loved Flowers](https://xpressenglish.com/man-who-loved-flowers/) - Things aren’t as they seem with a well-dressed young man walking down a New York City street who has the appearance of someone in love. Text, PDF, mp3
- [The Treasure in the Forest](https://xpressenglish.com/treasure-in-the-forest/) - Two men kill another to steal a treasure map. They find the treasure, then learn why the map owner was smiling as they killed him. Text, PDF, mp
- [Residents and Transients](https://xpressenglish.com/residents-and-transients/) - A woman must choose between joining her salesman husband in a new city, or remaining in her home town where she is having an affair with a local man. Text, PDF
- [The Khaki Coat](https://xpressenglish.com/khaki-coat/) - Set in the early days of the Vietnamese socialist government, a girl supports her younger siblings by hawking items she digs up in graveyards. Text, PDF
- [Stray](https://xpressenglish.com/stray/) - A young girl finds a stray puppy lost in a snowstorm. She takes it home knowing that her parents are too poor for her to be able to keep it. Text, PDF, mp3
- [The Twelve Months](https://xpressenglish.com/the-twelve-months/) - The Gods of the Twelve Months of the year save the life of a poor girl badly treated by her step-mother and step-sister. Text, PDF, mp3, Quiz, Radio Plays
- [Three Thanksgivings](https://xpressenglish.com/three-thanksgivings/) - A widow has three Thanksgivings to decide whether to sell her house and move in with her married children, or find enough money to repay her mortgage. Text, PDF
- [The Stains](https://xpressenglish.com/the-stains/) - As a steamy romance grows between a widower and mysterious, nymph-like girl, he and everything around him begin to be covered in lichen-like stains. Text, PDF
- [Bloodchild](https://xpressenglish.com/bloodchild/) - A human colony shelters on a planet inhabited by giant, insect-like beings. To survive, their young men are taken to incubate the insects' eggs. Text, PDF, mp3
- [A Joke](https://xpressenglish.com/a-joke/) - A woman with a fear of tobogganing tries to find the source of a ghostly voice whispering 'I love you' as she speeds down a mountain. Text, PDF, mp
- [In the Withaak's Shade](https://xpressenglish.com/the-withaaks-shade/) - A story about a farmer's unlikely meeting with a leopard as he was lying under a tree while busily searching for lost cattle. Text, PDF, mp3
- [Sweat](https://xpressenglish.com/sweat/) - A brutal, abusive husband decides to kill his wife when she threatens to report him. In an ironic twist of fate, she manages to turn the tables. Text, PDF, mp3
- [Victoria and Her Kimono](https://xpressenglish.com/victoria-and-her-kimono/) - Thanks to a home-made kimono, a Malaysian woman saves her husband’s life amid the brutality and privation of World War 2. Text, PDF
- [Names/Nombres](https://xpressenglish.com/names-nombres/) - A girl faces a dilemma between wanting to be retain her hispanic name and her desire to 'fit in' at school with an anglicized version. Text PDF
- [Amnesty](https://xpressenglish.com/amnesty-dalisay/) - A chance encounter on a bus contrasts the directions taken by two student revolutionaries during the Philippine’s Marcos dictatorship. Text, PDF
- [Christmas Storms and Sunshine](https://xpressenglish.com/christmas-storms-sunshine/) - Two feuding Victorian era families are brought together by a hungry cat, seriously ill child, Christmas carolers, and some homemade sausages. Text, PDF, mp3
- [The Autopsy (Dissection)](https://xpressenglish.com/autopsy/) - A short vignette about the dissection of a dead body, and a wonderful example of how to use prose poetry to deal with a rather unpleasant topic. Text, PDF
- [The Swimmer](https://xpressenglish.com/the-swimmer/) - A rich man's attempt to “swim” home from a party through a summer storm highlights his arrogant, pretentious, narcissistic lifestyle. Text, PDF, mp3
- [Servant Girl](https://xpressenglish.com/servant-girl/) - After a particularly brutal beating, a Filipino servant girl runs away to look for an “angelic” cochero who was once kind to her after a fall. Text, PDF
- [Greasy Lake](https://xpressenglish.com/greasy-lake/) - A night out for three teenage boys who think it is "good to be bad" almost ends in disaster when an innocent prank goes terribly wrong. Text, PDF, mp3
- [Beyond the Wall of Sleep](https://xpressenglish.com/wall-of-sleep/) - A hospital intern discovers that beyond the wall of sleep we exist as a “brother of light” able to traverse multiple planes and universes. Text, PDF, mp3
- [Click-Clack the Rattlebag](https://xpressenglish.com/click-clack-rattlebag/) - A boy tells a man a story about Click-Clacks, “the best monsters ever” that come from out of the dark when you don’t pay attention. Text, PDF, mp3
- [Axolotl](https://xpressenglish.com/axolotl/) - A man becomes so fascinated with the life of the axolotls on display in a Paris aquarium that part of him transforms into one. Text, PDF
- [Babylon Revisited](https://xpressenglish.com/babylon-revisited/) - After losing everything in the 1929 stock market cash, a man gives up custody of his young daughter. Two years later, he returns to win her back. Text, PDF
- [Gusev](https://xpressenglish.com/gusev/) - Two Russian soldiers returning home by ship after serving in the Far East have contrasting views on social injustice. Text, PDF
- [Brother and Sister](https://xpressenglish.com/brother-sister/) - Brothers Grimm story about a wicked witch (of course!), a boy/deer that loves to be hunted, and a girl/Queen who dies and comes back to life. Text, PDF, Quiz
- [Bang-bang You're Dead](https://xpressenglish.com/bang-bang/) - Home movies about the protagonist’s life in Africa highlight the difference between how her family and friends acted and their true personalities. Text, PDF
- [The Blue Umbrella](https://xpressenglish.com/blue-umbrella/) - A magnificent silk umbrella paraded vainly by a young girl becomes a source of envy and divides a Himalayan village community. Text, PDF, mp3
- [The Flowers](https://xpressenglish.com/flowers/) - A ten-year-old farm girl's summer ends when she finds the decomposed body of a decapitated man while collecting flowers in a field. Text, PDF, mp3
- [The Jungle](https://xpressenglish.com/the-jungle/) - A lonely fifteen-year-old boarding school student experiences an implied sexual awakening after bonding with a girl in another class . Text, PDF
- [Rules of the Game](https://xpressenglish.com/rules-of-the-game/) - A young girl learns about the art of invisible strength and how, as well as being an important rule of life, it can help win chess tournaments. Text, PDF, mp3
- [Marigolds](https://xpressenglish.com/marigolds/) - Angry about her father’s shame over not being able to find work, an adolescent girl comes of age when caught in a senseless act of destruction. Text, PDF, mp3
- [The Alienist](https://xpressenglish.com/alienist/) - Rebellion stirs after a brilliant physician relocates to his hometown in Brazil and convinces the council to build the region’s first madhouse. Text, PDF
- [The Weight of a Gun](https://xpressenglish.com/weight-of-a-gun/) - In trying to prevent her schizophrenic adult son from self-harming or harming others, a woman finds herself caring for her ex-husband's newborn baby. Text, PDF
- [The New Dress](https://xpressenglish.com/new-dress/) - A woman has a new dress made for an important party. Upon arrival, she is highly embarrassed because it is obvious the dress is “not right”. Text, PDF, mp3
- [My Kinsman, Major Molineux](https://xpressenglish.com/major-molineux/) - In pre-revolutionary America, a naïve young man travels to town seeking favors from his kinsman Major Molineu, an officer in the British army. Text, PDF, mp3
- [The Circuit](https://xpressenglish.com/the-circuit/) - A description of the lonely, difficult way of life for children in a close-knit family of itinerant Mexican farm workers. Text, PDF. mp3
- [The Visitor](https://xpressenglish.com/the-visitor/) - A story that foreshadows a visit from an aged relative needing around the clock care, and then surprises with a heart-warming ending. Text, PDF
- [Raymond's Run](https://xpressenglish.com/raymonds-run/) - A story about a talented young athlete who learns that sometimes there are more rewarding things than personally winning every race. Text, PDF, mp3
- [The Adventure of the Dancing Men](https://xpressenglish.com/dancing-men/) - An English squire’s secretive new bride has been receiving messages written in a strange code that appear to terrify her. Text, PDF, mp3
- [Naga](https://xpressenglish.com/naga/) - An widowed snake charmer abandons his young son, taking the boy’s trained monkey and leaving his snake which is too old to perform. Text PDF
- [A Fish Story](https://xpressenglish.com/fish-story/) - An Australian aboriginal myth about how fish came to live in rivers, and why rivers feel warmer if you swim on a cold day. Text, PDF, mp3, Quiz
- [The Cranes](https://xpressenglish.com/the-cranes/) - Two whooping cranes become a symbol for the enduring love of an elderly couple with serious medical issues for whom no one else seems to care. Text, PDF
- [Melvin in the Sixth Grade](https://xpressenglish.com/melvin-in-sixth-grade/) - An African-American sixth grader is so desperate effort to be accepted by the other students that she betrays her only friend. Text, PDF, mp3
- [Overcoat](https://xpressenglish.com/overcoat/) - A man with the persona of a well-to-do dandy enjoys a leisurely stroll through the streets of Lahore. Unfortunately, he is not what he seems. Text, PDF
- [Talpa](https://xpressenglish.com/talpa/) - The wife and brother of a man dying slowly from a painful, weeping skin condition agree to take him on a pilgrimage to a famous religious shrine. Text, PDF
- [Answer](https://xpressenglish.com/answer/) - A new supercomputer combines the knowledge of all the galaxies. Its answer to the question: “Is there a God?” shocks the universe. Text, PDF, mp3
- [Slowly, Slowly in the Wind](https://xpressenglish.com/slowly-slowly/) - A dispute between a farmer and his neighbour over access to a stream results in a feud that escalates to murder when their children elope. Text, PDF
- [Incarnations of Burned Children](https://xpressenglish.com/incarnations/) - A toddler is scalded by a fallen pot of boiling water. Its father reacts quickly, but misses a crucial detail that may ruin the child’s future. Text, PDF
- [The Intoxicated Years](https://xpressenglish.com/intoxicated-years/) - Three thoroughly dislikeable teenaged girls given almost total freedom by their parents pursue a hedonistic, drug and alcohol fueled lifestyle. Text, PDF
- [In the Kindergarten](https://xpressenglish.com/kindergarten/) - A Chinese kindergarten student finds an unusual way of punishing her teacher for lying about the herbs she has had heir class collecting. Text, PDF
- [Seven Floors](https://xpressenglish.com/seven-floors/) - A slightly ill patient enters a ward on the seventh floor of a sanatorium and makes the slow, inexorable descent to the first floor of the dying. Text, PDF, mp3
- [The Sphinx without a Secret](https://xpressenglish.com/sphinx-without-a-secret/) - A man who had fallen in love with a mysterious woman ends the relationship when she refuses to reveal her hidden “secrets”. Text, PDF, mp3In this story by Oscar Wilde, two old college friends discuss a mysterious woman one of them had fallen in love with. The relationship ended when she refused to reveal the secret behind her apparent paranoia about being contacted at home and a clandestine visit to a boarding house. The major themes of the story
- [Sleeping](https://xpressenglish.com/sleeping/) - A story about a young girl who is asked by a couple she has never met before to watch over a baby that seems too perfect to be true. Text, PDF
- [Babette's Feast](https://xpressenglish.com/babettes-feast/) - The lives of twelve people change when a refugee French revolutionary wins the lottery and uses her winnings to prepare them a special meal. Text, PDF
- [On the Bridge](https://xpressenglish.com/on-the-bridge/) - A young teen comes of age when he realizes that the “cool” friend he looks up to is little more than a boastful fake. Text, PDF, mp3
- [Mr Miacca](https://xpressenglish.com/mr-miacca/) - A "bogeyman" type story in which a boy disobeys his mother twice and both times finds himself about to be cooked for Mr. Miacca's dinner. Text, PDF, mp3
- [The Most Dangerous Game](https://xpressenglish.com/dangerous-game/) - A famous big game hunter who cares nothing about the rights or feelings of the animals he kills experiences the hunt from the other side. Text, PDF, mp3
- [The Call of the Wild](https://xpressenglish.com/call-of-the-wild/) - Set during the 1890s Klondike Gold Rush, a huge St. Bernard-Scotch Shepherd dog devolves into the leader of a pack of wild wolves. Text, PDF, mp3
- [King of the Bingo Game](https://xpressenglish.com/king-of-bingo/) - A desperate man wins a game of bingo and spins a wheel of fortune to claim the prize. It stops on the winning number, but he doesn't get the money. Text, PDF
- [The Vane Sisters](https://xpressenglish.com/vane-sisters/) - A university professor befriends the sister of a student who committed suicide, and grudgingly begins to wonder about her occult beliefs. Text, PDF, mp3
- [Swimming Lessons](https://xpressenglish.com/swimming-lessons/) - A Parsi immigrant trying to adjust to life in Toronto thrills his parents when he sends them a book he has writtenabout growing up in Bombay. Text, PDF
- [An Outpost of Progress](https://xpressenglish.com/outpost-of-progress/) - Isolation and greed lead to a decline in the moral, physical and mental conditions of two men sent to administer a remote African trading post. Text, PDF, mp3
- [A Wagner Matinée](https://xpressenglish.com/wagner-matinee/) - A woman becomes highly emotional as she experiences a concert again after thirty years of living on an isolated ranch in the American West. Text, PDF, mp3
- [Monkeyman](https://xpressenglish.com/monkeyman/) - A large crowd gathers to see a bookish high-school student face a member of a street gang that wants to kill him. What he does surprises them all. Text, PDF
- [The Jogi's Punishment](https://xpressenglish.com/jogis-punishment/) - A famed holy man who turns out to be not very holy after all gets a nasty shock when he opens a chest that he thinks has a beautiful princess inside. Text, PDF
- [The Spider Thread](https://xpressenglish.com/spider-thread/) - Lord Buddha takes pity on a notorious murder and thief and sends a “life-line” in the form of a spider’s thread to help him escape from hell. Text, PDF
- [The Serial Garden](https://xpressenglish.com/serial-garden/) - A young boy stumbles upon the entrance to a magical garden and tries to reunite the haughty princess living there with her lost lover. Text, PDF, mp3
- [Rape Fantasies](https://xpressenglish.com/rape-fantasies/) - For the protagonist's co-workers, rape fantasies are erotic, romantic encounters. Her imagined attackers all have physical or mental impediments. Text, PDF, mp3
- [The Handsomest Drowned Man in the World](https://xpressenglish.com/handsomest-drowned-man/) - The body of a huge man washed in from the sea results in the transformation of a drab, sleepy fishing village into famous landmark. Text, PDF, mp3

## Pages

- [The Last Question - Analysis](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/the-last-question/analysis/) - The Last Question, Short Story by Isaac Asimov, Plot & Character Analysis
- [A Horse and Two Goats - Original Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/horse-two-goats/) - ‘I have sold our goats to a red-faced man. He was absolutely crazy to have them, gave me all this money and carried them off in his motor car!’
- [The Witness for the Prosecution - Original Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/witness-for-the-prosecution/) - ‘‘No – there’s almost too much evidence against him. I don’t believe this woman. She was trumping up the whole story. But she’ll never bring it into court.’
- [There Will Come Soft Rains - Original Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/soft-rains/) - In the living room the voice-clock sang, Tick-tock, seven o’clock, time to get up, time to get up, seven o’clock! as if it were afraid that nobody would.
- [Searching for Summer - Original Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/searching-for-summer/) - Now they, too, would be able to tell their grandchildren, when beginning a story, “Long, long ago, when we were young, in the days when the sky was blue . . .”
- [The Lumber Room - Original Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/lumber-room/) - Often and often Nicholas had pictured to himself what the lumber-room might be like, that region that was so carefully sealed from youthful eyes.
- [Window - Original Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/window/)
- [A Brief Moment in the Life of Angus Bethune - Original Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/angus-bethune/) - Melissa reaches across and wipes a drop of sweat from my brow with her finger. When she touches the finger to her tongue, I tell God he can take me now.
- [The Fairy Nurse - Original Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/fairy-nurse/) - ...he struck the eye next him with a switch. Friends, she never saw a glimmer after with that one till the day of her death.
- [Her Hands That Held the Stars - Original Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/hands-that-held-the-stars/) - She looked up at the sky one more time. “I want to chase that star, Nana. All that sky up there, it should be for everybody.”
- [Stop the Sun - Original Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/stop-the-sun/) - “It’s from the war,” his mother had said. “The doctors at the veterans’ hospital call it the Vietnam syndrome.” “Will it go away?” “They don’t know...”
- [Dirk the Protector - Original Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/dirk-the-protector/) - It was absolutely great. Maybe one of the great moments in my life. I had a bodyguard. It was as close to having a live nuclear weapon as you can get.
- [Folklore](https://xpressenglish.com/folklore/)
- [Stories A-Z](https://xpressenglish.com/short-stories-a-z/) - Over 500 short stories from leading authors around the world.
- [The Waving Rye - Full Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/waving-rye/) - A prose poem that paints a powerful word-picture of Scadinavian rye fields through the seasons and the magic of the Danish “light nights”. Text, PDF
- [Did They catch the Ferry? - Full Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/did-they-catch-the-ferry/) - A young couple on a motorcycle speed through the Danish countryside, racing against a car heading in the same direction that refuses to let them pass. Text, PDF
- [Lost Forests - Full Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/lost-forests/) - A freed slave returns to his former master after learning that his home forest has disappeared and there is no place for him in the outside world. Text, PDF
- [Authors](https://xpressenglish.com/authors/)
- [Ann and the Cow - Full Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/ann-and-cow/) - Potential buyers become confused and angry when an old woman standing beside her cow at a Danish fair repeatedly says it is not for sale. Text, PDF
- [The Nail - Full Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/the-nail/) - Two friends learn that a woman they both love and know by different names killed her husband by driving a nail through the top of his head. Text, PDF
- [The Tall Woman - Full Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/tall-woman/) - A man’s life-long phobia about meeting a woman on a deserted street in the early hours of the morning appears well-founded. Text, PDF
- [Young Readers](https://xpressenglish.com/young-readers/) - Complete list of the Children's Stories and Folktales on our website
- [The Whisperer - Full Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/whisperer/) - A girl visiting a friend’s house hears strange whispering that she later learns comes from a ghost that has been following the family for years. Text, PDF
- [A Woman on the Roof - Full Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/woman-on-the-roof/) - Three construction workers repairing the roof of an apartment building make demeaning catcalls to a woman sunbathing on a nearby rooftop. Text, PDF
- [The Girls - Full Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/the-girls/) - Two narcissistic, thirty-something sisters heartlessly manipulate their parents and delight in humiliating and driving away houseguests. Text, PDF
- [The Living - Original Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/the-living/) - An encounter with death at a wake brings a boy closer to his parents and highlights the grim significance of his family’s nightly prayer. Text, PDF
- [Defender of the Faith - Full Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/defender-of-the-faith/) - A Jewish-American army sergeant returning from fighting in World War 2 is assigned to a training unit in which there is an entitled Jewish recruit. Text, PDF
- [Sunbird - Full Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/sunbird/) - Five members of an exclusive club travel to Cairo to capture and eat a rare Sunbird. They are successful, but only one of them returns. Text, PDF, mp3
- [A Sunrise on the Veld - Full Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/veld-sunrise/) - Life changes for the hubristic son of an Afrikaner farmer when he comes across a young buck with a broken leg being devoured by ants. Text, PDF
- [American History - Full Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/american-history/) - A teenage Puerto Rican girl and the boy to whom she is attracted are outsiders among their peers. Sadly, their friendship plans are cruelly thwarted. Text, PDF
- [Just Before the War with the Eskimos - Full Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/before-the-eskimo-war/) - A schoolgirl’s outlook on life changes after meeting a classmate’s troubled older brother and his effeminate best friend. Text, PDF
- [About Us / Privacy](https://xpressenglish.com/about/) - About Us; Privacy & Cookie Policy
- [Contact Us](https://xpressenglish.com/contact/) - Contact Form
- [Everything Is Nice - Full Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/everything-is-nice/) - An American woman alone in Morocco becomes uncomfortable when a group of Moslem women begin to ask probing questions about her life. Text, PDF
- [Busy Lines -Full Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/busy-lines/) - A woman who has lived alone for fifteen years following her husband’s death copes by imagining him as a star watching over her at night. Text, PDF, mp3
- [Waywaya - Full Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/waywaya/) - A young Filipino warrior who yearns for the freedom to determine his own destiny kidnaps and enslaves a girl from a rival tribe. Text, PDF
- [The Tale - Full Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/the-tale/) - An English naval captain sinks a potentially innocent trading ship he suspects of supplying fuel to enemy U-boats without firing a shot. Text, PDF
- [The World Goes On - Full Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/world-goes-on/) - A narrator attributes the 2001 World Trade Center collapse to a vast destructive power that releases itself in cycles of destruction and renewal. Text, PDF
- [The Parsley Garden - Full Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/parsley-garden/) - An eleven-year-old boy spends a day plotting how to redeem himself after being caught stealing a hammer from a department store. Text, PDF
- [The Well - Full Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/the-well/) - After a family visit to a supposed witch, a six-year-old girl develops a series of severe phobias that make it difficult to leave her house. Text, PDF
- [Between Earth and Sky - Full Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/between/) - An indigenous New Zealand farmer’s wife describes the day’s events and life’s frustrations as she bonds in hospital with her eighth newborn. Text, PDF
- [The Cheater's Guide to Love - Full Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/guide-to-love/) - A man who slept with fifty other women over the course of a relationship belatedly realizes that the fiancé who dumped him was “the one”. Text, PDF
- [The Daring Young Man on the Flying Trapeze - Full Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/trapeze/) - Too weak to complete "An Application for Permission to Live”, an aspiring writer dying of starvation surrenders himself to a final dream. Text, PDF
- [Tong - Full Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/tong/) - Cultural division and a debt that must be repaid doom a courtship between a Filipino accountant and young Chinese woman. Text, PDF
- [A Distant Episode - Full Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/distant-episode/) - A Western linguist kidnapped by a nomadic Moroccan tribe is beaten and dehumanized by having to perform clown-like antics to entertain them. Text, PDF, mp3
- [A Lifestyle - Full Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/lifestyle/) - A man relates how being trapped inside his tenth-floor apartment for years with the telephone, power and water cut off changed his outlook on life. Text, PDF
- [A Vermont Tale - Full Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/vermont-tale/) - A man tells his grandchildren a tale about two Arctic loons. The story is an allegory of his marriage. Sadly, its happy ending does not match reality. Text, PDF
- [Il Colore Ritrovato - Full Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/ritrovato/) - An impresario has doubts about signing up a young street performer he thinks could become the greatest opera singer in the world. Text, PDF
- [The Spirit of Emulation - Full Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/emulation/) - Rivalry among residents of a multi-story apartment building over who has the most exotic pet gets seriously out of hand. Text, PDF
- [Mahesh / The Drought - Full Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/mahesh/) - An exploited Indian farmer does the unthinkable when, after years of drought, his beloved bull escapes and raids his cruel zamindar’s garden. Text, PDF
- [Good Country People - Full Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/good-country-people/) - A condescending, highly educated woman who lost a leg in a childhood accident learns a hard lesson when she tries to seduce a young bible salesman. Text, PDF
- [Let the Old Dead Make Room for the Young Dead - Full Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/make-room/) - After a chance encounter with a much younger man she had seduced fifteen years earlier, an “almost old” widow considers reliving the experience. Text, PDF
- [Nobody Will Laugh - Full Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/nobody-will-laugh/) - A Czechoslovakian college lecturer goes to great lengths to avoid telling the truth about a substandard paper an amateur researcher has sent him. Text, PDF
- [Old Woman Magoun - Full Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/magoun/) - An old woman takes drastic action to prevent her granddaughter’s father from trafficking the innocent fourteen-year-old to settle a gambling debt. Text, PDF
- [The Horla - Full Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/horla/)
- [The Secret Sharer - Full Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/secret-sharer/) - A young sea captain preparing for his first command learns some valuable lessons from a fugitive killer he allows to hide in his cabin. Text, PDF, mp3
- [The Revolt of "Mother" - Full Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/revolt-of-mother/) - “Now, father,” said she, “I ain't crazy. But we've come here to live, an' we're goin' to live here. We've got jest as good a right here as new horses an' cows.
- [The Teacher - Full Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/teacher/) - A Singapore English teacher frustrated by the lack of progress in one of his students misses clues that may indicate problems at home. Text, PDF
- [The Mouse - Original Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/the-mouse/) - A story about a prudish young man who finds himself with an embarrassing and potentially painful problem during a train journey. Text, PDF, mp3
- [Sredni Vashtar - Full Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/sredni-vashtar/) - A caged polecat-ferret named Sredni Vashtar takes revenge on an oppressive woman who thwarts every pleasure of a sickly ten-year-old boy. Text, PDF. mp3
- [In the Region of Ice - Full Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/region-of-ice/) - A nun teaching at a Jesuit university is unable to meet the emotional support needs of a brilliant but mentally disturbed graduate student. Text, PDF
- [Three Girls - Full Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/three-girls/) - Two college girls encounter a woman they believe to be a heavily disguised Marilyn Monroe browsing in a used bookstore. Text, PDF
- [Pigs is Pigs - Full Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/pigs-is-pigs/) - A customer has problems with a freight agent who claims that two guinea pigs he has been sent should be charged as common pigs rather than pets. Text, PDF
- [Punishment - Full Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/punishment/) - A lie comes back to haunt an Indian farmer when his wife pleads guilty and is sentenced to hang for a murder she did not commit. Text, PDF
- [New York Day Woman - Full Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/day-woman/) - A Haitian woman secretly follows her mother through the streets of central Manhattan after coming across her window shopping in expensive stores. Text, PDF
- [Night Talkers - Full Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/night-talkers/) - A conversation with a new friend causes a Haitian man to rethink his plans of revenge against the person the believes killed his parents. Text, PDF
- [The Balloon - Original Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/the-balloon/) - The balloon, beginning at a point on Fourteenth Street, the exact location of which I cannot reveal, expanded northward all one night...
- [Mitya’s Love - Full Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/mityas-love/) - A young Russian’s jealousy stifles his relationship with the woman he loves. They separate to test their feelings, but things don’t end well. Text, PDF
- [The Invention of Morel - Full Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/invention-of-morel/) - A group of “tourists” treat a fugitive hiding on a deserted island as if he doesn’t exist. In reality, they don’t exist and he tries to join them. Text, PDF
- [In Memory of Pauline - Full Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/in-memory-of-pauline/) - A man is shattered when his childhood lover marries another. Two years later, she visits and falls into his arms. The next day he hears shocking news. Text, PDF
- [Pumpkin Seed and the Snake - Full Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/pumpkin-seed/) - Three times a widow breaks a promise that whoever removes a large rock from her field can marry one of her daughters. Text, PDF, mp3
- [The Lighthouse - Full Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/the-lighthouse/) - A man recovering from a troubled marriage begins a passionate affair with a married woman working at beach-side café. Text, PDF
- [The Near Departed - Full Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/near-departed/) - A man emphasises that cost is unimportant as he visits a mortician to arrange an elaborate funeral for his wife. Text, PDF, mp3
- [Born of Man and Woman - Original Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/born-of-man-and-woman/) - This day when it had light mother called me a retch. You retch she said. I saw in her eyes the anger. I wonder what it is a retch.
- [Big Brother / Bade Bhai Sahab - Original Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/elder-brother/) - The younger of two Indian brothers attending boarding school learns the importance of listening to those with more life experience. Text, PDF
- [The Old Aunt (Boodhi Kaki) - Full Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/old-aunt/) - A Hindu woman is overcome with pity and fear when she sees her husband’s incapacitated aunt foraging for food among banquet leftovers. Text, PDF
- [Poovan Pazham - Full Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/poovan-pazham/) - A man calmly puts up with his nagging, ill-tempered wife until a quest to find poovan pazham (dessert bananas) proves too much. Text, PDF
- [Scent of Apples - Full Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/scent-of-apples/) - For a Filipino apple farmer who has lived in America for twenty years, the omnipresent scent of the fruit is a constant reminder of home. Text, PDF, mp3
- [I'm Your Horse in the Night - Full Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/horse-in-the-night/) - A woman questions whether a night of passion with her lover, an Argentinian resistance leader, was real, a dream, or with the dead man’s spirit. Text, PDF
- [A Woman’s Help - Full Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/womans-help/) - A man enlists a woman’s help to escape from his loveless marriage to a rich, bed-ridden woman who makes his life a misery. Text, PDF
- [The Right Kind of House - Full Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/right-kind-of-house/) - A man is left with a bitter taste in his mouth after agreeing to pay over seven times a fair asking price for a dilapidated house he wants to buy. Text, PDF
- [Festival of Eid / Idgah - Original Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/festival-of-eid/) - Granny Ameena's heart was too full for words. Big tears fell from her eyes. How was Hamid to understand what was going on inside her!
- [Examination Day - Full Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/examination-day/) - A twelve-year-old boy must take a government intelligence test. He does well at school and, to his parents’ horror, aces the exam. Text, PDF, mp3
- [The Crowd - Full Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/the-crowd/) - A man injured in a car accident senses something ominous about some of the onlookers in the crowd that gathers around him. Text PDF, mp3
- [Heavy-Set - Original Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/heavy-set/) - A story about a Halloween that goes wrong for a mentally and socially challenged young man and his aging mother. Analysis, Text, PDF, mp3
- [Heavy-Set - Analysis](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/heavy-set/analysis/) - Heavy-Set by Ray Bradbury, Plot & Character Analysis
- [The Good Deed - Full Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/good-deed/) - The life of an elderly Chinese woman changes when she decides to help a kind-hearted but “ugly” friend of her American family find a husband. Text, PDF
- [The Enemy - Full Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/the-enemy/) - A Japanese surgeon faces a dilemma when he finds a badly wounded escaped prisoner of war washed up on the beach in front of his house. Text, PDF, mp3
- [The Old Demon - Full Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/old-demon/) - With help from her “Old Demon” (the Yellow River), the matriarch of a small Chinese village single-handedly stops the advance of a Japanese army. Text, PDF
- [The Chance - Full Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/the-chance/) - A man desperately tries to prevent his attractive lover from making herself ugly in a genetic lottery run by alien invaders. Text, PDF
- [Exotic Pleasures - Full Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/exotic-pleasures/) - A woman travels the country selling time with a brightly coloured exotic bird that gives a rush of pleasure to those who stroke it. Text, PDF
- [Heart is Where the Home Is - Full Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/where-the-home-is/) - An Australian aboriginal woman desperately tries to save her baby from being forcefully removed and placed in a missionary school by authorities. Text, PDF
- [Footnote to Youth - Full Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/footnote-to-youth/) - A Filipino couple’s teenage marriage provides little fulfilment amid the daily grind of farm life and the responsibilities of raising a family. Text, PDF
- [The Bread of Salt - Full Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/bread-of-salt/) - A popular Filipino food symbolizes the divide between a working-class teen and the Spanish plantation owner’s niece with whom he is infatuated. Text, PDF
- [The Daemon Lover - Full Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/daemon-lover/) - A woman wakes on what was to be her wedding day to realize that she may have been used and duped by the promise of marriage. Text, PDF, mp3
- [Pillar of Salt - Full Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/pillar-of-salt/) - A woman visiting New York with her husband has a nervous breakdown after falsely believing a building they were in was on fire. Text, PDF, mp3
- [The Witch - Full Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/the-witch/) - A young boy on a train with his mother and infant sister encounters a strange man who relates how he killed and dismembered his own sister. Text, PDF, mp3
- [The Lottery (Shirley Jackson) - Full Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/the-lottery/) - A story about how people can be influenced by herd or mob mentality to do inhuman things they would never consider individually. Text, PDF, mp3,
- [A Work of Art - Full Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/work-of-art/) - The mother of a man too poor to pay for treatment sends his doctor a gift featuring two not safe for work or home statuettes of naked women. Text, PDF, mp3
- [You’ll Learn Soon Enough - Full Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/soon-enough/) - A young Thai girl’s first bus-trip to a near-by town to sell vegetables is cut short by the greedy owner/concessionaire of a newly built highway. Text, PDF
- [The Gold-legged Frog - Full Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/gold-legged-frog/) - A Thai farmer leaves his dying son in the hands of faith-healers and herbalists to grovel in front of local officials for a government handout. Text, PDF, mp3
- [As If It Had Never Happened - Full Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/as-if/) - A busload of Bangkok students descend upon a poor, isolated rice farming village to build a Community Hall they neither asked for or need. Text, PDF
- [The Pose - Full Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/the-pose/) - An attractive Indian college student makes a spur-of-the-moment decision to exchange places with a mannequin in a shop window. Text, PDF
- [Daisy Miller: A Study in Two Parts - Full Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/daisy-miller/) - The behaviour of an American socialite traveling through Southern Europe is scandalous in the eyes of the American expat community. Text, PDF, mp3
- [The Metaphor - Full Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/metaphor/) - Inspired by a flamboyant English teacher, a seventh-grade girl learns to endure problems in life by writing metaphors. Text, PDF
- [Be-ers and Doers - Full Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/be-ers-and-doers/) - A boy rebels after years of maternal pressure to change from being a "be-er" into a “do-er”, someone driven by success and always on the go. Text, PDF, mp3
- [A Family Supper - Full Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/family-supper/) - A young Japanese man returns home following a falling out with his parents. The supper served by his father could be their last meal. Text, PDF
- [Come Rain or Come Shine - Full Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/come-rain-or-shine/) - A man trying to save his stagnating marriage manipulates a mutual friend into providing company for his wife while he is away on business. Text, PDF
- [A Village After Dark - Full Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/village-after-dark/) - An elderly man returns to a village he left many years ago. Older villagers are uneasy about his return; to younger ones he is a hero. Text, PDF, mp3
- [The Year of Spaghetti - Full Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/year-of-spaghetti/) - A reclusive man buys the necessary equipment and ingredients and sets out to cook spaghetti every day for a year. Text, PDF
- [The Bakery Attack - Original Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/bakery-attack/) - In any event, we were hungry. No, not quite hungry. It was as if we had swallowed the empty vacuum of space itself. Text, PDF
- [The New Constitution / Naya Qanun - Full Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/new-constitution/) - An illiterate tongawala [coachman] lands in jail after misinterpreting news of a new “India Act” to infer a coming end to British rule. Text, PDF
- [Open It / Khol Do - Full Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/open-it/) - A father searches for his daughter in a refugee camp for “Indian” Muslims in Pakistan. When found, her corpse displays a shocking conditioned reflex. Text, PDF
- [The Assignment - Full Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/the-assignment/) - Set during shortly after India’s Partition, a Muslim judge underestimates the religious rioting to come and insists on staying in India. Text, PDF
- [The End - Full Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/the-end/) - An elderly man released from an institution against his wishes desperately tries to survive despite declining physical and mental health. Text, PDF, mp3
- [First Love - Full Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/first-love/) - A reclusive, homeless man recalls how he became infatuated with and moved in with a prostitute he met on a canal-side bench. Text, PDF
- [Dante and the Lobster - Original Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/dantes-lobster/) - She lifted the lobster clear of the table. It had about thirty seconds to live. Well, thought Belacqua, it’s a quick death, God help us all. (It is not.)
- [Secret Worship - Full Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/secret-worship/) - A man decides to visit his old boarding school. When he arrives, he is welcomed with open arms. However, leaving is not so easy. Text, PDF, mp3
- [The Glamour of the Snow - Full Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/glamour-of-the-snow/) - A writer holidaying in the Swiss Alps encounters a spectral woman who lures him to her snow-covered mountain “home” and tries to make him hers. Text, PDF, mp3
- [The Wendigo - Full Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/wendigo/) - Two hunters and their guides encounter a malevolent being said by Native Indian folklore to haunt the wilds of Eastern Canada. Text, PDF, mp3
- [The Olive - Full Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/the-olive/) - A man dreams about a girl who rolled an olive towards him across a restaurant floor. Later, she repeats things she said and did in the dream. Text, PDF, mp3
- [Life in the Iron-Mills - Full Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/in-the-iron-mills/) - A deformed woman whose love for an iron-mill worker is not reciprocated destroys both of their lives by stealing money to try to help him. Text, PDF, mp3
- [The Madness of Doctor Montarco - Full Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/doctor-montarco/) - When a respected physician begins to publish increasingly bizarre short stories as a pastime, his patients desert him and question his sanity. Text, PDF
- [The Ingredients - Full Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/ingredients/) - Four boys try to outdo one another with descriptions of the exotic sandwiches they would like to eat. What they are served is very different. Text, PDF
- [Eraser Tattoo  - Full Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/eraser-tattoo/) - When about to be separated, a controlling girl insists on burning her initial into her teenage lover’s arm as a token of his enduring devotion. Text, PDF, mp3
- [Mechanopolis - Full Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/mechanopolis/) - A man dying of thirst in a desert stumbles upon a mysterious train station and is whisked off to a deserted, fully functioning city of the future. Text, PDF
- [Solitude - Full Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/solitude/) - Predicting what her baby daughter’s future will hold, the dying wish of a woman married to a selfish, uncaring man is that she be named Solitude. Text, PDF
- [Saint Manuel Bueno, Martyr - Original Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/saint-manuel-bueno/) - A woman from a remote Spanish village reflects on her close connection with a saintly priest who harbors an astonishing secret. Text, PDF
- [The Goose Father - Full Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/goose-father/) - Sexual tension builds between a South Korean “goose father” and an enigmatic young man he rents a room to after six months’ living alone. Text, PDF
- [Drifting House - Full Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/drifting-house/) - Two starving, malnourished North Korean boys abandoned by their mother struggle across a snow-covered mountain to try to join her in China. Text, PDF
- [The Bicentennial Man - Full Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/bicentennial-man/) - A household robot that can improvise and experience emotions fights for his freedom, robot rights, and official recognition as being human. Text, PDF, mp3
- [The Dead Past - Full Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/dead-past/) - The government unsucestries to suppress an invention that would allow home users to look back in time up to one hundred and fifty years. Text, PDF
- [The Machine That Won the War - Original Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/machine-that-won-the-war/) - The war is over, Earth is safe. But what/who won it? The machine, its Chief Programmer, the Project Leader, or the Head of the Solar Federation? Text, PDF, mp3
- [A Cold Autumn - Full Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/cold-autumn/) - A Russian woman reflects on a cold autumn morning thirty years earlier when she saw her fiancé off to war, never to return. Text, PDF
- [Cleansing Monday - Full Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/cleansing-monday/) - A young Russian man is surprised when, after a long, chaste relationship, his lover gives herself to him. The same day, she leaves him forever. Text, PDF
- [In Paris - Full Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/in-paris/) - A well-to-do, middle-aged Russian exile becomes “animated” for the first time in years when he encounters a Russian waitress in a Paris restaurant. Text, PDF
- [The Gentleman from San Francisco - Full Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/gentleman-from-san-francisco/) - An overweight, fifty-eight-year-old industrialist treats himself and his family to a two-year trip around the world. He doesn’t get far. Text, PDF, mp3
- [Shhhh - Full Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/shhhh/) - A Zimbabwean girl is full of hatred when her father returns home terminally ill with AIDS after years of no contact or family support. Text, PDF
- [Hitting Budapest - Full Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/hitting-budapest/) - Six hungry children from an African slum cross town to steal fruit from the guava trees of a rich neighborhood. Text, PDF
- [The Big True - Full Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/big-true/) - Following his wife’s death and his daughter’s graduation from Harvard, a once famous Iranian sitar player chooses the simple life of a drifter. Text, PDF
- [A Ride Out of Phrao - Full Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/ride-out-of-phrao/) - A woman working for the United Stated Peace Corps in Northern Thailand is excited about a visit by her estranged daughter. Text, PDF
- [Absalom’s Hair - Full Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/absaloms-hair/) - After her dominating husband’s death, a woman spends the next ten years trying to control every aspect of their then twelve-year-old son’s life. Text, PDF
- [The Railroad and the Churchyard - Full Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/railroad-and-churchyard/) - Ex-friends clash over a proposal to allow a new railway to follow the only route possible, which includes part of an old, disused cemetery. Text, PDF
- [One Day - Full Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/one-day/) - A woman in a loveless marriage is enlivened when her teenage idol pays her special attention, only to be crushed when he reveals his true self. Text, PDF
- [The Bridal March - Full Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/bridal-march/) - A bridal march composed for the daughter of a Norwegian peasant links the stories of four generations of his descendants. Text, PDF
- [The Father - Full Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/the-father/) - The tragic death of a prideful man’s son leaves him devasted and humbled, bringing about a major change in his outlook on life. Text, PDF, mp3
- [Gombei and the Wild Ducks - Full Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/gombei/) - A man who had made a good living by snaring one wild duck a day decides to trap a hundred at a time and relax for the next ninety-nine days. Text, PDF, mp3
- [Aunty Misery - Full Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/aunty-misery/) - A wish granted by a travelling sorcerer helps an old woman cheat Death when he comes for her and force him to grant her immortality. Text, PDF
- [The Story of a Disappearance and an Appearance - Full Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/disappearance-and-appearance/) - The mystery of a missing, presumed dead clergyman is solved when a traveling Punch and Judy show comes to town. Text, PDF, mp3
- [The Treasure of Abbot Thomas - Full Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/treasure-of-abbot-thomas/) - A British antiquary decodes a hidden message to find an Abbot’s treasure but encounters problems dealing with its monstrous guardian. Text, PDF, mp3
- [Oh, Whistle and I'll Come To You, My Lad - Full Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/whistle/) - A university professor investigating some monastic ruins finds an ancient bronze whistle and “whistles up” a terrifying personage. Text, PDF, mp3
- [The Mezzotint - Full Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/mezzotint/) - A university don is sshocked when the image on an 1800s mezzotint changes several times over a day, finally revealing a heinous crime. Text, PDF, mp3
- [Dead End - Original Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/dead-end/) - A high-school senior faces a decision: to keep a promise made to her dying mother, or end a budding romance with the most popular boy in school. Text, PDF, mp3
- [In Search of Epifano - Full Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/epifano/) - An aging woman leaves her loveless marriage and unfulfilling life in California to search for her familial, ethnic and spiritual roots in Mexico. Text, PDF
- [The Indian and the Hundred Cows - Full Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/hundred-cows/) - A priest poorly explains the biblical concept of a hundredfold return. A parishioner gives him a cow, and takes a hundred of the his cattle in return. Text, PDF
- [Wicked Girl - Full Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/wicked-girl/) - An eleven-year-old girl tries to sexually arouse her mother’s lover. He rejects her, but develops an unhealthy attraction towards young girls. Text, PDF
- [Two Words - Full Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/two-words/) - A feared bandit/rebel leader becomes obsessed with two “secret” words a woman he forced to write a political speech whispered in his ear. Text, PDF, mp3
- [Oliver's Evolution - Full Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/olivers-evolution/) - A young man who has led a troubled life transforms into a responsible, loving husband and father after marrying an equally troubled girl. Text, PDF
- [The Secret Source - Full Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/secret-source/) - In a future world, river and ground water is undrinkable and tap water is manufactured. A couple set off to find a source of pure water. Text, PDF, mp3
- [Prayer for the Living - Full Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/prayer-for-the-living/) - Amid the mass starvation caused by the Nigerian Civil War, a man who hasn’t eaten for weeks walks among corpses looking for his loved ones. Text, PDF, mp3
- [The Sisters - Full Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/the-sisters/) - A boy who was friends with and mentored by a Catholic priest feels “freed” after his death, presumably because he can resume a normal boyhood. Text, PDF, mp3
- [A Painful Case - Original Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/painful-case/) - A man who lives an orderly, spartan, solitary life drives the one woman who could have made his life complete to drink and possible suicide. Text, PDF, mp3
- [Circular Ruins - Full Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/circular-ruins/) - An ascetic mystic “dreams” a man into existence, initiates him into the riddles of the universe, and sends him to inhabit a ruined temple. Text, PDF
- [The Library of Babel - Original Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/library-of-babel/) - A story about an endless library full of books that don't make sens,e and the search for a special book that may be the key to them all. Text, PDF, mp3
- [The Disk - Original Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/the-disk/) - An exiled king pays a high price for showing a woodcutter his symbol of power... the only object of its kind in the universe. Text, PDF, mp3
- [Baby H.P. - Full Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/baby-h-p/) - An advertisement targeting 1940s housewives, promoting a device that transforms the energy of a child’s movements into stored electricity. Text, PDF
- [The Switchman - Full Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/switchman/) - A retired switchman gives a man waiting for a train in Mexico a long list of absurd reasons why he has little chance of reaching his destination. Text, PDF, mp3
- [The Soft Touch of Grass - Full Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/touch-of-grass/) - A misunderstanding by a young girl causes a lonely man spending his day watching children play in a park to return home in misery. Text, PDF
- [The Wreath - Full Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/the-wreath/) - A middle-aged doctor is disturbed to learn that his much younger wife has secretly ordered a wreath for a former lover’s grave. Text, PDF
- [Mrs. Frola and Mr. Ponza, Her Son-in-Law - Full Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/frola-and-ponza/) - Gossip rages when a respected civil servant doesn’t allow his wife to leave their apartment, or her mother to visit. Text, PDF, mp3
- [A Horse in the Moon - Full Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/horse-in-the-moon/) - A medical episode, and a vision a newly married man has as the moon rises behind a dying horse, solves a problem for his young bride. Text, PDF
- [MS. Found in a Bottle - Full Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/found-in-a-bottle/) - After a series of misadventures at sea, a man finds himself on a huge ghost galleon speeding under full sail towards the South pole. Text, PDF, mp3
- [The Hack Driver - Full Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/hack-driver/) - A young lawyer enjoys his time with a helpful hack driver who drives him around all day trying to find a witness needed for an important case. Text, PDF, mp3
- [Disorder and Early Sorrow - Original Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/disorder-and-sorrow/) - Tomorrow, forgetful of all but present joy, she will walk with Abel and Snapper,... [and] play the ever-thrilling cushion game. Heaven be praised for that!
- [Agkon, the Greedy Son - Original Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/agkon/) - Then mother and son were reconciled and both resolved to love each other truly. And Agkon said, "Mother, from now on, we shall always eat together!"
- [Moths in the Arc Light - Full Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/in-the-arc-light/) - A successful 1920s businessman becomes infatuated with a secretary he sees from his twelfth story window working in an office across the street. Text, PDF, mp3
- [Things - Full Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/things/) - A young woman’s life is turned upside down when her father becomes instantly rich, buys a mansion, and fills it with expensive “things”. Text, PDF, mp3
- [The Willow Walk – Full Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/willow-walk/) - A skilled actor pulls off an elaborate bank heist by alternating between the roles of himself and a fictional twin brother. Text, PDF, mp3
- [Ashes for the Wind – Full Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/ashes-for-the-wind/) - A corrupt mayor and police, aided by a local informer, are systematically expelling residents who voted against the incumbent government. Text, PDF
- [My Father Goes to Court - Full Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/father-goes-to-court/) - A rich man files a legal complaint against his poor neighbors for standing outside his house and enjoying the aroma of his food. Text, PDF
- [Lather and Nothing Else - Full Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/lather-and-nothing-else/) - A barber who supports a revolutionary cause has a dilemma when an army captain who has been brutal in putting down the revolt asks for a shave. Text, PDF, mp3
- [The Weeping Fig - Full Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/weeping-fig/) - After coming into possession of his great-grandfather’s diary, a man visits the cattle station on which his forefathers had settled. Text, PDF
- [The Ant-Lion - Full Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/ant-lion/) - A brother and sister watch in silent horror as an ant-lion larvae severs the abdomen of a meat-ant the boy had dropped into its pit. Text, PDF
- [The Holiday - Full Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/the-holiday/) - An Australian Jewish couple who survived the holocaust is understandably obsessive about security and the welfare of their only daughter. Text, PDF
- [Luba - Full Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/luba/) - An Australian couple who survived the holocaust is understandably obsessive about security and the welfare of their only daughter. Text, PDF
- [Diamond Cuts Diamond (Thai) - Original Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/diamond-cuts-diamond-thai/) - "...you can take the water of his money in exchange for your loss. But you are allowed to take only the water. Don’t take the bowl because it belongs to me.”
- [Homecoming - Full Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/homecoming-bulosan/) - A young Filipino man who had immigrated to America at fifteen returns home to find his family destitute. Sadly, he cannot help them. Text, PDF
- [Why Had I Left Home? – Full Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/why-had-i-left-home/) - A young Filipino man who experiences exploitation and racial violence after immigrating to America asks himself: “Why Had I Left Home?” Text, PDF
- [The Story of a Letter - Full Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/story-of-a-letter/) - A young, illiterate Filipino man flees the harshness and unpredictability of life in his own country for the promise of a new life in America. Text, PDF
- [The Wedding Reception - Full Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/wedding-reception/) - On the day of a Mandalay wedding the groom, his new wife, and others go the great lengths to help his seriously ill father have an enjoyable day. Text, PDF
- [Neighbours (Moe Moe) - Full Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/neighbours-moe/) - After a brief period living in the suburbs, a couple move into an apartment closer to the city. They find the “neighborliness” vastly different. Text, PDF
- [Neighbours (Tim Winton) - Full Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/neighbours/) - A naïve Australian couple initially feel uncomfortable when they move into a new home and find that their street is full of European migrants. Text, PDF
- [Reunion (John Cheever) - Full Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/reunion-cheever/) - I felt that he was my father, my flesh and blood, my future and my doom. I knew that when I was grown I would be something like him.
- [Reunion (Arthur C. Clarke) - Full Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/reunion-clarke/) - we have a simple remedy for the ... genetic plague that afflicted so many ... you can rejoin the society of the universe without shame, without embarrassment.
- [The Homemaker / Gharwali - Full Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/homemaker/) - Things change for a woman whose body was her only asset when a friend suggests that a respectable shopkeeper employ her as a housemaid. Text, PDF
- [Sacred Duty / Mugaddas Farz – Full Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/sacred-duty/) - Two sets of manipulative parents are put in their place after a Muslem girl opts out of an arranged marriage and elopes with a Hindu boy. Text, PDF
- [Smell / Bu - Full Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/smell/) - A refined Indian man is enchanted by the “at once foul and sweet-smelling” odour emitted by a factory worker he sleeps with. Text, PDF
- [The Quilt / Lihaaf – Full Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/the-quilt/) - A young girl is left in the care of an aunt who spends her day being “attended to” by a personal servant/masseuse who also shares her bed. Text, PDF
- [Valediction](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/valediction/) - Two boys who have been friends for years shoplift together several times. Guilt and fear cause one stop, but the other continues and is caught. Text, PDF, mp3
- [The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven - Full Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/lone-ranger-and-tonto/) - A Spokane Indian recalls his constant fights and arguments, often over his excessive drinking, with a white kindergarten teacher he loved. Text, PDF
- [This is What It Means to Say Phoenix, Arizona - Full Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/phoenix-arizona/) - A Native-American man enlists the help of a former friend to go on a road trip to bring back his father’s ashes. Text, PDF
- [Because My Father Always Said He Was the Only Indian Who Saw Jimi Hendrix Play 'The Star-Spangled Banner' at Woodstock - Full Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/my-father-always-said/) - A Native-American boy recalls the good and not-so-good times before his father rode off on his motorcycle, never to be seen again. Text, PDF
- [The Voter - Full Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/the-voter/) - After a Nigerian politician appoints canvassers to bribe influential villagers, their leader is offered of a huge bribe to vote for the opposition. Text, PDF
- [What I Saw from Where I Stood - Full Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/what-i-saw/) - Told from the husband’s point of view, a couple struggles to keep their marriage together after the miscarriage of their first child. Text, PDF
- [Gren's Ghost - Full Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/grens-ghost/) - A usually timid boy sneaks out of his house at midnight to help a classmate with a task he says needs two to pull off. Text, PDF
- [A Man Who Had No Eyes - Full Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/no-eyes/) - A blind peddler tells the wrong person a sob story about how his blindness was caused by poison gas released during a factory explosion. Text, PDF
- [The Homecoming Stranger - Full Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/homecoming-stranger/) - A young woman in 1970s China has difficulty dealing with her father’s homecoming after being falsely convicted and spending twenty years in prison. Text, PDF
- [Victory - Full Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/victory/) - A casual chess game between a Russian grandmaster and a chance acquaintance comes to represent both a class struggle and the struggle for life. Text PDF
- [Snowstorm - Full Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/snowstorm/) - A Brazilian college student studying in Vermont receives warnings about every possible danger from her anxious mother. Text, PDF
- [Little Whale, Varnisher of Reality - Full Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/little-whale/) - Returning home after a difficult day, a weak-willed man would rather spend time in the fantasy world of his son than make a dreaded phone call. Text, PDF
- [Papa, What Does that Spell? - Full Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/what-does-that-spell/) - A Russian factory worker reviews his life and relationships as he spends a day with his six-year-old daughter while his wife is at a “meeting”. Text, PDF
- [Halfway to the Moon - Full Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/halfway-to-the-moon/) - A hard-drinking, Russian logging-truck driver becomes infatuated with a stylish stewardess he meets on a flight to Moscow. Text, PDF
- [How Sweet It Is to Die in the Sea - Full Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/to-die-in-the-sea/) - A novelist becomes rich and has a good plot for a new book when a “friend” kills a negative critic, his second wife, and her two lovers. Text, PDF
- [The Man with the Light - Full Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/man-with-the-light/) - An aging Russian entertainer under threat of arrest by Angolan authorities tries to think what “James Dean” would do. Text, PDF
- [Cold Spring - Full Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/cold-spring/) - At the end of World War 2 six Jews emerge from hiding, feast on abandoned food and alcohol, and join a long line of refugees. Text, PDF
- [Only Goodness - Full Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/only-goodness/) - A foolish decision by a Bengali-American woman destroys her husband’s trust and almost costs the life of their child. Text, PDF
- [The Bridge on the Žepa – Full Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/bridge-on-the-zepa/) - A Grand Vizier who has emerged victorious from banishment commissions the construction of a bridge as a tribute to his birthplace. Text, PDF
- [Thirst - Full Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/thirst/) - As a gendarme commander sleeps soundly, his young wife listens to a wounded prisoner’s screams and pleas for water throughout the night. Text, PDF
- [A. V. Laider - Full Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/laider/) - A self-proclaimed palm reader feels guilty of murder after failing to prevent a train crash predicted in the palms of four fellow passengers. Text, PDF, mp3
- [Barcelona - Full Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/barcelona/) - As a wealthy-looking American couple walk through the darkened streets of Barcelona, a thief grabs the woman’s purse and flees. Text, PDF
- [Snow (Alice Adams) - Full Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/snow-adams/) - A middle-aged man initially questions his decision to create a “diversion” for his first meeting with his daughter’s lesbian lover. Text, PDF
- [Snow (Anne Beattie) - Original Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/snow/) - ...the snowplow that seemed always to be there, scraping snow off our narrow road - an artery cleared, though neither of us could have said where the heart was.
- [The Budget - Full Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/the-budget/) - On hearing false rumours of an imminent budget increase, the staff of a small government Office go into debt and splurge on luxuries. Text, PDF
- [Gloria's Saturday - Full Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/glorias-saturday/) - A man writes about his regret over how he and his critically ill wife's busy lifestyles hindered their ability to spend quality time together. Text, PDF
- [Trick or Treat - Full Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/trick-or-treat/) - A twelve-year-old boy approaches a bored, frustrated housewife who frequently walks past his house for help exploring his sexuality. Text, PDF
- [Cicada - Full Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/cicada/) - A young African-American girl from a working-class family wins a piano competition against privileged white kids from a wealthy neighborhood. Text, PDF
- [The Night of the Ugly Ones - Full Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/ugly-ones/) - A man and woman, each with a serious facial blemish, bond over their shared feeling of social exclusion when others turn away. Text, PDF
- [The Easthound - Full Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/easthound/) - A virus has swept the world, causing all who achieve adulthood to “sprout” into ravenous, werewolf-like beasts. Children hide until it is their turn. Text, PDF
- [Five-Twenty - Full Test](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/five-twenty/) - As a woman’s aging husband wastes away, she becomes obsessed with a strange-looking man who drives by their house at five-twenty every day. Text, PDF
- [Clay - Full Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/clay-full-text/) - A Filipino boy is horrified and disillusioned after an American soldier he idolizes boasts about having seduced a teacher with whom he is infatuated. Text, PDF
- [Victoria and Her Kimono - Full Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/victoria-and-her-kimono/) - Thanks to a home-made kimono, a Malaysian woman saves her husband’s life amid the brutality and privation of World War 2. Text, PDF
- [Jaycee - Full Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/jaycee/) - Scientists have discovered a way for women to asexually reproduce. However, the oldest such child has started to exhibit concerning behavior. Text, PDF
- [Good Advice is Rarer than Rubies - Original Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/rarer-than-rubies/) - Her last smile, which he watched from the compound, was the happiest thing he had ever seen in his long, hot, hard, unloving life.
- [Blues Ain't No Mockin Bird - Full Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/aint-no-mockingbird/) - The matriarch of a poor African-American family is angered by two white men who invade her family’s privacy while making a government film. Text, PDF, mp3
- [Wakefield - Full Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/wakefield/) - A man ‘disappears’ after going on a week’s holiday, stalks his wife for twenty years, and returns home as if nothing had happened. Text, PDF, mp3
- [Sunanda - Full Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/sunanda/) - After dreaming about a life of power and prestige, a young Indian woman wakes to the grim reality of her miserable existence . Text, PDF
- [The Homecoming (A Puja Story) - Full Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/the-homecoming/) - An Indian insurance agent who tries to sell a policy to four fellow passengers in his train compartment realizes they are not who they seem. Text, PDF
- [The Snake and the Mirror - Full Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/snake-and-the-mirror/) - A humorous tale about a tense encounter between a young doctor and a cobra that becomes taken with its own beauty. Text, PDF
- [The Shell Collector - Full Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/shell-collector/) - The orderly life of a blind shell expert is thrown into chaos when ailing people from all over the world converge on his tiny island. Text, PDF
- [The Street-sweeping Show - Full Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/street-sweeping-show/) - A Chinese Mayor, surrounded by groveling officials, puts on an artificial media show to be seen supporting National Cleanup Week. Text, PDF
- [Beggar My Neighbor - Full Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/beggar-my-neighbor/) - A white South African boy is confronted by the cruel realities of racism when a decision to give food to two black street children gets out of hand. Text, PDF
- [Through the Wilderness - Full Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/through-the-wilderness/) - A nominally Jewish South African university graduate begins a search for religious enlightenment after encountering a black Israelite preacher. Text PDF
- [The Zulu and the Zeide - Full Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/zulu-and-zeide/) - A South African businessman employs a “raw” Zulu from the countryside to keep his senile father out of trouble. Text, PDF
- [Master Thief: Brothers Grimm - Full Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/master-thief-grimm/) - Since thou pride thyself on being a master-thief, I will put thy art to the proof, but if thou do not stand the test, thou must marry the rope-maker’s daughter.
- [Tom Tit Tot - Full Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/tom-tit-tot/) - A lazy girl who isn't good at anything but eating becomes queen. An imp demands a terrible price for saving her from losing her head. Text, PDF, mp3
- [Rumpelstiltskin - Full Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/rumpelstiltskin/) - After a miller brags to the king that his daughter can spin straw into gold, a little man asks a high price to save her from losing her head. Text, PDF, mp3
- [Voodoo - Original Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/voodoo/) - When a couple can't agree on a divorce settlement, the wife proposes a bet involving the use voodoo that has a "winner take all" prize. Text, PDF
- [Answer - Original Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/answer/) - A new supercomputer combines the knowledge of all the galaxies. Its answer to the question: “Is there a God?” shocks the universe. Text, PDF, mp3
- [Earthmen Bearing Gifts - Original Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/earthmen-bearing-gifts/) - The people of Earth and Mars can do much to help the other. However Earth sends a “gift" that does not does not bode well for cooperation. Text, PDF, mp3
- [Bread of Sacrifice - Full Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/bread-of-sacrifice/) - Starving Palestinian soldiers on a roof-top barricade face a dilemma… eat prohibited food (a dead dog), or bread soaked in a martyred woman’s blood. Text, PDF
- [On the Way to Solomon’s Pools - Full Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/solomons-pools/) - A Palestinian schoolteacher/National Guardsman whose son is shot as they flee an Israeli attack on his village loses his soul to hatred. Text, PDF
- [The Little Things - Full Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/little-things/) - A lovestruck Palestinian college student tries but fails to heed her parent’s advice to remain virtuous and “not be like other silly girls”. Text, PDF
- [Tears for Sale - Full Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/tears-for-sale/) - A Palestinian professional mourner who doubles as a beautician for brides learns that grief is easier to fake than to suffer. Text, PDF
- [Because He Loved Them - Full Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/because-he-loved-them/) - A man working in a Palestinian food distribution agency torches a warehouse, believing his people may rise up and rebel if they are hungry enough. Text, PDF
- [Story in a Mirror - Full Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/story-in-a-mirror/) - During a death struggle, a woman’s life "flashes before her eyes", first picturing her burial, and then re-living key events back to her birth.. Text, PDF
- [The Bound Man - Full Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/bound-man/) - A man who wakes to find himself bound from head to toe manages to “walk” to a nearby village where a circus owner hires him as a performer. Text, PDF
- [Why I Learned to Cook - Full Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/why-i-learned-to-cook/) - A bisexual Iranian-American teen has an ulterior motive in asking her grandmother to teach her to cook Persian food. Text, PDF
- [A Change of Aunts - Full Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/change-of-aunts/) - Two children are horrified when their kindly Aunt Janet gets married and is replaced by wicked, cruel Aunt Gertrude. Text, PDF
- [The Skater - Full Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/skater/) - A teenage girl suspects her Californian parents’ motive in sending her across the country to study in a New England boarding school. Text, PDF
- [Escapes - Full Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/escapes/) - A woman relates her experiences as a young girl living with her alcoholic mother, highlighted by an embarrassing incident at a magic show. Text, PDF
- [Taking Care - Full Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/taking-care/) - An understandably distracted parish priest goes through the motions of fulfilling his duties as his wife wastes away in hospital. Text, PDF
- [Train - Full Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/train/) - A sensitive, compassionate girl “comes of age” as she rides a long-distance train with the family of a rude, cynical, self-absorbed friend. Text, PDF
- [Servant Girl - Full Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/servant-girl/) - After a particularly brutal beating, a Filipino servant girl runs away to look for an “angelic” cochero who was once kind to her after a fall. Text, PDF
- [Magnificence - Full Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/magnificence/) - A mother is magnificent in humiliating a depraved tutor who “lost control” and soiled the dress of her seven-year-old daughter he had sat on his knee. Text, PDF
- [What Shall We Do When We All Go Out? - Original Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/what-shall-we-do/) - A nine-year-old boy’s innocence is shattered by the death of a classmate and his initiation under threat of violence into a gang of older students. Text, PDF
- [The Distance to Andromeda - Original Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/distance-to-andromeda/) - After watching a movie about post-apocalyptic survivors traversing the vastness of space, a boy questions the significance of his existence on Earth. Text, PDF
- [The Higgler - Full Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/higgler/) - A higgler’s life gets complicated when a wealthy widow in poor health asks him to marry her beautiful, well-educated daughter. Text, PDF
- [Ahoy, Sailor Boy! - Full Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/ahoy-sailor-boy/) - An off-duty sailor encounters a ghost. After discussing her sins, and what she is doing to obtain redemption, he eagerly watches as she undresses. Text, PDF
- [Adam and Eve and Pinch Me - Full Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/pinch-me/) - A confused man awakens from a daydream about being a ghost and not being able to communicate with his three children. Text, PDF
- [Arabesque: The Mouse - Full Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/arabesque-mouse/) - The sight of a mouse sitting before a trap with its forepaws torn off send a depressed man to the brink of madness. Text, PDF
- [The Memsahib of Mandla - Full Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/memsahib-of-mandla/) - Nature and the ghost of a woman who founded a missionary school combine to drive a British man and his family from a forest officer’s rest house. Text, PDF
- [Kusum](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/kusum/) - An overweight, physically unattractive young woman’s passions are stirred by an accidental encounter with a cheeky young street hawker. Text, PDF
- [Karma - Full Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/karma/) - Karma strikes a high-ranking Indian official who rejects his heritage and aspires to identify with the British ruling class. Text, PDF
- [The Sphinx without a Secret - Full Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/sphinx-without-a-secret/) - A man who had fallen in love with a mysterious woman ends the relationship when she refuses to reveal her hidden “secrets”. Text, PDF, mp3
- [The Star-Child - Full Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/star-child/) - A baby who seemingly fell from the sky grows into a narcissistic, cruel young man until karma and loss teach him the error of his ways. Text, PDF, mp3
- [The Model Millionaire - Full Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/model-millionaire/) - A chance visit to an artist friend and the generous gift of his last sovereign to a beggar he was painting changes a man’s life. Text, PDF, mp3
- [With the Photographer - Full Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/with-the-photographer/) - A professional photographer humiliates a customer by criticizing and trying to manipulate every aspect of his facial features and posture. Text, PDF
- [In the Garden - Full Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/in-the-garden/) - Set during the Philippine’s Marcos dictatorship, a group of soldiers appears and begins remove the vegetables from a school garden. Text, PDF
- [Amnesty (Jose Dalisay Jr) - Full Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/amnesty-dalisay/) - A chance encounter on a bus contrasts the directions taken by two student revolutionaries during the Philippine’s Marcos dictatorship. Text, PDF
- [Some Families, Very Large - Full Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/some-families/) - A grieving mother, desperate for company, welcomes nine-year-old Sammy and his irresponsible father into her “family”. Text, PDF
- [Rice - Full Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/rice/) - Filipino tenant farmers consider desperate measures when their feudal landlord tries to exploit them after storms destroy half their rice crop. Text, PDF
- [Midsummer - Full Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/midsummer/) - A man driving a bullock cart along an isolated stretch of road has an innocent but sexually charged encounter with a young woman collecting water. Text, PDF
- [Snow, Glass, Apples - Original Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/snow-glass-apples/) - What you might call a "reverse Snow White", where the much-maligned Queen is no match for her evil, vampiric, sexually depraved stepdaughter. Text, PDF, mp3
- [The Cop and the Anthem - Full Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/cop-and-the-anthem/) - A homeless man who lives on the streets in the warmer months tries in vain to commit a petty crime so he can spend the winter in prison. Text, PDF, mp3
- [One Thousand Dollars - Full Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/one-thousand-dollars/) - After receiving an inheritance of $1,000 from an uncle and canvassing various options, a spendthrift man reforms and gives it and more away. Text, PDF, mp3
- [The Ransom of Red Chief - Full Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/red-chief/) - Two men kidnap a hyperactive and uncontrollable boy. Through various persona (including the warrior Red Chief), he drives them to distraction. Text, PDF, mp3
- [The Guilty Party - Full Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/guilty-party/) - A young woman makes good her promise to kill her fiancée if he takes another girl to a dance. Strangely, a heavenly court absolves her of the crime. Text, PDF
- [Soldier's Home - Full Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/soldiers-home/) - Alienated from his culture, community, friends, and family, an American soldier has difficulty “fitting in” after returning from World War 1. Text, PDF, mp3
- [Do What You Can - Full Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/do-what-you-can/) - A raindrop sees a farmer in distress. His crop of corn is beginning to wither and droop, and it decides to bring him a moment of happiness. Text, PDF
- [Old Man at the Bridge - Full Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/old-man-at-the-bridge/) - An old man forced by war to set his beloved pets free and flee fears for their safety. He sits alone on a bridge, having lost the drive to go on. Text, PDF, mp3
- [Cat in the Rain - Analysis](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/cat-in-the-rain/analysis/) - Short Story by Ernest Hemingway, Plot & Character Analysis
- [The Prince Who Wasn’t Hungry - Full Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/prince-who-wasnt-hungry/) - A Prince obsessed with food demanded increasingly rare dishes. Nothing satisfied him until he discovered the best food in the world. Text, PDF
- [The Kiss - Full Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/the-kiss/) - A mistaken kiss in a darkened room causes a shy, insecure army officer to fanaticise about the possibility of success in love and life. Text, PDF, mp3
- [An Upheaval - Full Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/an-upheaval/) - A young woman in her first job as a governess returns from a walk to find the woman of the house searching her room for a missing brooch. Text, PDF, mp3
- [Vanka - Full Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/vanka/) - A boy recently apprenticed to a shoemaker writes a poignant letter pleading to be taken home. Sadly, the letter will never reach its destination. Text, PDF, mp3
- [The Death of a Government Clerk - Full Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/death-of-a-government-clerk/) - A government clerk enjoying a night at the opera is dismayed when an unexpected sneeze lands droplets on the bald head of a civilian General. Text, PDF, mp3
- [Gusev - Full Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/gusev/) - Two Russian soldiers returning home by ship after serving in the Far East have contrasting views on social injustice. Text, PDF
- [Home - Full Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/home/) - A father having difficulty explaining the dangers of smoking to his seven-year-old son finally gets the message across through a bedtime story. Text, PDF
- [Misery - Analysis](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/misery/analysis/) - Misery, Short Story by Anton Chekhov, Plot & Character Analysis
- [A Joke - Full Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/a-joke/) - A woman with a fear of tobogganing tries to find the source of a ghostly voice whispering 'I love you' as she speeds down a mountain. Text, PDF, mp3
- [The Greatest Gift - Full Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/greatest-gift/) - A depressed man standing on a bridge contemplating suicide learns through a mysterious experience that every life has meaning and value. Text, PDF, mp3
- [The Boy Who Broke the Bank - Full Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/boy-who-broke-the-bank/) - A young sweeper working for an Indian bank causes panic, leading to a run on the bank, after complaining to a friend about being paid late. Text, PDF, mp3
- [The Grandfather and the Python – Full Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/grandfather-and-the-python/) - Grandfather’s pet python falls in love with its own reflection. When grandmother says it must go, the snake’s vanity assists in its capture. Text, PDF
- [Pret in the House / Ghost Trouble - Full Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/ghost-trouble/) - A mischievous pret (ghost) moves into a family’s house. They decide to move away from it, but this does not prove as easy as they had hoped. Text, PDF. mp3
- [The Blue Umbrella – Full Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/blue-umbrella/) - A magnificent silk umbrella paraded vainly by a young girl becomes a source of envy and divides a Himalayan village community. Text, PDF, mp3
- [The Kitemaker - Original Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/kitemaker/) - ...a sudden gust of wind caught the torn kite and lifted it in the air, carrying it far above the struggling city into the blind blue sky.
- [A Face in the Dark - Original Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/face-in-the-dark/) - The boy took his hands from his face and looked up at his teacher. The light from Mr Oliver’s torch fell on the boy’s face—if you could call it a face.
- [The Eyes Have It / The Girl on the Train - Full Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/eyes-have-it/) - A blind man in an empty train carriage is joined by a young woman. As he initiates a conversation, he decides to conceal the fact that he is blind. Text, PDFThe Eyes Have It / The Girl on the Train – Ruskin Bond Online Flip Book / Download Back to our Information Page I had the train compartment to myself up to Rohana, then a girl got in. The couple who saw her off was probably her parents. They seemed very anxious about her comfort and
- [When Darkness Falls - Original Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/when-darkness-falls/) - Negi and Markham belonged to another era, another time and place. So did the old hotel. 'We’re dead, but we won’t lie down,’ joked Markham, but he didn’t find it very funny.
- [Hearts and Hands - Full Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/hearts-and-hands/) - A US Marshall helps a prisoner out of an embarrassing situation in front of a young woman he knows... or is it the other way around? Text, PDF, mp3
- [After Twenty Years - Full Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/after-twenty-years/) - Sometimes it is best not to keep a promise to meet a friend, especially if there is someone looking for you that you sre trying to hide from. Text, PDF, mp3
- [All Summer in a Day - Original Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/all-summer/) - A story about life on a rainy planet where people see the sun only once every seven years. Text, PDF, mp3, Quiz, Literary Analysis
- [The Pedestrian - Original Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/the-pedestrian/) - A story about a man living in a TV dominated world who likes to do the unthinkable: go for a long evening walk every day! Text, PDF, mp3
- [The Last Class / Lesson - Original Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/last-class/) - A boy and his French teacher both have regrets about missed opportunities as their new government requires all future lessons to be in German. Text, PDF, mp3
- [The Girl Who Can - Full Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/girl-who-can/) - A Ghanaian grandmother who clings to outdated concepts of a woman’s role and place in the community constantly body shames her granddaughter. Text, PDF, mp3
- [The Elevator - Full Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/the-elevator/) - A timid twelve-year-old lives in fear of a fat woman with a piggish look who stares at him uncomfortably and appears to be stalking him. Text, PDF, mp3
- [The Blue Bead - Full Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/blue-bead/) - An Indian girl who saves a villager by fighting off a crocodile is more excited by a blue bead she later finds in the water than the danger she faced. Text, PDF
- [The Address - Full Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/the-address/) - A young Jewish woman is horrified to see her precious family heirlooms tastelessly displayed on the walls and furniture of a stranger’s house. Text, PDF
- [The Summer of the Beautiful White Horse - Full Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/beautiful-white-horse/) - A nine-year-old boy from a poor farming family has several rides on a beautiful white horse ‘borrowed’ without permission by an older cousin. Text, PDF, mp3
- [The Ambitious Guest - Full Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/ambitious-guest/) - Nature intervenes when a man stops at an inn high on a mountain pass and boasts about his ambition to do something be remembered by. Text, PDF, mp3
- [Dr Heidegger’s Experiment - Full Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/dr-heideggers-experiment/) - An ageing scientist invites four friends to participate in an experiment to test the efficacy of waters from the famed fountain of youth. Text, PDF, mp3
- [The Shadowy Third - Full Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/shadowy-third/) - A woman mourning the death of her daughter hallucinates that she is still alive. Her nurse claims that she, too, can see the spectral child. Text, PDF, mp3
- [Subha - Full Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/subha/) - The father of a deaf Indian girl rejected by her mother and most in her village tricks a man from a distant village into an arranged marriage. Text, PDF
- [The Home-Coming - Full Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/home-coming/) - A rebellious country teen who jumps at an offer to live with his uncle’s family in Calcutta finds city life unbearable. Text, PDF
- [The Hungry Stones - Original Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/hungry-stones/) - While waiting for a delayed train, a passenger tells a frightening story about the time he stayed alone in a deserted, seemingly haunted palace. Text, PDF, mp3
- [My Lord, the Baby / The Child’s Return - Full Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/my-lord-the-baby/) - A servant discharged after his master’s son disappears has a son of his own and comes to believe that his boy is the lost child reincarnate. Text, PDF
- [The Postmaster (Rabindranath Tagore) - Original Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/postmaster-tagore/) - We cling with both arms to false hope, refusing to believe the weightiest proofs against it, embracing it with all our strength.
- [The Artist - Original Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/the-artist/) - The water was knee-deep at Rangalal’s door. Satyabati came in with Chunilal. She said, “My dear, you take charge of him. Keep him from the worship of money.”
- [The Babus of Nayanjore - Full Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/babus-of-nayanjore/) - Despite living in poverty, the last male descendent of a once wealthy Indian noble family maintains his dignity and aristocratic bearing. Text, PDF
- [The Man of the Crowd - Full Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/man-of-the-crowd/) - A man people-watching from a London coffee shop is fascinated by a “decrepid old man” with a fiendish, unreadable expression. Text, PDF, mp3
- [The Imp of the Perverse - Full Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/imp-of-the-perverse/) - A man facing execution for murder blames his actions the “Imp of the Perverse”, an urge that drives people to do things they know to be wrong. Text, PDF, mp3
- [The Pit and the Pendulum - Full Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/pit-and-pendulum/) - A man sentenced to death by the Spanish Inquisition is tied to a wooden frame in a chamber housing several forms of horrific death. Text, PDF, mp3
- [The Murders in the Rue Morgue - Full Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/rue-morgue/) - A locked-room mystery in which the wrong man is arrested for two violent murders and an “Ourang-Outang” makes a monkey out of the police. Text, PDF
- [A Sound of Thunder - Full Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/sound-of-thunder/) - The sign on the wall seemed to quaver under a film of sliding warm water. Eckels felt his eyelids blink over his stare, and the sign burned in this momentary...
- [The Perfect Match - Full Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/perfect-match/) - A powerful cyber system gathers information on almost everyone in the world and uses it to control governments and manipulate user’s lives. Text, PDF
- [Seventh Day of the Seventh Moon - Full Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/seventh-day/) - The myth behind China’s annual Qixi Festival comes to life to help two young women in love face a forced separation. Text, PDF
- [The Lottery (Marjorie Barnard) - Full Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/the-lottery-barnard/) - Friends draw a man’s attention to a newspaper report that his wife has just won first prize in a lottery. It turns out not to be good news. Text, PDF
- [Native Land / Lupang Tinubuan - Full Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/native-land/) - A young boy visiting his father’s home village comes to love and find peace in the land others describe as having “nothing beautiful except the sky”. Text, PDF
- [The Heathen - Full Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/the-heathen/) - The only survivors of a ship that sinks in a hurricane, a hard-drinking American pearl buyer and an outcast Pacific Islander form a life-long bond. Text, PDF
- [To the Man On the Trail - Full Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/man-on-the-trail/) - A group of Alaskan miners celebrating Christmas greet a stranger warmly. When they later learn he is wanted for a crime, they drink to his good luck. Text, PDF
- [The Call of the Wild - Full Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/call-of-the-wild/) - Set during the 1890s Klondike Gold Rush, a huge St. Bernard-Scotch Shepherd dog devolves into the leader of a pack of wild wolves. Text, PDF, mp3
- [The Law of Life - Original Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/the-law-of-life/) - A story about the life of an old Inuit who was once chief of his tribe but is left by them to die in the snow. Text, PDF, mp3
- [The Three Hermits - Full Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/three-hermits/) - A bishop tries to change the way three devout hermits seeking salvation by living alone on a deserted island pray to God. Text, PDF, mp3
- [The Two Brothers and the Gold - Full Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/two-brothers-and-the-gold/) - Two brothers react differently to finding a heap of gold. One runs away. The other uses it to help the needy, but is told that this was wrong. Text, PDF, mp3
- [The Country of the Blind - Full Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/country-of-the-blind/) - A climber who falls off a mountain into a hidden valley inhabited by a community who were born blind sees it as a chance to become their king. Text, PDF, mp3
- [Midnight Mass - Full Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/midnight-mass/) - A seemingly innocent but sexually charged conversation between a seventeen-year-old boy and the thirty-year-old wife of his landlord. Text, PDF
- [The Treasure in the Forest - Full Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/treasure-in-the-forest/) - Two men kill another to steal a treasure map. They find the treasure, then learn why the map owner was smiling as they killed him. Text, PDF, mp3
- [The Pearl of Love - Full Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/pearl-of-love/) - An Indian prince, devastated by the death of his young wife, builds a magnificent shrine to her that the names the “Pearl of Love”. Text, PDF, mp3
- [The Time Machine (H. G. Wells) - Full Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/time-machine-wells/) - A Victorian scientist who invents a time machine and travels over 800,000 years into the future finds a disintegrating world. Text, PDF, mp3
- [The Man Who Could Work Miracles (A Pantoum in Prose) - Full Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/man-who-could-work-miracles/) - A man known as a sceptic as far as miracles are concerned suddenly discovers he can make things happen just by thinking about them. Text, PDF, mp3
- [The Color Master - Full Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/color-master/) - In completing several difficult dress-making commissions for a king, a group of artisans saves a princess from a terrible fate. Text, PDF
- [Off by Aimee Bender - Full Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/off/) - A conceited, deliberately overdressed woman attends a party with the stated objective of kissing three men of different hair color. Text, PDF
- [The Rememberer - Full Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/rememberer/) - A man experiences reverse evolution, shedding millions of years a day. He regresses into an ape, then a sea turtle, and finally a salamander. Text, PDF
- [The Price of Eggs in China - Full Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/price-of-eggs/) - A Japanese-American furniture artisan is caught-up in rivalry between his girlfriend and a former friend she believes is trying to ruin her life. Text, PDF
- [The Alienist - Full Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/alienist/) - Rebellion stirs after a brilliant physician relocates to his hometown in Brazil and convinces the council to build the region’s first madhouse. Text, PDF
- [The Fortune-Teller](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/fortune-teller/) - A love triangle exists between life-long best friends and the wife of one of them. The wife and lover both find temporary comfort in a fortune-teller. Text, PDF
- [The Secret Cause - Full Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/secret-cause/) - A young doctor learns that his business partner is a sadist who finds pleasure in inflicting pain on animals and observing the suffering of others. Text, PDF
- [Father Against Mother - Original Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/father-against-mother/) - ...shedding genuine tears, Cândido Neves blessed the fugitive and gave barely a thought to her dead child. “Not all children make it,” his heart told him.
- [The Schreuderspitze - Full Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/schreuderspitze/) - A grieving photographer decides to teach himself to become a mountain climber and ascend a dangerous peak alone. Text, PDF
- [The Continuity of Parks - Original Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/continuity-of-parks/) - A lustful, yearning dialogue raced down the pages like a rivulet of snakes, and one felt it had all been decided from eternity.
- [The Night Face Up](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/night-face-up/) - A hospitalized man drifts in and out between the “present” and a “dream” in which he is captured by Aztec warriors for sacrifice. Text, PDF
- [Blow-Up - Full Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/blow-up/) - An amateur photographer captures an image (of an adolescent boy with an adult woman) that seemingly comes alive, rewriting its narrative. Text, PDF
- [Letter to a Young Lady in Paris - Full Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/letter-to-paris/) - A man housesitting a friend’s apartment vomits up eleven tiny rabbits. As they grow and begin to trash the place, he contemplates drastic action. Text, PDF
- [The Pursuer - Full Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/pursuer/) - A fictional tribute to jazz legend Carlie Parker which not only highlights his extraordinary talent, but also lays bare his personal demons. Text, PDF
- [The Boy in the Tunnel / The Boy on the Tünel- Full Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/boy-in-the-tunnel/) - A boy making his first trip on Istanbul’s Beyoğlu – Karaköy funicular railway tries hard to suppress his feelings of excitement and wonder. Text, PDF
- [God's Food - Full Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/gods-food/) - German children's legend from the Brothers Grimm in which a woman and her five children die because her rich sister refused to give her food. Text, PDF, mp3
- [A Nurse's Story - Full Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/nurses-story/) - A dying nurse of forty years tries to encourage a new nurse in the geriatric facility in which she is staying to stand up for her worker’s rights. Text, PDF
- [The Mystery of the Missing Cap - Original Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/missing-cap/) - Asomething most preposterous came out of the dry lips of Shi Moharana who seemed to be on the verge of collapsing: ‘Yes, yes, this is that nobleman…"
- [Sardarji - Full Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/sardarji/) - Fate plays a cruel trick on a Muslim man who has spent his life not only vilifying Hindus and Sikhs, but also Punjabis of his own faith. Text, PDF, mp3
- [The Refugee - Full Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/refugee/) - An elderly Sikh woman lives through the hatred, bloodshed and displacement of Sikh and Hindu families caused by the 1947 Partition of India. Text, PDF
- [The Sparrows - Full Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/sparrows/) - An Indian man whose ill-treatment of his wife and sons has driven them from his home finds solace and redemption through a family of sparrows. Text, PDF
- [Here’s Your Hat What’s Your Hurry - Full Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/heres-your-hat/) - A homeless woman with no family survives by traveling the countryside, staying at the homes of people she claims to be distant relatives. Text, PDF
- [A Useless Man - Full Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/useless-man/) - The ordered life of a recluse who hasn’t left his Istanbul neighborhood of four streets in seven years is shattered when he ventures further afield. Text, PDF
- [Wedding Night - Full Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/wedding-night/) - A Turkish father belatedly registers his sixteen-year-old son as being twenty-four years old because his bride, who he has never seen, is twenty-six! Text, PDF
- [The Beginning of Homewood - Full Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/beginning-of-homewood/) - A man reflects on the legacy of his great-great-great-grandmother who escaped slavery with the son of her owner and their two children. Text, PDF
- [Drinking Coffee Elsewhere - Full Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/drinking-coffee-elsewhere/) - An African-American university student struggling with her identity and sexuality lives as a recluse until linking up with an overweight white girl. Text, PDF
- [The War of the Wall - Full Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/war-of-the-wall/) - Two boys plan sabotage when a strange woman paints a mural on a wall in their neighborhood, but change their minds when they see it. Text, PDF, mp3
- [The Final Problem - Full Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/final-problem/) - Sherlock Holmes has his first and last encounter with master criminal Professor Moriarty. After a pursuit across Europe, both perish. Text, PDF, mp3
- [The Adventure of the Empty House - Full Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/empty-house-adventure/) - After being presumed dead, Sherlock Holmes miraculously returns to bring to justice several senior members of a criminal network. Text, PDF, mp3
- [Brownies - Full Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/brownies/) - At a summer camp, a Brownie troop from a black neighborhood decides to "kick the asses" of an all-white troop. Things don’t go as planned. Text, PDF, mp3
- [Overcoat - Full Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/overcoat/) - A man with the persona of a well-to-do dandy enjoys a leisurely stroll through the streets of Lahore. Unfortunately, he is not what he seems. Text, PDF
- [Anandi - Full Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/anandi/) - Concerned about the appearance of prostitutes plying their trade, a Pakistani city’s authorities banish them to empty land twelve miles out of town. Text, PDF
- [The Five-Forty-Eight - Full Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/five-forty-eight/) - An ex-secretary once taken advantage of by her misogynistic boss confronts him with a gun and avenges herself by humiliating the repugnant man. Text, PDF, mp3
- [A Night in the Life of the Mayor - Full Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/night-of-the-mayor/) - Karma strikes when a cow runs off with an Indian mayor’s half-eaten clothes and car keys as he is taking a naked dip in a river. Text, PDF
- [Lakshmi’s Adventure - Full Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/lakshmi/) - A six-year-old Indian girl dies after being chased by an angry mob for sneaking into her village temple and taking two bananas from a shrine. Text, PDF
- [Miss Moberly's Targets - Full Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/miss-moberly/) - A spinster living in a home for the affluent aged is belittled after showing off her skill in throwing food to stray dogs on the street below. Text, PDF
- [Yellow Fish - Original Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/yellow-fish/) - A grieving mother rescues a discarded fish dying on the sand because its struggles remind her of those of her premature baby before she died. Text, PDF
- [The Crocodile's Lady - Full Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/crocodiles-lady/) - A young woman who was carried off by a crocodile reappears a decade later, claiming to have fallen in love with and lived with it in the river. Text, PDF
- [Theft - Full Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/theft/) - A struggling writer realizes that if she doesn’t do more to take charge of her life and stop “letting things go”, she will end up with nothing. Text, PDF, mp3
- [María Concepción - Full Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/maria-concepcion/) - The life of a Mexican peasant is shattered when her husband has an affair with a fifteen-year-old neighbour and runs away with her to war. Text, PDF
- [Stone Mattress - Full Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/stone-mattress/) - When a woman on an arctic cruise recognizes a man who had brutally raped her fifty years earlier, she begins to plot the perfect murder. Text, PDF
- [The Bog Man - Full Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/bog-man/) - An affair between an archaeology professor and his student “assistant” breaks down during a trip to inspect a body preserved in a peat bog. Text, PDF
- [The Age of Lead - Full Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/age-of-lead/) - A frozen 150-year-old body highlights the dangers of consumerism and modern technology such as soil and water pollution, toxic waste and acid rain. Text, PDF
- [The Man from Mars - Full Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/man-from-mars/) - A "big-boned", but athletic Canadian university student becomes anxious when a creepy-looking “Oriental” student begins to stalk her. Text, PDF
- [Bread](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/bread/) - A story in which bread is used as a metaphor to illustrate a range of themes associated with starvation and suffering. Text, PDF, mp3
- [Doc's Story - Full Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/docs-story/) - A young man recovering from a break-up with his girlfriend is inspired by a story about “Doc”, a former college basketballer who lost his eyesight Text, PDF
- [Weight - Full Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/weight/) - A writer reads his mother a draft of a story that begins “My mother is a weightlifter”, and goes on to admire the many burdens she has shouldered. Text, PDF
- [The Jade Bracelet - Full Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/jade-bracelet/) - A dying Malaysian woman’s wish is for her granddaughter to have her jade bracelet. The girl’s mother disagrees and gives it to someone else. Text, PDF
- [Poonek - Full Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/poonek/) - A young Malaysian man becomes “Poonek” (likely to suffer a disaster) after refusing a father’s offer of his beautiful daughter in marriage. Text, PDF
- [Mariah - Full Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/mariah/) - The Imam of a Malay village is so love-struck by an attractive young widow with swinging hips and an easy smile that he decides to take a second wife. Text, PDF
- [The Key - Full Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/the-key/) - An elderly widow who has lived alone for almost twenty years distrusts everyone and lives in poverty despite having a fortune hidden in her house . Text, PDF
- [The End of the World - Full Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/end-of-the-world/) - The fist of God appears in the sky, signalling the end of the world. Panic sets in when there aren’t enough confessors available to meet demand. Text, PDF
- [The Time Machine (Dino Buzzati) - Full Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/time-machine-buzzati/) - A scientist builds a luxurious walled city in which time is slowed down, allowing animals and plants to grow and age half as quickly as those outside. Text, PDF
- [Seven Floors - Full Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/seven-floors/) - A slightly ill patient enters a ward on the seventh floor of a sanatorium and makes the slow, inexorable descent to the first floor of the dying. Text, PDF, mp3
- [The Adventure of the Dancing Men - Full Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/dancing-men/) - An English squire’s secretive new bride has been receiving messages written in a strange code that appear to terrify her. Text, PDF, mp3,
- [Going Steady - Full Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/going-steady/) - A boy asks a girl to go steady in order to win a bet. He wasn’t looking for such a commitment, and finds calling it off easier said than done. Text, PDF
- [Popularity - Full Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/popularity/) - A ten-year-old boy wants to hang out at recess with the most popular group in his grade. His wish comes true, but he never feels secure among them. Text, PDF
- [Hamadi - Full Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/hamadi/) - A bookish fourteen-year-old Palestinian-American girl develops a strong connection with Saleh Hamadi, an ageing Lebanese immigrant. Text, PDF
- [Stay True Hotel - Full Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/stay-true/) - A teenage girl grieving over her mother’s death finds exploring the vibrant, unfamiliar streets of a new city strangely exhilarating. Text, PDF
- [Girls at Play - Full Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/girls-at-play/) - Three rebellious junior high school girls pause their daily recess sex game to befriend a sweet, naïve new girl in town and teach her teenage ways.. Text, PDF
- [Wolf - Full Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/wolf/) - In this take on the Red Riding Hood fairy tale, a girl flees to her grandmother’s house after her stepfather repeatedly rapes her over several years. Text, PDF
- [Blue - Full Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/blue/) - A girl abandoned by her mother finds comfort in stories about how much her mother loved her told by an imaginary creature living in her closet. Text, PDF
- [The Stolen Party - Full Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/stolen-party/) - A woman who works as a maid is uneasy when her daughter is invited to the birthday party of her employer’s daughter. Her fears prove well-founded. Text, PDF
- [Inem - Full Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/inem/) - An eight-year-old girl is married off to a seventeen-year-old-man. A year later she is divorced, a tainted “woman” facing a miserable future. Text, PDF
- [Mrs. Geni in December - Full Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/mrs-geni/) - An eccentric Indonesian bridal make-up artist believes that marriage is both illogical and “humanity’s most restricting and frightening discovery.” Text, PDF
- [The Custodian - Full Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/custodian/) - A shared child-minding job for a young woman and her “touchy-feely” college professor husband tears apart two childhood friends. Text, PDF
- [Transactions in a Foreign Currency - Full Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/in-a-foreign-currency/) - A twenty-eight-year-old woman decides to end her relationship with a lover she has been seeing on and off for almost ten years. Text, PDF
- [The Son - Full Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/the-son/) - A concerned father begins a frantic search when his thirteen-year-old son does not return from a hunting trip at the agreed time. Text, PDF
- [The Decapitated Chicken - Full Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/decapitated-chicken/) - Four idiot brothers watch as their cook decapitates a chicken. Later, they cruelly imitate the act with the only small ‘animal’ available. Text, PDF, mp3
- [The Feather Pillow - Full Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/feather-pillow/) - A "monster" in a feather pillow slowly drains the lifeblood of a young bride confined to bed after months of isolation and loneliness. Text, PDF, mp3
- [The Necessary Grace to Fall - Full Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/necessary-grace/) - An insurance investigative assistant becomes obsessed with learning more about a woman from his childhood neighborhood who jumped/fell from a bridge. Text, PDF
- [The Princess of Nebraska - Full Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/princess-of-nebraska/) - A pregnant Chinese graduate student who has traveled from Nebraska to Chicago for an abortion has second thoughts as the baby begins to move. Text, PDF
- [Extra - Full Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/extra/) - After being retrenched by a Chinese garment factory, a middle-aged woman’s next jobs involve “extras”, people who have been cast off by their family. Text, PDF
- [Notes to My Biographer - Full Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/my-biographer/) - A mentally ill seventy-three-year-old who refuses to take his medication comes up with an idea for a revolutionary new bicycle. Text, PDF
- [Don't Cry - Full Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/dont-cry/) - A grief and guilt woman accompanies a friend to adopt a child in Ethiopia. The woman gains almost as much from the trip as her friend. Text, PDF
- [Secretary - Full Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/secretary/) - A young woman who begins her first ever job as a secretary in a lawyer’s office learns that her employer is a sadistic sexual predator. Text, PDF
- [Another Pioneer - Full Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/another-pioneer/) - A child in a paleolithic jungle tribe has the abilty to correctly answer any question. As the boy matures, fear on both sides leads to tragedy. Text, PDF
- [Incarnations of Burned Children - Full Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/incarnations/) - A toddler is scalded by a fallen pot of boiling water. Its father reacts quickly, but misses a crucial detail that may ruin the child’s future. Text, PDF
- [The Soul is Not a Smithy - Full Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/not-a-smithy/) - A nine-year-old student daydreams as a deranged substitute teacher writes KILL, KILL THEM, KILL THEM ALL repeatedly on the chalkboard. Text, PDF, mp3
- [Grandfather’s Story - Full Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/grandfathers-story/) - An old man relates a story about how the fates of himself, his estranged wife, and lifetime lover were predestined a thousand years previously. Text, PDF
- [Monster - Full Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/monster/) - An “old, rickety, bug-infested” four-poster bed treasured by a frail woman in her seventies is despised by her daughter-in-law. Text, PDF
- [The Stars - Full Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/the-stars/) - An Indian farmer doubling as his village astrologer charts his own destiny and invites the whole village to witness and celebrate his death. Text, PDF
- [The Tiger - Full Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/the-tiger/) - A pregnant Malay villager is uneasy when some men set out to shoot an apparently harmless tiger, and horrified by what they find after killing it. Text, PDF
- [She - Full Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/she/) - A junior high schooler who drops her platonic first love for a “bad boy” classmate is confused and ashamed after making out in the backseat of a car. Text, PDF
- [We Are All One - Full Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/we-are-all-one/) - With help from a centipede and some ants he becomes “One” with, a poor candy peddler earns a large reward and lives happily ever after. Text, PDF
- [The Fisherman and His Wife - Original Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/fisherman-and-wife/) - Folktale about a fisherman with a wife who is so greedy that when granted a wish by an enchanted fish she asks for more and more until... Text, PDF. mp3
- [Tam and Cam - Full Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/tam-cam/) - A "Cinderella-type" folktale with an added piece that could only happen in a country where people believed in reincarnation in non-human form. Text, PDF
- [Young Archimedes - Full Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/young-archimedes/) - “If I had known,” Carlo kept repeating, “if only I had known. ... At the time he didn’t mind at all. And she deceived me, she lied to me.”
- [The Garden Party - Full Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/garden-party/) - While they were laughing and while the band was playing, this marvel had come to the lane. Happy... happy... All is well, said that sleeping face. I am content.
- [A Spinster's Tale - Full Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/spinsters-tale/) - A phobia about and encounter with the town drunk leaves a teenaged girl isolated and in fear of the masculine world. Text, PDF
- [The Story of the Good Little Boy - Full Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/good-little-boy/) - Thus perished the good little boy who did the best he could, but didn't come out according to the books. It will probably never be accounted for.
- [The Story of the Bad Little Boy - Full Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/bad-little-boy/) - ...and now he is the infernalest wickedest scoundrel in his native village, and is universally respected, and belongs to the legislature.
- [A Tiger in the House - Full Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/tiger-in-the-house/) - When Timothy was about six months old a change came over him; he grew steadily less friendly. Finally, Grandfather decided it was time to transfer him to a zoo.
- [The Sea of Lost Time - Full Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/sea-of-lost-time/) - "There's a village at the bottom of the sea," Tobías said, "with little white houses with millions of flowers on the terraces."
- [The Diamond Mine - Full Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/diamond-mine/) - A famous opera singer derives pleasure from “giving” to her husbands and extended family, most of whom ruthlessly exploit the poor woman. Text, PDF, mp3.
- [Faith, Love, Time and Dr. Lazaro - Full Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/faith-love-time/) - A disillusioned doctor has lost faith in religion and become detached from his family. A late night house call leads to a momentary epiphany. Text, PDF
- [Zoo - Full Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/zoo/) - He waved farewell to them, and as the ship rose from the ground the Earth peoples agreed that this had been the very best Zoo yet.
- [A Haunted House - Full Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/haunted-house/) - A living couple share their home with two ghostly lovers who continuously search the house and garden for a lost or hidden treasure. Text, PDF, mp3
- [The Storm - Full Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/the-storm/) - As she glanced up at him the fear in her liquid blue eyes had given place to a drowsy gleam that unconsciously betrayed a sensuous desire.
- [Games at Twilight - Full Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/games-at-twilight/) - He lay down full length on the damp grass, crushing his face into it, no longer crying, silenced by a terrible sense of his insignificance.
- [At the 'Cadian Ball - Full Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/cadian-ball/) - Calixta was like a myth, now. The one, only, great reality in the world was Clarisse standing before him, telling him that she loved him.
- [Jeffty is Five - Full Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/jeffty-is-five/) - A boy retains the body and mind of a five-year-old as those around him age, and has the seemingly magical power to be able to "live" in the past. Text, PDF, mp3
- [Dead Stars - Full Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/dead-stars/) - ...all these years--since when?--he had been seeing the light of dead stars, long extinguished, yet seemingly still in their appointed places in the heavens.
- [Clean Sweep - Full Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/clean-sweep/) - Memories are the only things we have left sometimes. You can hold a photo , but it isn’t alive. Memories are filled with sights, smells, love, and happiness.
- [Almost No Memory - Full Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/almost-no-memory/) - A certain woman had almost no memory. She remembered enough to get by, and to do her work, but she did not learn from what she did, or heard, or read.
- [Through the Tunnel - Full Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/through-the-tunnel/) - He felt he would sink now and drown; he could not swim the few feet back to the rock. Then he was clutching it and pulling himself up onto it.
- [Marriage Is a Private Affair - Full Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/marriage-is-private/) - His mind immediately returned to the children. That night he hardly slept, from remorse—and a vague fear that he might die without making it up to them.
- [The Old Man and the Sea - Full Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/old-man-and-the-sea/) - It is good that we do not have to try to kill the sun or the moon or the stars. It is enough to live on the sea and kill our true brothers.
- [The Enormous Radio - Full Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/enormous-radio/) - “Oh, I’m sick!” he shouted. “I’m sick to death of your apprehensiveness. The radio can’t hear us. Nobody can hear us. And what if they can hear us? Who cares?”
- [Gorilla, My Love - Full Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/gorilla/) - “You a lyin dawg,” I say, when I meant to say treacherous dog, but just couldn’t get hold of the word. It slipped away from me. I’m crying and just don’t care.
- [Aftermath - Full Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/aftermath/) - In the aftermath of WW2, a young Japanese mother struggles to deal with the loss of her husband and the effects on society of American occupation. Text, PDF
- [The Canal - Full Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/the-canal/) - Two men at a cocktail party learn that their army divisions fought alongside each other during a bloody World War 2 canal crossing. Text, PDF
- [Last Courtesies - Full Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/last-courtesies/) - A widow struggling to cope alone following the death of her aunt and long-time companion falls prey to a vicious serial killer. Text, PDF
- [Where I'm Calling From - Full Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/where-im-calling-from/) - I’ve got the shakes. I started out with them this morning. This morning I wanted something to drink. It’s depressing... I try to put my mind on something else.
- [Beware of the Dog - Full Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/beware-of-the-dog/) - He looked straight at the Wing Commander and he said, “My name is Peter Williamson, my rank is Squadron Leader and my number is nine seven two four five seven.”
- [The Harvest - Full Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/the-harvest/) - When a farm worker walks alone into the fields each afternoon, refusing to allow anyone to follow, rumors start to fly about buried treasure. Text, PDF
- [Gooseberries - Full Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/gooseberries/) - You look at life: the insolence and idleness of the strong, the ignorance and brutishness of the weak, incredible poverty all about us, overcrowding...
- [The Man with the Rose - Full Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/man-with-the-rose/) - A man claiming to have “black magical” powers tells a priest that, if locked in a room for an hour, he can retrieve any distant object he nominates. Text, PDF
- [The Cow of the Barricades - Full Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/barricades/) - Therefore it is said, ‘The Mahatma may be all wrong about politics, but he is right about the fullness of love in all creatures— the speechful and the mute.’
- [Stones in My Passway, Hellhound on My Trail - Full Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/stones-in-my-passway/) - A fictionalized account of the mysterious death of American blues musician Robert Johnson, who was rumoured to have sold his soul to the devil. Text, PDF
- [A Scandal in Bohemia - Full Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/scandal-in-bohemia/) - “From what I have seen of the lady she seems indeed to be on a very different level to your Majesty,” said Holmes coldly.
- [The Scarlet Ibis - Full Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/scarlet-ibis/) - There is within me a knot of cruelty borne by the stream of love , much as our blood sometimes bears the seed of our destruction.
- [The Feathered Ogre - Full Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/feathered-ogre/) - A dying king is told that his only hope for a cure is a magical feather from a feared ogre known to kill any human it sees. Text, PDF
- [The Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas - Full Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/ones-who-walk-away/) - They all know it is there, all the people of Omelas. The terms are strict and absolute; there may not even be a kind word spoken to the child.
- [Jacklighting - Full Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/jacklighting/) - Three people who, having gathered each year on the birthday of a friend, gather once more on the birthday immediately following his death. Text, PDF
- [Here We Are - Full Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/here-we-are/) - As a couple travel to their honeymoon destination, the bride claims that several things her new husband says prove he doesn’t really love her. Text, PDF, mp3
- [The Slump - Full Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/the-slump/) - A professional baseball player tries to analyze why he is no longer hitting the ball as well as he used to. Text, PDF
- [Flowers and Freckle Cream - Full Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/freckle-cream/) - I had cried myself to sleep that night. When I opened my swollen, sticky eyes the next morning, the first thing I saw, lying on the pillow, was a tiger lily.
- [Boys and Girls - Full Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/boys-and-girls/) - “Never mind,” my father said, in words which absolved and dismissed me for good, “she’s only a girl,” I didn’t protest, even in my heart. Maybe it was true.
- [The Minority Report - Full Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/minority-report/) - “My case was unique. It could happen again — but only to the next Police Commissioner. So watch your step. It might happen to you at any time.”
- [The Boarded Window - Full Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/boarded-window/) - From the throat, dreadfully lacerated, had issued a pool of blood not yet entirely coagulated. Between the teeth was a fragment of the animal’s ear.
- [Vasilii the Unlucky - Full Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/the-three-beggars-vasilii/) - A rich man pays a high price for his cruelty, greed and attempts to defy fate by killing the child destined to marry his daughter. Text, PDF
- [Little Claus and Great Claus - Original Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/little-claus-great-claus/) - A poor farmer who develops a talent for swindling people invents stories to explain the source of his newfound wealth to an envious neighbor. Text, PDF, mp3
- [The Egyptian Miracle Worker - Original Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/sweet-porridge-egyptian/) - Story from "Philopseudes" (Lover of Lies) written by Lucian around AD 150, believed to be the source of the Goethe poem "The Sorcerer's Apprentice", Text, PDF
- [The Homecoming - Original Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/homecoming/) - A woodcutter who took an interest in everyone’s business but his own finds many changes on returning home after being missing for thousands of years. Text, PDF
- [Clever Elsie - Original Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/the-three-sillies-elsie/) - There was once a man who had a daughter who was called Clever Elsie. And when she had grown up her father said, "We will get her married." Text, PDF
- [The Three Sillies - Original Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/the-three-sillies/) - I've never met three such big sillies as you three. I'll start on my travels again. When I find three bigger sillies, I'll come back and marry your daughter.
- [Signs and Symbols - Original Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/signs-and-symbols/) - For the fourth time in as many years they were confronted with the problem of what birthday present to bring a young man who was incurably deranged in his mind.
- [Spring in Fialta - Original Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/spring-in-fialta/) - In his European travels, a businessman repeatedly comes across and enjoys brief dalliances with the same enigmatic woman. Text, PDF, mp3
- [The Tale of the Two Oxen / Do Bailon Ki Katha - Original Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/two-oxen/) - When we want to tell someone that he is totally lacking in intelligence, we call him a ‘donkey’. The donkey has a younger brother, and that is the ox.
- [The Voice of God / Holy Panchayat - Original Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/voice-of-god/) - A life-long friendship is broken when one rules against the other at a village council meeting. The two reunite after the roles are reversed. Text, PDFThe Voice of God (Holy Panchayat) - Premchand Online Flip Book / Download Back to our Information Page Jumman Sheikh and Algu Chaudhari were fast friends. They were also partners in farming. They had an unshakable faith in each other’s love and loyalty. When Jumman was going on pilgrimage, he entrusted his household to the care
- [The Salt Inspector / Namak Ka Daroga - Original Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/salt-inspector/) - Salaries are given by men; that is why they seldom increase. Extra income is god-given; that is why there is so much of it.
- [The Thakur’s Well / Thakur Ka Kuan - Original Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/thakurs-well/) - A low-caste Indian woman whose well is contaminated risks a severe beating by secretly drawing water from the well of the high-caste Thakur. Text, PDF
- [A January Night /  Poos Ki Raat - Original Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/january-night/) - A blanketless Indian farmer watches over his crops one night in freezing temperatures. He manages to survive the night, but his crops do not. Text, PDF
- [The Shroud / Kafan - Original Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/the-shroud/) - ‘She won’t last, it seems’,’ said Ghisu. ‘She has been tossing and turning the whole day. Go in and see what’s wrong.’ ‘What’s there to see?’ Madho whined.
- [The Widow and the Parrot - Original Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/widow-and-parrot/) - In return for her kindness, a foul-mouthed parrot not only saves an old widow's life, but also leads her to a fortune in gold. Text, PDF
- [The Mispaired Anklet - Original Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/mispaired-anklet/) - When a man is framed for theft and summarily executed, his devoted wife calls on the gods and has the city in which it took place destroyed. Text, PDF
- [The Doctor's Word - Original Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/doctors-word/) - A doctor known for telling the truth must choose between telling a friend he is dying, or lying to give him hope and a small chance of survival. Text, PDF, mp3
- [Naga - Original Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/naga/) - An widowed snake charmer abandons his young son, taking the boy’s trained monkey and leaving his snake which is too old to perform. Text PDF
- [An Astrologer's Day - Original Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/astrologers-day/) - A fake astrologer’s deliberate lie in answering a question eases a tormented man’s mind and brings peace and redemption to himself. Text, PDF, mp3
- [The Station](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/the-station/) - An eighteen-year-old truck driver’s assistant is spellbound by an attractive woman in her twenties working in an all-night café. Text, PDF
- [The Kimono - Original Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/kimono/) - A fifty-year-old man looks back on his life from the day he had an unexpected sexual encounter with a woman in an orange and green kimono. Text, PDF, mp3
- [The Mill - Original Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/the-mill/) - A young servant is raped by her employer on an almost daily basis. Used, abused, and heavy with child, she is sent back to her parents in tears. Text, PDF
- [Momotarō - Original Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/momotaro/) - A fifteen-year-old boy born out of a giant peach helps his poor parents by destroying a band of “devils” and bringing back their treasure. Text, PDF, mp3
- [My Oedipus Complex - Original Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/my-oedipus/) - A young boy’s close attachment to his mother is disrupted, firstly by his father’s return from World War 1, and later by the birth of a baby. Text, PDF, mp3
- [The Tenant - Original Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/tenant/) - A young Indian-American college professor struggles to make a new life after marrying and later being left by an American graduate student. Text, PDF
- [A Wife's Story - Original Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/wifes-story-mukherjee/) - The wife of an Indian textile executive undergoes a cultural transformation after moving to New York to complete a doctoral degree. Text, PDF
- [Meeting Mrinal - Original Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/meeting-mrinal/) - An Indian-American woman struggles to come to terms with the failure of her arranged marriage and her teenage son’s increasing withdrawal. Text, PDF
- [The Perfect Murder - Original Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/perfect-murder/) - A man accidentally kills his mistress for having another lover. He frames the other man for her murder, and closely follows the innocent man's trial. Text, PDF
- [Old Love - Original Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/old-love/) - Fierce competition between a couple at university spurs them on to topping their class, attaining professorships, and earning royal honors. Text, PDF
- [Cheap at Half the Price - Original Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/half-the-price/) - A socialite hatches a plan whereby her husband thinks he was clever enough to buy her a diamond-and-ruby necklace for half the asking price. Text, PDF
- [The Cat from Hell - Original Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/cat-from-hell/) - An aging industrialist hires a hitman to kill his cat. The old man believes the cat has killed three people, and fears he will be next. Text, PDF, mp3
- [The Man Who Loved Flowers – Original Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/man-who-loved-flowers/) - Things aren’t as they seem with a well-dressed young man walking down a New York City street who has the appearance of someone in love. Text, PDF, mp3
- [The Raft - Original Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/the-raft/) - A black mass floating on the surface of a deserted lake stalks four college students who have swum out to a raft to say good-bye to summer. Text, PDF. mp3
- [The Good Doctor - Original Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/the-good-doctor/) - An idealistic government psychiatrist is frustrated when a depressed woman he has driven two and a half hours to evaluate refuses therapy. Text, PDF
- [The Rats in the Walls - Original Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/rats-in-the-walls/) - The sound of a swarm of rats in the walls of a recently restored family castle causes its owner to explore its long-sealed lower chambers. Text, PDF, mp3
- [The Colour Out of Space - Original Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/colour-out-of-space/) - An unusual meteor releases a presence that causes every living thing nearby to mutate and either wither or die a horrible death. Text, PDF, mp3
- [The Outsider - Original Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/outsider/) - In one cataclysmic second of cosmic nightmarishness and hellish accident my fingers touched the rotting outstretched paw of the monster beneath the golden arch.
- [Beyond the Wall of Sleep - Original Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/wall-of-sleep/) - A hospital intern discovers that beyond the wall of sleep we exist as a “brother of light” able to traverse multiple planes and universes. Text, PDF, mp3
- [The Dunwich Horror - Original Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/dunwich-horror/) - An early 19th century practitioner of the black arts summons an “Elder Thing” from another dimension to mate with his daughter. Text, PDF, mp3
- [Hominids - Original Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/hominids/) - A woman is disgusted by the way a group of men joke about the bodies of women they had encountered at a strip club earlier in the day. Text, PDF
- [The English Pupil - Original Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/english-pupil/) - The dying scientist Carl Linnaeus reminisces about his life and the fate of the “apostles” he sent around the world collecting biological specimens. Text, PDF
- [Testimony of Pilot - Original Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/testimony-of-pilot/) - A story following the journey of a boy and several companions from youthful pranks to fulfilling careers and, in two cases, premature death. Text, PDF
- [You Were Perfectly Fine - Original Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/perfectly-fine/) - An entertaining “morning after” story in which an embarrassed young man asks a woman to help him piece together what happened the night before. Text, PDF, mp3
- [Skin - Original Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/skin/) - A destitute man is tempted by two offers to help him capitalize on the value of a picture a now famous artist once tattooed on his back. Text, PDF, mp3, Video
- [Initiation - Original Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/initiation/) - A candidate declines membership of an elite high school sorority after successfully completing its initiation process. Text, PDF, mp3
- [Inside Out - Original Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/inside-out/) - A man reflects on his first year at school, when his academic progress and relationships with classmates were held back by a complete lack of English. Text, PDF
- [The Circuit - Original Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/the-circuit/) - A description of the lonely, difficult way of life for children in a close-knit family of itinerant Mexican farm workers. Text, PDF. mp3
- [Grandpa's Magic Hat - Original Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/grandpas-magic-hat/) - Two brothers set out to prove their grandfather was joking when he told them his old straw hat has the magical ability to bring things to life. Text, PDF
- [Dragon, Dragon - Original Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/dragon-dragon/) - After the two older sons son of a wise cobbler attempt to win a rich reward by killing a ravaging dragon, his nervous youngest succeeds. Text, PDF
- [The Three-Century Woman - Original Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/three-century-woman/) - A normally sleepy and forgetful “three-century” woman has prepared an elaborate prank to play on any press who turn up for her 102nd birthday. Text, PDF
- [At the Pitt-Rivers - Original Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/at-the-pitt-rivers/) - A teenaged boy notices a woman of about thirty waiting for someone. He is shocked when she greets a man in his fifties she obviously loves. Text, PDF, mp3
- [Exchange Value - Original Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/exchange-value/) - Two brothers break into the apartment of a deceased elderly neighbor. In her living room, they find cash and valuables worth over a million dollars. Text, PDF
- [When Anklets Tinkle - Original Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/when-anklets-tinkle/) - Life changes for a middle-class Indian couple after renting the barsati of their Delhi home to a “Madrasi man” who plays a cruel trick on them. Text, PDF
- [Her Mother - Original Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/her-mother/) - An Indian mother describes her feelings upon reading the first letter home from a daughter who has travelled to America to complete a Ph.D. Text, PDF
- [The Smoothest Way Is Full of Stones - Original Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/the-smoothest-way/) - A teenage Jewish girl raised in a secular environment spends her school holidays living in the Orthodox community of an aunt. Text, PDF
- [A Small, Good Thing - Original Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/small-good-thing/) - As their son lies unconscious in hospital, parents receive prank phone calls mentioning his name. After the boy dies, the calls continue. Text, PDF, mp3
- [Autobiography of Irene - Original Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/autobiography-of-irene/) - A young woman with psychic powers, who has accurately foreseen the deaths of her father and lover, now foresees and prepares for her own death. Text, PDF
- [Thus Were Their Faces - Original Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/thus-were-their-faces/) - Teachers at a boarding school are puzzled when students begin to act “as if they want to become equal” and increasingly lose their individuality. Text, PDF
- [The Glass of Milk - Original Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/glass-of-milk/) - A penniless, hungry boy, who is too proud to beg for food, decides to order something in a milk bar and accept the consequences. Text, PDF
- [The Pugilist at Rest - Original Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/pugilist-at-rest/) - A brain damaged ex-Marine must choose between a life of seizures in a drug-induced haze, or risky surgery that could turn him into a vegetable. Text, PDF
- [Proper Library - Original Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/proper-library/) - A gay, academically challenged African-American boy faces a conflict between doing well at school and his feelings for a former lover. Text, PDF, mp3
- [Hot Ice - Original Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/hot-ice/) - An urban myth about girl encased in a block of ice ties together a story about urban decay and social change in a 1970s Chicago neighborhood. Text, PDF
- [Elbow Room - Original Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/elbow-room/) - A metafictional story in which an unidentified black writer describes his relationship with a young multiracial couple in the late 1960s. Text, PDF
- [Flying Home - Original Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/flying-home/) - A young, idealistic black man survives when his plane crashes into a field while training to become an air-force pilot. Text, PDF
- [Talpa - Original Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/talpa/) - The wife and brother of a man dying slowly from a painful, weeping skin condition agree to take him on a pilgrimage to a famous religious shrine. Text, PDF
- [(Because) We're Very Poor - Original Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/we-are-very-poor/) - A flood causes a Mexican farming family to lose both their crop and a precious cow intended to help their twelve-year-old daughter attract a husband. Text, PDF
- [Absit - Original Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/absit/) - A child molester is planning to have his way with a young girl he found playing alone in her garden. Fortunately, she manages to turn the tables. Text, PDF
- [Spiderweb - Original Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/spiderweb/) - Marrying “impetuously” at a young age, an Argentinian woman finds herself trapped in a relationship with a nagging, controlling man she hates. Text, PDF
- [The Intoxicated Years - Original Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/intoxicated-years/) - Three thoroughly dislikeable teenaged girls given almost total freedom by their parents pursue a hedonistic, drug and alcohol fueled lifestyle. Text, PDF
- [Black Tickets - Original Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/black-tickets/) - An imprisoned drug dealer recalls his obsessive love for and unpredictable, often violent relationship with, his girlfriend and partner in crime. Text, PDF
- [Jealous Husband Returns in Form of Parrot - Original Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/jealous-parrot/) - A jealous husband who did not communicate his love or concerns enough is resurrected as a parrot and purchased as a pet by his recently widowed wife. Text, PDF
- [A Good Scent from a Strange Mountain - Original Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/a-good-scent/) - With help from Ho Chi Minh, an aging Vietnamese-American immigrant makes ready to meet his wife and other dead loved-ones in the “village square”. Text, PDF
- [This Is Earle Sandt - Original Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/earle-sandt/) - A small town banker’s ordered world is shaken when he witnesses the crash that killed pioneer American aviator Earle Sandt. Text, PDF
- [Looking for Mr. Green - Original Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/looking-for-mr-green/) - A man delivering unclaimed welfare checks to people in a depressed neighborhood goes above and beyond trying find the elusive Mr. Green. Text, PDF
- [A Father-To-Be - Original Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/father-to-be/) - A man worried for his future children when he notices the resemblance between his wife-to-be and the “dandy” sitting next to him on the subway. Text, PDF
- [Greatness Strikes Where It Pleases - Original Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/greatness-strikes/) - A retarded man, institutionalized for most of his life, uses childhood memories to connect to the world through an imaginary private universe. Text, PDF
- [Islands - Original Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/islands/) - A nine-year-old Bosnian boy’s innocence is shattered by an account of the brutal mistreatment and torture of children in Stalin’s prison camps. Text, PDF
- [The Grandmother - Original Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/the-grandmother/) - Rejected by four of her five children, a frail Thai grandmother forced to fend for herself selling dumplings faces rudeness and disrespect every day. Text, PDF
- [Champoon - Original Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/champoon/) - The locked up daughter of a Chinese towkay meets a grisly end after escaping her chains and finding her lover in the arms of a prostitute. Text, PDF
- [The Weight of a Gun - Original Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/weight-of-a-gun/) - In trying to prevent her schizophrenic adult son from self-harming or harming others, a woman finds herself caring for her ex-husband's newborn baby. Text, PDF
- [The Good Shopkeeper - Original Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/the-good-shopkeeper/) - An affair with a nondescript housemaid teaches an unemployed Nepali accountant that self-worth comes from within and not a fancy job or title. Text, PDF
- [A Country Doctor (Kafka) - Original Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/country-doctor-kafka/) - A country doctor experiences an existential crisis when his response to a call for help sets off a surreal chain of events. Text, PDF, mp3
- [The End of Old Horse - Original Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/end-of-old-horse/) - Two boys face their first experience with death and grief when a friend’s dog chokes to death trying to free itself from being tied to a pole. Text, PDF
- [The Demon Lover - Original Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/demon-lover/) - ‘I shall be with you,’ he said, ‘sooner or later. You won’t forget that. You need do nothing but wait.’ Only a little more than a minute later she was free...
- [The Jungle -  Original Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/the-jungle/) - A lonely fifteen-year-old boarding school student experiences an implied sexual awakening after bonding with a girl in another class . Text, PDF
- [Look at All Those Roses - Original Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/all-those-roses/) - Car trouble on a deserted country road results in a woman spending several unsettling hours with a mother and daughter who hold a frightening secret. Text, PDF
- [A Day in the Dark - Original Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/day-in-the-dark/) - A woman recalls when, as a fifteen-year-old girl “platonically” in love with her uncle, she was forced to re-examine their relationship. Text, PDF
- [My Milk Goes Dry - Original Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/my-milk-goes-dry/) - An orphaned Vietnamese girl grows up constantly being told by an uncle that she will grow into a barbarous woman devoid of human sentiment. Text, PDF
- [The Khaki Coat - Original Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/khaki-coat/) - Set in the early days of the Vietnamese socialist government, a girl supports her younger siblings by hawking items she digs up in graveyards. Text, PDF
- [An Unsound Sleep - Original Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/an-unsound-sleep/) - Set during the Vietnamese Buddhist Crisis of 1963, an old man is shocked to learn that his daughter is involved in anti-government activities. Text, PDF
- [Think of England - Original Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/think-of-england/) - A sixteen-year-old Welsh barmaid comes home traumatised when her “sweetheart” (an English soldier she has known for only a week), tries to rape her. Text, PDF
- [Repent, Harlequin! Said the Ticktockman - Original Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/repent-harlequin/) - In a future world, everyone and everything must be on time. If you are late to work or cause a delay, the lost time is deducted from your life. Text, PDF, mp3
- [The Sea Beyond - Original Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/the-sea-beyond/) - A Philippine passenger-cargo ship transports a critically injured stevedore to the next port for medical treatment. Text, PDF
- [Children of the Ash-Covered Loam - Original Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/ash-covered-loam/) - A description of life, ritual and coming of age in a Philippine subsistence farming family during the planting season. Text, PDF
- [The Water-Faucet Vision - Original Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/water-faucet-vision/) - A woman reflects back to when, as a fifth grader in a Catholic schoool, she woke to a “vision” telling her how to recover a precious lost object. Text, PDF
- [In the Zoo - Original Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/in-the-zoo/) - A sorry-looking polar bear in a zoo reminds adult sisters of a "gentle alcoholic ne’er-do-well" who befriended them during their traumatic childhood. Text, PDF
- [If You Sing like That for Me - Original Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/sing-like-that-for-me/) - After an arranged marriage, a young Indian woman who has come to love her husband is shattered to learn that to him, she is a mere commodity. Text, PDF
- [Eyes of a Blue Dog - Original Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/blue-dog/) - While in a dream state, a man has an ongoing relationship with a woman in which each desires the other but they cannot touch . Text, PDF, mp3
- [The Sun, the Moon, the Stars - Original Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/sun-moon-stars/) - A Dominican-American man attempts to shake off the stereotype of Latino machismo to maintain the relationship with his Cuban-born girlfriend. Text, PDF
- [Private Lies - Original Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/private-lies/) - A " happily" married man is obsessed with finding the soon-to-be eighteen-year-old woman he and his previous wife gave up for adoption at birth. Text, PDF
- [In the Shadow of War - Original Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/in-the-shadow-of-war/) - A boy, curious about a mysterious woman who walks through his village every day wearing a black veil, follows her to her destination. Text, PDF
- [Big Black Good Man - Original Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/big-black-good-man/) - An elderly man working the night desk at a seedy hotel is terrified when the “biggest, strangest, and blackest man he’d ever seen” asks for a room. Text, PDF
- [Babette's Feast - Original Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/babettes-feast/) - The lives of twelve people change when a refugee French revolutionary wins the lottery and uses her winnings to prepare them a special meal. Text, PDF
- [The Underground Gardens - Original Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/underground-gardens/) - When an Italian immigrant finds that land he bought by mail order is too dry and hard to farm, he hand digs a subterranean paradise. Text, PDF
- [The Ultimate Safari - Original Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/ultimate-safari/) - Set during the Mozambican Civil War, a displaced family undertake an arduous journey to a South African refugee camp through Kruger Park. Text, PDF
- [Sweat - Original Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/sweat/) - He crept an inch or two toward her – all that he was able, and she saw his horribly swollen neck and his one open eye shining with hope.
- [Separating - Original Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/separating/) - Why. It was a whistle of wind in a crack, a knife thrust, a window thrown open on emptiness. The darkness was featureless. Richard had forgotten why.
- [Meneseteung - Original Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/meneseteung/) - A traumatic discovery changes a contented frontier poet’s outlook on life and drives her into isolation and madness. Text, PDF
- [Long Distance - Original Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/long-distance/) - A selfish bachelor realizes that his long-distance affair with a Japanese woman has probably ruined her chances of a happy life. Text, PDF
- [Eveline - Original Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/eveline/) - No! No! No! It was impossible... She set her white face to him, passive, like a helpless animal. Her eyes gave him no sign of love or farewell or recognition.
- [A Circle in the Fire](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/circle-in-the-fire/) - A widow who runs a large farm is visited by three teenage boys asking for a horse ride. Her refusal results in her greatest fear. Text, PDF
- [The Snob - Original Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/the-snob/) - A young man shopping with a new girlfriend shames his poorly dressed father by ignoring him when they see each other in a department store. Text, PDF, mp3
- [The Faithful Wife](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/faithful-wife/) - A young man is invited to visit the home of a married woman he has never spoken to. When he gets there, she encourages him to “make out”. Text, PDF
- [The Sentimentalists - Original Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/sentimentalists/) - Two young men in a department store notice three women being watched by a store detective. They bet on which one is the thief. Text, PDF
- [Now That April’s Here - Original Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/now-that-aprils-here/) - Two men, obviously lovers, travel to France because America “had nothing to offer them”. A promiscuous female roommate destroys their relationship. Text, PDF
- [All the Years of Her Life - Original Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/all-the-years/) - A young man’s attitude to life changes when he sees the effect on his mother after she rescued him when he was caught pilfering goods from a store. Text, PDF
- [The Way It Felt to Be Falling - Original Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/the-way-it-felt/) - A young woman's exhilaration over her first skydiving lesson helps overturn other fears and turns her life around. Text, PDF
- [The Toxic Donut - Original Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/toxic-donut/) - Set in the future, technology exists that can concentrate a whole year’s toxic wastes and pollutants into a single donut. Text, PDF
- [Three Thanksgivings - Original Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/three-thanksgivings/) - A widow has three Thanksgivings to decide whether to sell her house and move in with her married children, or find enough money to repay her mortgage. Text, PDF
- [Mrs. Dutta Writes a Letter - Original Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/mrs-dutta/) - When a widowed Indian woman’s attempts to integrate with her son’s American family fail, she finds the courage to admit she will be happier back home. Text, PDF
- [Mammon and the Archer - Original Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/mammon/) - A self-made millionaire learns there are two things his money can’t buy: love and family recognition among New York High Society. Text, PDF, mp3
- ['If I Forget Thee, Oh Earth...' - Original Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/if-i-forget-thee/) - A ten-year-old boy receives a nasty shock when his father takes him on his first trip outside the protective dome of a moon colony. Text, PDF, mp3
- [The Conversion of the Jews - Original Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/conversion-of-the-jews/) - A Jewish boy makes a stand by proclaiming, against his Rabbi's teachings, that God has the power to impregnate a woman without intercourse. Text, PDF
- [Unnecessary Things - Original Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/unnecessary-things/) - A woman’s discovery of the remains of her childhood teddy bear brings back long-suppressed memories and fosters a feeling of overwhelming nostalgia. Text, PDF
- [Africans - Original Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/africans/) - A woman is betrayed by her abusive Afrikaner husband and later, by the “loyal” African servant who has cared for her since childhood. Text, PDF
- [Four Summers - Original Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/four-summers/) - A woman’s coming of age and the lives of those around her are portrayed through experiences over four summers at the same lakeside bar. Text, PDF
- [A Conversation from the Third Floor - Original Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/conversation-from-the-third-floor/) - An inmate standing at the third floor window of an Egyptian prison has a brief conversation with his wife standing on the street below. Text, PDF, mp3
- [At War's End: An Elegy - Original Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/at-wars-end/) - The heir to a feudal estate is caught between a promise made under pressure to a revolutionary leader and what he thinks is the right thing to do. Text, PDF
- [The Centipede - Original Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/centipede/) - A boy who has suffered years of torment from his older sister snaps. Forgetting she has a weak heart, he plays a potentially fatal trick on her. Text, PDF
- [The Flight - Original Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/the-flight/) - Upon finding her disabled husband having sex with a nude model she is infatuated with, a successful sculptor “takes flight” into the sea. Text, PDF
- [A Home near the Sea - Original Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/home-near-the-sea/) - A homeless Indian woman tells a fellow beggar how her husband, a lazy drunkard, lost a secure job and caused them to be evicted from their hut. Text, PDF
- [Rules of the Game - Original Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/rules-of-the-game/) - I was six when my mother taught me the art of invisible strength. It was a strategy for winning arguments, respect from others, and eventually,... chess games.
- [Menagerie, a Child’s Fable - Original Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/menagerie/) - A confronting allegorical fable about the chaos that ensues when animals are left to fend for themselves in a locked pet shop. Text, PDF
- [The Mesmerizer - Original Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/mesmerizer/) - A young teen volunteers as a subject in the show of a traveling hypnotist. His performance is so convincing that he fools everyone in town. Text, PDF, mp3
- [Henne Fire - Original Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/henne-fire/) - Small fires tend to pop up around a seemingly deranged woman described as “not a human being but a fire from Gehenna [hell]”. Text, PDF
- [The Turning - Original Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/the-turning/) - Thanks to a “snow dome”, a mother of two whose hard-drinking husband is increasingly violent towards her finds a way out of her predicament. Text, PDF
- [The Three Questions - Original Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/three-questions/) - It once occurred to a certain king, that if he always knew the right time to begin everything; if he knew who were the right people to listen to, and whom to...
- [A Clean Well-Lighted Place  - Literary Analysis](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/a-clean-well-lighted-place/analysis/) - Setting, Point of View & Tone, Themes, Characters & Conflicts, Dramatic Structure & Moods, Literary Techniques
- [A Clean Well-Lighted Place - Original Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/a-clean-well-lighted-place/) - It was very late and everyone had left the cafe except an old man who sat in the shadow the leaves of the tree made against the electric light. In the day...
- [Salt - Original Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/salt/) - "DEAR COMRADE EDITOR. I want to describe a thing or two about thoughtless women, who do us harm. The boys trust that when you were making your rounds..."
- [My First Goose - Original Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/my-first-goose/) - SAVITSKY, the Sixth Division commander, rose when he saw me, and I marvelled at the beauty of his gigantic body. He rose and — with the purple of his...
- [Crossing the Zbrucz - Original Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/crossing-the-zbrucz/) - THE SIXTH DIVISION commander reported that Novograd-Volynsk was taken today at dawn. The staff has moved out of Krapivno and our transport sprawls in a noisy...
- [The Portrait of a Lady - Original Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/portrait-of-a-lady/) - We were certain she had stayed at the same age for twenty years. She could never have been pretty; but she was always beautiful.
- [Rex Ex Machina - Original Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/rex-ex-machina/) - You will find the machine walled up in ... my bedchamber. Your education is now complete my son, use it well. Be kind to our slave peoples, the world is yours.
- [Breakfast at Tiffany's - Original Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/tiffanys/) - A budding writer describes his relationship with his downstairs neighbour, mysterious New York café society girl Holly (Holiday) Golightly. Text, PDF, mp3
- [Black Is My Favorite Color - Original Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/black-is-my-favorite-color/) - A Jewish-American shopkeeper unsuccessfully tries to not only integrate with his local African-American community but also marry into it. Text, PDF
- [A Christmas Memory - Original Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/christmas-memory/) - It’s bad enough in life to do without something you want; but confound it, what gets my goat is not being able to give somebody something you want them to have.
- [The Wives of the Dead - Original Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/wives-of-the-dead/) - Two young women grieving over the recent deaths of their husbands are woken with messages of hope. But are the messages real? Text, PDF, mp3
- [To Da-duh in Memoriam - Original Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/da-duh-in-memoriam/) - A feisty nine-year-old American girl engages in a process of one-upmanship with her eighty-year-old Barbadian grandmother. Text, PDF
- [The Replacement - Original Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/replacement/) - A frustrated teacher and his bored students are reading a story in class as a schoolboy outside interacts strangely with a tree. Text, PDF
- [How to Tell a True War Story - Original Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/how-to-tell-a-war-story/) - Observations on a collection of stories related by soldiers highlight the difficulty of faithfully communicating one’s wartime experiences. Text, PDF
- [America and I - Original Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/america-and-i/) - A Russian immigrant is disappointed by what she finds in America. English proficiency and some lessons from American history lead her out of despair. Text, PDF
- [Double Birthday - Original Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/double-birthday/) - A man and his aging uncle have the same birthday. An unexpected visitor on the day heralds a possible improvement in their lives. Text, PDF
- [The Sand Castle - Original Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/sand-castle/) - Despite Earth having warmed so much that exposure to sunlight or seawater can be deadly, a woman teaches her grandchildren hoto build a sand castle. Text, PDF
- [Small Change - Original Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/small-change/) - An Israeli woman suffers severe psychological trauma while imprisoned for a minor crime in post-World War 2 Switzerland. Text. PDF
- [Filial Sentiments of a Parricide - Original Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/filial-sentiments/) - A philosophical newspaper article discussing a parricide-suicide committed by a highly respected French businessman. Text, PDF
- [Resurrection of a Life  - Original Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/resurrection-of-a-life/) - A "resurrected" man reflects on how, when ten years old, the carnage of World War 1 and other injustices had made it difficult for him to eccept God. Text, PDF
- [The Red Convertible - Original Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/red-convertible/) - A carefreeyoung Native-American is drafted and sent to Vietnam. He comes back a changed man, suffering a downward spiral of depression and despair. Text, PDF
- [Night - Original Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/night/) - An impoverished eighty-year-old woman struggles to cope with task of looking after her middle-aged, severely retarded son. Text, PDF
- [The Eskimo Connection - Original Story](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/eskimo-connection/) - A pen-pal relationship develops between a Japanese-American widow and a young Eskimo jailed for an unknown crime in a federal penitentiary. Text, PDF
- [The Challenge - Original Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/the-challenge-llosa/) - A street thug challenges a man from a rival group to a knife fight. The other accepts, knowing he has little chance of surviving. Text, PDF
- [Philomel Cottage - Original Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/philomel-cottage/) - When a new bride sets out to find out more about her husband, she discovers a trail of swindling, bigamy, murder, and escape from prison. Text, PDF
- [Black Boy - Original Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/black-boy/) - When an African-American boy helps a twelve-year-old girl home after a horse riding accident, he doesn’t get the thanks he deserves. Text, PDF
- [Animal Stories - Original Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/animal-stories/) - A melancholicyoung man struggles to deal with his mother’s deteriorating state of mind and looming death from a brain tumor. Text, PDF
- [All Over the World - Original Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/all-over-the-world/) - A special friendship between a protective young man and eleven-year-old girl is put on hold as they go their separate ways during World War 2. Text, PDF
- [A Fish Named Dog - Original Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/fish-named-dog/) - A girl’s parents buy her a pet goldfish instead of the dog or cat she had asked for. Soon, she and the fish are the envy of the neighborhood. Text, PDF
- [The Sailor-Boy’s Tale - Original Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/sailor-boys-tale/) - A young sailor who accidentally kills another flees, gets his first kiss, and is saved by a grateful shape-shifter returning a good deed. Text, PDF
- [My Life with the Wave - Original Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/my-life-with-the-wave/) - A man is seduced by a sensuous ocean wave. The wave insists on following him home, where they begin a passionate love affair. Text, PDF, mp3
- [Désirée's Baby - Original Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/desirees-baby/) - A marriage based on desire fails when racism raises its ugly head. It also leads to the possible death of a mother and her baby. Text, PDF, mp3
- [Civil Peace - Original Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/civil-peace/) - By maintaining a positive attitude and working together, a family finds opportunity amid chaos and lawlessness in the aftermath of war. Text, PDF, mp3
- [Astronomer's Wife - Original Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/astronomers-wife/) - An astronomer appears more in love with his work than his wife, treating her purely as someone whose role it is to maintain the household order. Text, PDF
- [What We Talk About When We Talk About Love - Original Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/talk-about-love/) - I was going to tell you about something... I mean, it ought to make us feel ashamed when we talk like we know what we're talking about when we talk above love.
- [The Learned Adventure of the Dragon's Head - Original Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/dragons-head/) - A badly damaged book leads to an adventure involving attempted robbery, Scotland Yard and a riddle leading to buried pirate treasure. Text, PDF
- [Suspicion - Original Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/suspicion/) - A man who fears for his ailing wife rushes home after a chemist identifies arsenic in some hot chocolate their new cook has prepared. Text, PDF
- [The Spinoza of Market Street - Original Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/spinoza/) - An aging philosopher struggling to complete his life's work regains his youthful virility and passion after marrying a reclusive spinster. Text, PDF, mp3
- [At the Jim Bridger - Original Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/jim-bridger/) - A man feels cheapened by having used a censored version of a story about how he saved the life of a hiker to seduce a woman. Text, PDF
- [Metamorphosis - Original Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/metamorphosis/) - A man who works hard to support his parents and sister wakes up one morning, having metamorphosed into a giant bug. Text, PDF, mp3
- [Leaving the Yellow House - Original Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/leaving-the-yellow-house/) - A 72 year-old woman reviews her life of lost opportunities after an accident threatens her ability to live independently in her isolated Yellow House. Text, PDF
- [Heart of Darkness - Original Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/heart-of-darkness/) - A riverboat captain travels into the heart of Africa to recover an enigmatic trading post manager who may have become of unsound mind. Text, PDF, mp3
- [Goodbye, Columbus - Original Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/goodbye-columbus/) - A twenty-three-year-old man from a working class Jewish family falls for a spoiled college student from a wealthy one. Text, PDF
- [Fountains in the Rain - Original Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/fountains-in-the-rain/) - An arrogant young man courts, seduces and sleeps with a woman for the “pleasure” of seeing her reaction when he says, “It’s time to break it off!” Text, PDF
- [Swaddling Clothes - Original Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/swaddling-clothes/) - She did not feel in the least afraid and made no effort to free herself. In a flash the thought had struck her, Ah, so the twenty years have already gone by!Swaddling Clothes – Yukio Mishima Online Flip Book / Download Back to our Information Page Unfortunately your browser does not appear to support the audio tag. He was always busy, Toshiko’s husband. Even tonight he had to dash off to an appointment, leaving her to go home alone by taxi. But what else could a woman
- [The Bunyip (Dunlop) - Original Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/bunyip-dunlop/) - Australian aboriginal myth about the fate of a foolish man's tribe after he tries to kidnap the cub of a dreaded water-dwelling Bunyip. Text, PDF
- [The Bunyip (Lang) - Original Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/bunyip-lang/) - Australian aboriginal myth about the fate of a foolish man's tribe after he tries to kidnap the cub of a dreaded water-dwelling Bunyip. Text, PDF
- [Why Fishes Inhabit the Water - Original Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/why-fishes-inhabit-the-water/) - An Australian aboriginal myth about how fish came to live in rivers, and why rivers feel warmer if you swim on a cold day. Text, PDF.
- [Gamani-canda - Original Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/gamani-canda/) - Story 257 from the Jataka Tales, recording the wisdom of a king in dealing with charges against and questions asked by a former servant of his father. Text, PDF
- [The Erlking - Original Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/erlking/) - A mysterious being, who lives in harmony with nature, exerts a strange power over animals and seduces young women traveling through his forest domain Text, PDF
- [The Veldt - Original Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/the-veldt/) - A shadow flickered over Mr. McClean's hot face. Many shadows flickered. The vultures were dropping down the blazing sky. "A cup of tea?" asked Wendy...
- [Storyteller - Original Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/storyteller-silko/) - A Yupic Eskimo woman relates how “Gussick” (American) miners and traders ruined her life and destroyed her village’s traditional customs and values. Text, PDF
- [The Storyteller - Original Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/storyteller-saki/) - "It is the most beautiful story that I ever heard," said the bigger of the small girls. "It is the only beautiful story I have ever heard," said Cyril.
- [Roselily - Original Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/roselily/) - A Christian African-American from the South daydreams about how her life is about to change as she marries a Muslim man from Chicago. Text, PDF. mp3
- [My Kinsman, Major Molineux - Original Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/major-molineux/) - In pre-revolutionary America, a naïve young man travels to town seeking favors from his kinsman Major Molineu, an officer in the British army. Text, PDF, mp3
- [Mrs Plum - Original Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/mrs-plum/) - Deep down, a white activist who campaigns for better treatment for black South Africans still harbors racist sentiments. Text, PDF
- [What I Have Been Doing Lately - Original Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/what-i-have-been-doing/) - A circular narrative in the form of a dream. Woken by her doorbell and finding no one there, the narrator embarks upon a surreal journey. Text, PDF
- [The Drowned Giant - Original Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/drowned-giant/) - The body of a giant man left to rot on a beach becomes a tourist attraction and source of exploitation because of its otherworldly size. Text, PDF, mp3
- [The Grave - Original text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/the-grave/) - A gold ring found in an open grave and seeing unborn kittens in the womb of a dead rabbit bring about an epiphany in a young girl. Text, PDF
- [Battle Royal - Original Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/battle-royal/) - I am not ashamed of my grandparents for having been slaves. I am only ashamed of myself for having at one time been ashamed.
- [The Enchanted Buffalo - Original Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/enchanted-buffalo/) - With help from a wizard, a treacherous bison bull kills his herd’s aging and much loved king and tries to eliminate the old king’s young son. Text, PDF, mp3
- [LAFFF - Original Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/lafff/) - A girl travels forward in time to get ideas she can use to win the Best Story Award in her school’s annual writing competition. Text, PDF, mp3
- [Fox Hunt - Original Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/fox-hunt/) - A studious Asian-American boy preparing for the PSAT exam is helped by what appears to be a "huli", or fox spirit disguised as a girl. Text, PDF, mp3
- [My Sweet Sixteenth - Original Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/my-sweet-sixteenth/) - A school friend helps a young girl deliver her baby in her bedroom while a house-full of guests celebrate her “Sweet Sixteenth” birthday downstairs. Text, PDF
- [On the Bridge - Original Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/on-the-bridge/) - A young teen comes of age when he realizes that the “cool” friend he looks up to is little more than a boastful fake. Text, PDF, mp3
- [Wandering Willie’s Tale - Original Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/wandering-willies-tale/) - A mysterious stranger helps the tenant of a dead Scottish Lord by accompanying him to hell to collect a rent receipt. Text, PDF
- [Farewell to a Ghost - Literary Analysis](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/farewell-ghost/analysis/) - Setting, Point of View & Tone, Themes, Characters & Conflicts, Dramatic Structure & Moods, Literary Techniques
- [Jeeves Takes Charge - Original Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/jeeves-takes-charge/) - Wonder valet Jeeves saves his employer from losing his inheritance and helps him avoid what would have been a fate worse than death. Text, PDF
- [The Hitchhiking Game - Original Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/hitchhiking-game/) - A couple on a road trip play a seemingly harmless game. The woman, normally shy and sexually inhibited, pla the role of a seductive hitchhiker. Text, PDF
- [A Passion in the Desert - Original Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/passion-in-the-desert/) - I am not always regretting my palm trees and my panther. In the desert, you see, there is everything and nothing… it is God without mankind.
- [La Grande Bretèche - Original Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/la-grande-breteche/) - An elderly French doctor entertains guests at a dinner party by relating how he solved the mystery of a dilapidated, abandoned mansion. Text, PDF
- [The Lower Garden District Free Gravity Mule Blight - Original Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/free-gravity-mule-blight/) - Temporarily short of money, a woman going through a divorce commits insurance fraud before considering what she will do with the rest of her life. Text, PDF
- [Music - Original Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/music/) - When a father takes his rebellious daughter on a business trip into the Kentucky hills, an act of disobedience leads to a milestone in her life. Text, PDF
- [Victory Over Japan - Original Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/victory-over-japan/) - A third-grader with an ulterior motive befriends a shy, reclusive classmate. Their innocence is shattered when the two pair up for a paper-drive. Text, PDF
- [The Crooked Man - Original Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/crooked-man/) - Set 500 years into the future, a man and woman who are strongly attracted to one another struggle to cope with how the world has changed. Text, PDF
- [One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich - Original Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/ivan-denisovich/) - An account of life in a Soviet Gulag designed to break inmates through a combination of harsh conditions, brutality and absurd rules. Text, PDF, mp3
- [Rothschild's Fiddle (Violin) - Original Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/rothschilds-fiddle/) - And as he thought of his life so full of waste and losses he began playing without knowing how touching his music was, and the tears streamed down his cheeks.
- [Our Stories](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/) - Over 1,100 famous short and not-so-short stories from leading authors around the world.
- [The Garden of Forking Paths - Original Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/garden-of-forking-paths/) - "In a guessing game to which the answer is chess, which word is the only one prohibited?" I thought for a moment and then replied: "The word is chess."
- [The Difference - Original Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/the-difference/) - A woman’s calm existence is shattered when she receives a letter from the mistress of her husband of twenty years. Text, PDF
- [The Devil and Daniel Webster - Original Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/daniel-webster/) - A farmer sells his soul to the devil in exchange for seven years of good luck. When the time comes to “pay up”, he tries to get out of the deal. Text, PDF, mp3
- [A Pilgrim Yankee’s Progress - Original Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/pilgrim-yankee/) - Misunderstandings arise between a Filipino family recovering from the trauma of World War 2 and an American soldier visiting the grave of an uncle. Text, PDF
- [Forty-Five a Month - Original Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/forty-five-a-month/) - A working-class father is tortured by guilt over his inability to spend time with his young daughter and provide the luxuries other children enjoy. Text, PDF
- [Residents and Transients - Original Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/residents-and-transients/) - A woman must choose between joining her salesman husband in a new city, or remaining in her home town where she is having an affair with a local man. Text, PDF
- [Redemption - Original Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/redemption/) - After a twelve-year-old boy kills his seven-year-old brother in a horrific farm accident, he and his family have different ways of coping with grief. Text, PDF
- [A New England Nun - Original Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/new-england-nun/) - After fourteen years apart, things have changed for an engaged couple. Each has a good reason not to marry, but neither is prepared to admit it. Text, PDF, mp3
- [Mrs. Bathurst - Original Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/mrs-bathurst/) - Four men discuss the mysterious events surroun an affair between a New Zealand hotel keeper and a mentally unstable naval officer. Text, PDF, mp3
- [Mateo  Falcone - Original Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/mateo-falcone/) - A Corsican father delivers a brutal punishment when his ten-year-old son accepts money to hide a fleeing criminal and later betrays the man. Text, PDF, mp3
- [The Indian Uprising - Original Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/indian-uprising/) - An American city is being besieged by “Comanches”. The city leader is incompetent, its citizens are unhappy, and rebellion is in the air. Text, PDF, mp3
- [The Masque of the Red Death - Original Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/red-death/) - A prince tries to escape a deadly plague known as the “Red Death” by locking himself and a large entourage inside a secluded abbey. Text, PDF, mp3
- [The Man to Send Rain Clouds - Original Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/man-to-send-rain-clouds/) - A Native American community deceive a young Catholic priest in order to give an old man who has died a traditional tribal burial. Text, PDF, mp3
- [The Lifted Veil - Original Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/lifted-veil/) - When an illness leaves a man with psychic powers such that he can see into the future and read the thoughts of others, his life becomes a misery. Text, PDF, mp3
- [Roses, Rhododendron - Original Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/roses-rhododendron/) - A lifelong friendship develops after a girl falls permanently in love with a house, a family of three people and with an area of countryside. Text, PDF
- [How I Contemplated the World... - Original Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/how-i-contemplated-the-world/) - Starved of affection by her wealthy parents, a sixteen-year-old girl’s acts of rebellion escalate from shoplifting to prostitution. Text, PDF
- [The Grand Inquisitor - Original Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/grand-inquisitor/) - When Jesus visits Seville amid the suffering of the Spanish Inquisition, he is arrested and told that he is no longer welcome on Earth. Text, PDF
- [Flowering Judas - Original Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/flowering-judas/) - An idealistic American schoolteacher who traveled to Mexico to support the socialist revolution has a sense of impending doom. Text,
- [The Diamond as Big as the Ritz - Original Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/diamond-as-big-as-the-ritz/) - "How could a man of my position be fair-minded toward you? You might as well speak of a Spaniard being fair-minded toward a piece of steak."
- [I Go Along - Original Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/i-go-along/) - A high schooler attends a poetry recital with students from a higher English class and is lucky enough to sit with the hottest girl in his grade. Text, PDF
- [Blackberry Winter - Original Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/blackberry-winter/) - A nine-year-old boy is affected for life when a menacing-looking tramp with a large switchblade in his pocket visits his family farm. Text, PDF
- [Waldo - Original Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/waldo/)
- [Neighbour Rosicky - Original Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/rosicky/) - ...nothing could be more right for a man who had helped to do the work of great cities and had always longed for the open country and had got to it at last.
- [The Management of Grief - Original Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/management-of-grief/) - A fictional account of how families of Canadian-Indian passengers coped in the aftermath of the 1985 bombing of Air India Flight 182. Text, PDF, mp3 The Management of Grief – Bharati Mukherjee Online Flip Book / Download Back to our Information Page Unfortunately your browser does not appear to support the audio tag. A WOMAN I don’t know is boiling tea the Indian way in my kitchen. There are a lot of women I don’t know in my kitchen, whispering, and
- [The Man That Corrupted Hadleyburg - Original Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/hadleyburg/) - When some people in “the most honest and upright town in all the region" offend a passing stranger, the vindictive man takes sweet revenge. Text, PDF, mp3
- [The Daffodil Sky - Original Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/daffodil-sky/) - A man sent to prison for killing a love rival returns to the scene of the crime. His intent is to confront the woman they were fighting over. Text, PDF
- [A Very Old Man With Enormous Wings - Original Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/old-man-with-enormous-wings/) - “He’s an angel,” she told them. “He must have been coming for the child, but the poor fellow is so old that the rain knocked him down.”
- [Swimming Lessons - Original Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/swimming-lessons/) - A Parsi immigrant trying to adjust to life in Toronto thrills his parents when he sends them a book he has written about growing up in Bombay. Text, PDF
- [A Simple Heart / Soul - Original Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/simple-heart/) - Set in 1800s France, a simple-minded girl lives through fifty years of drudgery as house servant to an expolitative, “disagreeable” woman. Text, PDF, mp3
- [The Argentine Ant - Original Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/argentine-ant/) - I had not yet found any solution to how we could go on living in these parts; and it seemed to me that none of the people here had found it either.
- [The Short Happy Life of Francis Macomber - Original Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/francis-macomber/) - I’ll have to send a truck to the lake to wireless for a plane to take the three of us into Nairobi. Why didn’t you poison him? That’s what they do in England.
- [The Garden of Stubborn Cats - Original Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/stubborn-cats/) - "They keep me prisoner, they do, those cats! Oh, I'd be glad to leave! What wouldn't I give for a little apartment all my own. They follow me, they trip me up!
- [The Ring - Original Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/the-ring/) - The movement was definitive and unconditional. In this one motion he did what she had begged him to do: he vanished and was gone. She was free.
- [Pomegranate Seed - Original Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/pomegranate-seed/) - “You mean the paper is an absolute blank?” “No, not quite. There is writing on it. I can make out something like ‘mine’ — oh, and ‘come’. It might be ‘come’.”
- [The Mark of Vishnu - Original Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/mark-of-vishnu/) - On his forehead were little drops of blood. These the teacher wiped with his handkerchief. Underneath was the V mark where the Kala Nag had dug his fangs.
- [Javni - Original Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/javni/) - ‘You are the “chosen ones”... The sacred books are yours. The Vedas are yours. You are all the twice-born. We are your servants, Ramappa — your slaves.’
- [A Guide to Berlin - Original Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/guide-to-berlin/) - “I can’t understand what you see down there,” says my friend. What indeed! How can I demonstrate to him that I have glimpsed somebody’s future recollection?
- [Cathedral - Original Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/cathedral/) - It was like nothing else in my life up to now. "I think you got it," he said. "Take a look. What do you think?" "It's really something," I said.
- [Snapshots of a Wedding - Original Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/snapshots-of-a-wedding/) - She dropped to her knees before the bride, clenched her fists together, pounded the ground hard and said loudly: "Be a good wife! Be a good wife!"
- [The Sky is Gray - Original Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/sky-is-gray/) - The sleet’s coming down heavy and I turn up my coat collar to keep my neck warm. Mama tells me turn it right back down. “You not a bum,” she says. “You a man.”
- [Recitatif - Original Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/recitatif/) - Roberta covered her face with her palms. When she took them away she really was crying. “Oh shit, Twyla. Shit, shit, shit. What the hell happened to Maggie?”
- [Tickets, Please - Original Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/tickets-please/) - He was their sport now. They were going to have their own back, out of him. Strange, wild creatures, they hung on him and rushed at him to bear him down.
- [The Horse Dealer's Daughter - Original Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/horse-dealers-daughter/) - ‘No, I want you, I want you,’ was all he answered, with that terrible intonation which frightened her almost more than her horror lest he should not want her.
- [The Death of Ivan Ilyich - Original Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/ivan-ilyich/) - "Death is finished," he said to himself. "It is no more!" He drew in a breath, stopped in the midst of a sigh, stretched out, and died.
- [Noise Level - Original Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/noise-level/)
- [The Doll's House - Original Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/the-dolls-house/) - But now she had forgotten the cross lady. She smiled her rare smile. "I seen the little lamp," she said, softly. Then both were silent once more.
- [Blood-Burning Moon - Original Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/blood-burning-moon/)
- [The Tell-Tale Heart - Original Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/tell-tale-heart/) - "Villains!" I shrieked, "dissemble no more! I admit the deed! --tear up the planks! here, here! --It is the beating of his hideous heart!"
- [Souvenir - Original Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/souvenir/) - Kate swallowed calmly and let their gaze grow endless. She saw herself in her mother’s wide brown eyes and felt she was falling slowly into them.
- [A Mystery of Heroism - Original Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/mystery-of-heroism/) - It seemed to him strange that he had allowed his mind to maneuver his body into such a situation. He understood that it might be called dramatically great.
- [Mrs. Spring Fragrance - Original Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/spring-fragrance/) - “Why! why!” exclaimed Mrs. Spring Fragrance, more and more surprised. But the only explanation which Mr. Spring Fragrance vouchsafed was a jadestone pendant.
- [Lamb to the Slaughter - Analysis](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/lamb-to-the-slaughter/analysis/) - Lamb to the Slaughter, Short Story by Roald Dahl, Plot & Character Analysis, Themes
- [The Guest - Original Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/the-guest/) - The schoolmaster was watching the two men climb toward him. One was on horseback, the other on foot. They had not yet tackled the abrupt rise...
- [Christmas Not Just Once a Year - Original Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/christmas-not-once/) - We regret having ignored the voice of our cousin Franz, who long ago drew attention to the terrible consequences of what was on the face of it a harmless event.
- [Slowly, Slowly in the Wind - Original Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/slowly-slowly/) - I’ve had unpleasant dealings with old Frosby, I told you, Maggie. It just isn’t fitting if you get chummy with the son. Do me this one favor, Maggie doll.
- [Terrapin - Original Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/terrapin/) - Victor ... answered the questions they put to him, but only those questions, and since they didn’t ask him anything about a terrapin, he did not bring it up.
- [In the Cemetery Where Al Jolson Is Buried - Original Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/al-jolson/) - I review those things that will figure in the retelling: a kiss through surgical gauze, the pale hand correcting the position of the wig. In the Cemetery Where Al Jolson Is Buried - Amy Hempel Online Flip Book / Download Back to our Information Page Unfortunately your browser does not appear to support the audio tag. "Tell me things I won't mind forgetting," she said. "Make it useless stuff or skip it." I began. I told her insects fly through rain, missing every drop,
- [A Girl Like Phyl - Original Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/girl-like-phyl/) - The holier-than-thou, do-the-right-thing attitude. Not like Phyl at all! And yet it was Phyl, now. He’d been living on a dream, some crazy dream.
- [Amnesty (Octavia Butler) - Original Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/amnesty-butler/) - The only difference between the way they treated me and the way the aliens treated me was that the so-called human beings knew when they were hurting me.
- [King of the Bingo Game - Original Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/king-of-bingo/) - He felt the dull pain exploding in his skull, and he knew even as it slipped out of him that his luck had run out on the stage.
- [Bloodchild - Original Story](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/bloodchild/) - “But you came to me to save Hoa.” “Yes.” I leaned my forehead against her. “And to keep you for myself,” I said. I didn’t understand it, but it was so.
- [The Devil and Tom Walker - Original Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/tom-walker/) - “Tom, you’re come for!” said the black fellow, gruffly. The black man whisked him like a child astride the horse and away he galloped ...
- [Women in their Beds - Original Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/women-in-their-beds/) - Do you remember how each time you lay yourself down in a bed you wondered, if even for a moment, what you were doing there?
- [The Flying Machine - Original Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/flying-machine/) - “You are merciful, Emperor.” “No, only bewildered and afraid.” “What is the life of one man against those of a million others? I must take solace from that...”
- [Babylon Revisited - Original Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/babylon-revisited/) - Family quarrels are bitter things. They don’t go according to any rules. They’re not like aches or wounds; they’re more like splits in the skin that won’t heal.
- [I Could See the Smallest Things - Original Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/smallest-things/) - I thought for a minute of the world outside my house, and then didn’t have any more thoughts except the thought that I had to hurry up and sleep.
- [Vengeful Creditor - Original Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/vengeful-creditor/) - “I have always known that the craze for education in this country will one day ruin all of us. Now even children will commit murder in order to go to school.”
- [Flight - Original Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/flight/) - His left hand fluttered helplessly toward his breast. The second crash sounded from below. Pepé swung forward and toppled from the rock. Text,
- [The Heavenly Christmas Tree - Original Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/heavenly-christmas-tree/) - ...n the morning the porter found the little dead body of the frozen child on the woodstack; they sought out his mother too.... She had died before him.
- [Christmas Every Day - Original Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/christmas-every-day/) - ...it had leaked out who had caused all these Christmases. People despised her, because if it had not been for her greediness it wouldn't have happened;
- [The Stout Gentleman - Original Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/stout-gentleman/) - The skirts of a brown coat parted behind, and gave me a full view of the broad disk of a pair of drab breeches:—and that was all I saw of the stout gentleman!
- [The Man in the Black Suit - Original Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/man-in-the-black-suit/) - The Devil came to me once, long ago; suppose he were to come again now? I am too old to run now;. And suppose he is still hungry?
- [Pigeon Feathers - Original Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/pigeon-feathers/) - ... that the God who had lavished such craft upon these worthless birds would not destroy His whole Creation by refusing to let David live forever.
- [Leiningen Versus the Ants - Original Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/leiningen/) - "Everything in order?'' he asked. "They're gone,'' said his nurse. "To hell." "I told you I'd come back," he murmured, "even if I am a bit streamlined."
- [Chickamauga - Original Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/chickamauga/) - He had slept through it all, grasping his little wooden sword, heedless of the grandeur of the struggle as the dead who had died to make the glory.
- [Axolotl - Original Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/axolotl/) - There was a time when I thought a great deal about the axolotls. I went to see them in the aquarium and stayed for hours watching them... Now I am an axolotl.
- [The Train from Rhodesia - Original Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/train-from-rhodesia/) - The train called out; but there was no answer; and the cry hung on: I’m coming…I’m coming… Creaking, jerking, jostling, gasping, the train filled the station.
- [Miss Brill - Original Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/miss-brill/) - She unclasped the necklet quickly; quickly, without looking, laid it inside. But when she put the lid on she thought she heard something crying.
- [Heat - Original Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/heat/) - I saw my parents standing in the doorway of my bedroom watching me and I knew their thoughts, how they could keep me from harm, and there was no clear answer.
- [On the Rainy River - Original Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/rainy-river/) - I passed through towns with familiar names, and then to Vietnam, where I was a soldier, and then home again.. I was a coward. I went to the war.
- [A Kidnapped Santa Clause - Original Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/kidnapped-santa/) - Coming to meet his loyal friends appeared the imposing form of Santa Claus, his white beard floating in the breeze and his bright eyes sparkling with pleasure.
- [A Good Man is Hard to Find - Original Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/a-good-man/) - "Why you're... one of my own children!" She reached out and touched him on the shoulder. The Misfit sprang back and shot her three times through the chest.
- [The Gift of the Magi - Literary Analysis](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/gift-of-the-magi/analysis/) - Setting, Point of View & Tone, Themes, Characters & Conflicts, Dramatic Structure & Moods, Literary Techniques
- [Broken Chain - Original Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/broken-chain/) - Whenever he ran over a pothole, she screamed with delight. Once, when it looked like they were going to crash, she placed her hand over his and it felt like love.
- [The Bear - Original Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/the-bear/) - Truth doesn’t change. Truth is one thing. It covers all things which touch the heart—honor and pride and pity and justice and courage and love.
- [The Bear (Short Story) - Original Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/the-bear-short-story/) - Then he saw the bear. not as big as he had dreamed it, but as big as he had expected it, bigger, dimensionless against the dappled obscurity, looking at him.
- [Young Goodman Brown - Original Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/goodman-brown/) - And when he had lived long, and was borne to his grave a hoary corpse, ... they carved no hopeful verse upon his tombstone, for his dying hour was gloom.
- [The Yellow Wallpaper - Original Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/yellow-wallpaper/) - It is very seldom that mere ordinary people like John and myself secure ancestral halls for the summer. A colonial mansion, a hereditary estate...
- [Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been? - Original Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/where-are-you-going/) - She watched herself push the door slowly open as if she were back safe somewhere in the other doorway ... out into the sunlight where Arnold Friend waited.
- [The Legend of Sleepy Hollow - Original Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/sleepy-hollow/) - The old country wives, however, who are the best judges of these matters, maintain to this day that Ichabod was spirited away by supernatural means.
- [Exchanging Glances - Original Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/exchanging-glances/) - Least of all did I feel like knowing about the sadness and the dismay which were in his voice when he asked us, "Where, then, have you lived all these years?"
- [The Elephant Vanishes - Original Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/elephant-vanishes/) - “The most important point is unity,” I explained. “Even the most beautifully designed item dies if it is out of balance with its surroundings."
- [The Stone Boy - Original Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/stone-boy/) - He knew without looking up that the men were watching him. “Not a tear in his eye,” said Andy, and Arnold knew that his uncle had gestured the men to attention.
- [The Man in the Well - Original Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/man-in-the-well/) - ...we looked around at each other and it was decided. I don’t remember if we told ourselves a reason why we couldn’t help him, but we had decided. Text, PDF
- [Zero Hour - Original Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/zero-hour/) - Footsteps. A little humming sound. The attic lock melted. The door opened. Mink peered inside, tall blue shadows behind her. “Peekaboo,” said Mink.
- [The Drummer Boy of Shiloh - Original Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/drummer-boy/) - “Now, boy,” said the General quietly, “you are the heart of the army. Think of that. You’re the heart of the army. Listen, now.”
- [Amnesty (Nadine Gordimer)- Original Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/amnesty-gordimer/) - I’m watching the rat, it’s losing itself, its shape, eating the sky, and I’m waiting. Waiting for him to come back. Waiting. I’m waiting to come back home.
- [Speech Sounds - Original Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/speech-sounds/) - ...they watched her with at least as much curiosity as fear. “I’m Valerie Rye,” she said, savoring the words. “It’s all right for you to talk to me.”
- [The Things They Carried - Original Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/things-they-carried/) - Briefly, in the rain, Lieutenant Cross saw Martha's gray eyes gazing back at him. It was very sad, he thought. The things men carried inside.
- [The Eatonville Anthology - Original Story](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/eatonville-anthology/) - Sewell is a man who lives all to himself. He is baldheaded; but he says he doesn't mind that, because he wants as little as possible between him and God.
- [Fever - Original Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/fever/) - Your life, man. Tell me what sacred destiny, what nigger errand keeps you standing here at my filthy pallet? Fly, fly, fly away home.
- [The Gilded Six-Bits - Original Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/gilded-six-bits/) - Then another thought came clawing at her. He had come home to buy from her as if she were any woman in the longhouse. Fifty cents for her love.
- [Unaccustomed Earth - Original Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/unaccustomed-earth/) - Her first impulse was to shred it. They were sentences that proved, with more force than the funeral, that her mother no longer existed.
- [The Legend of the Christmas Rose - Original Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/christmas-rose/) - Göinge forest never again celebrated the hour of our Saviour’s birth; and of all its glory, there lives today only the plant which Abbot Hans had plucked.
- [A Day's Wait - Original Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/days-wait/) - “What time do you think I’m going to die?” he asked. “What?” “About how long will it be before I die?” “You aren’t going to die. What’s the matter with you?”
- [My Old Man](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/my-old-man/) - “Don’t listen to what those bums said, Joe. Your old man was one swell guy.” But I don’t know. Seems like when they get started they don’t leave a guy nothing.
- [The Snows of Kilimanjaro - Original Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/snows-of-kilimanjaro/) - Outside the tent the hyena made the same strange noise that had awakened her. But she did not hear him for the beating of her heart.
- [In Another Country - Original Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/in-another-country/) - I was very much afraid to die, and often lay in bed at night by myself, afraid to die and wondering how I would be when I went back to the front again.
- [Naming the Names - Original Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/naming-the-names/) - Once more they came back for the names, and I began: ‘Abyssinia, Alma, Balaclava, Balkan, Belgrade, Bosnia’, naming the names... I know no others.
- [Diamond Dust: A Tragedy - Original Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/diamond-dust/) - ‘Not even about our own children, not even your firstborn son, or your grandchildren, have you made so much of as of that dog.’
- [The Wedding Dance - Original Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/wedding-dance/) - Tonight, all the women who once danced in her honor were now dancing in honor of another whose only claim was that perhaps she could give her husband a child.
- [The Centaur - Original Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/centaur/) - The man lay stretched out on his back and looking up at the sky. An ever deepening sea, a sea with tiny, motionless clouds that were islands, and immortal life.
- [The Invisible Cloth - Original Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/invisible-cloth/) - ...the king was much pleased, thinking that he would be able to distinguish men who were legitimate sons from those who were not, and so increase his treasures.
- [The Emperor’s New Clothes - Original Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/emperor/) - "This procession has got to go on," he thought. So he walked more proudly than ever, as his noblemen held high the train that wasn't there at all.
- [The Country Husband - Original Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/country-husband/) - Dr. Herzog recommends woodwork as a therapy, and Francis finds some true consolation in the simple arithmetic involved and in the holy smell of new wood.
- [Big Brother, Little Sister - Original Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/big-brother-little-sister/) - They hurried through the night. A patrol car screamed along the street. A star burst across the sky. The lights of the city tightened around them.
- [A Game of Cards - Original Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/game-of-cards-1972/)
- [A Game of Cards - 2012 Revised Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/game-of-cards-2012/) - While she was laughing, she died. Everybody was silent. Then Mrs Heta took the cards from Nani’s hands and kissed her... Who will tend to the marae now?
- [That Evening Sun Go Down - Original Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/that-evening-sun-go-down/) - Sometimes the husbands of the washing women would fetch and deliver the clothes, but Jubah never did that for Nancy, even before father told him to stay away...
- [Master Jacob - Original Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/master-jacob/) - ...it would have been cheaper for them to have bought their pork in the first place, for, as it was, they paid a pretty penny for it.
- [The Water of Life - Original Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/water-of-life/) - The best packages are not always wrapped up in blue paper and tied with gay string, there are better men in the world than kings and princes, fine as they seem.
- [Melvin in the Sixth Grade - Original Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/melvin-in-sixth-grade/) - Melvin was even weirder to me than the rest of them. It was almost like he wasn’t white. He was an alien of some kind. My beautiful alien from Planet Cowboy.
- [Two Dollars - Original Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/two-dollars/) - And after supper, she closed her eyes and enjoyed that wonderful candy with the skinny, hungry little girl and the tiny boy with the big eyes.Two Dollars – Sharona Vedol Online Flip Book / Download Back to our Information Page “Helen! Are you coming?” “Yes!” Helen called back, yanking her dress on. It was a bit small, but she could manage. “Where are we going, Dad?” she asked. She didn’t often get to spend time with her father these days. He
- [The First Year of My Life - Original Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/the-first-year/) - On all the world’s fighting fronts the men killed in action or dead of wounds numbered 8,538,315 and the warriors wounded and maimed were 21,219,452.
- [The Nightingale and the Rose - Original Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/nightingale-and-rose/) - She said that she would dance with me if I brought her red roses," cried the young Student; "but in all my garden there is no red rose."
- [The Love Potion - Original Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/love-potion/) - “I was pretty certain that the juba-juice would work, Oom Schalk,” he said, “after Lettie’s father told me that you had been there that morning.”
- [Unto Dust - Original Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/unto-dust/) - Alive, you couldn't go wrong in distinguishing between a white man and a kafir. Dead, you had great difficulty in telling them apart.
- [Guests of the Nation - Original Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/guests-of-the-nation/) - ...the patch of bog where the Englishmen were was a million miles away. And anything that happened to me afterwards, I never felt the same about again.
- [A Problem - Original Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/problem/) - “Shall we be false to civic duty,” Ivan Markovitch exclaimed passionately, “if instead of punishing an erring boy we hold out to him a helping hand?”
- [The Looking-Glass - Original Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/the-looking-glass/) - NEW YEAR'S EVE. Nellie, the daughter of a landowner and general, a young and pretty girl, dreaming day and night of being married, was sitting in her room...
- [A Defenseless Creature - Original Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/defenseless-creature/) - Everything began swimming before Kistunov’s eyes. He breathed out all the air in his lungs in a prolonged sigh and sank helpless on a chair.
- [The Lady With the Dog - Original Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/lady-with-the-dog/) - IT was said that a new person had appeared on the sea-front: a lady with a little dog. Dmitri Dmitritch Gurov, who had by then been a fortnight at Yalta...
- [The Japanese Quince - Original Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/japanese-quince/) - Mr. Nilson smiled; the little tree was so alive and pretty! And instead of passing on, he stayed there smiling at the tree.
- [The Birds - Original Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/birds/) - Nat wondered how many million years of memory were stored in those little brains, now giving them this instinct to destroy mankind...
- [Carmilla - Original Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/carmilla/) - She caressed me with her hands, and lay down beside me on the bed, and drew me towards her; I felt immediately delightfully soothed, and fell asleep again.
- [Carmilla - Story](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/carmilla/story/) - I was wakened by a sensation as if two needles ran into my breast very deep at the same moment, and I cried loudly. She started back, her eyes fixed on me...
- [The Piece of String - Original Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/piece-of-string/) - ...in the ravings of death agony, he protested his innocence, repeating: “A little bit of string — a little bit of string. See, here it is, M’sieu le Maire.”
- [The (Diamond) Necklace - Original Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/the-necklace/) - "You say that you bought a necklace of diamonds to replace mine?" "Yes. You never noticed it!" And she smiled with a joy that was at once proud and ingenuous.
- [The Jewels / False Gems - Original Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/jewels/)
- [A Way of Talking - Original Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/way-of-talking/) - I’m not clever the way she [my sister] is. I can’t say things the same and I’ve never learnt to stick up for myself. But she won’t have to be alone again
- [Aquifer - Original Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/aquifer/) - (It) confirmed what I’ve thought since Alan Mannering left, that the past is in us, and not behind us. Things are never over.
- [The Devil - Original Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/the-devil/) - And when Honore returned in the evening he found her praying, and he calculated immediately that she had made twenty sous out of him.
- [Two Friends - Original Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/two-friends/) - They shook hands, trembling from head to foot with a dread beyond their mastery. The officer cried "Fire!” The twelve shots were as one.
- [Killings - Original Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/killings/) - ...the explosion of the shot surrounded him, isolated him in a nimbus of sound that cut him off from all his time, all his history .
- [A Dead Woman's Secret - Original Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/dead-womans-secret/) - The woman had died without pain, quietly, as a woman should whose life had been blameless. Now she was resting in her bed, lying on her back, her eyes closed...
- [Don't Look Now - Original Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/dont-look-now/) - ...he saw the vaporetto with Laura and the two sisters steaming down the Grand Canal, not today, not tomorrow, but the day after that.
- [Boule de Suif / Ball of Fat - Original Story](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/boule-de-suif/) - She made terrible efforts at self-control... She sat upright, with a fixed expression, her face pale and rigid, hoping desperately that no one saw her give way.
- [African Passions - Original Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/african-passions/) - “African Powers that surround our Savior,” Teresa prayed. “Babalú Ayé, Oshún, Eleggua, Orula, Ogún, Shangó, Yemayá, Obatalá, help me get over this man.”
- [Marjorie Daw - Original Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/marjorie-daw/) - Wait until you are entirely recovered; in any case, do not come without giving me warning. I fear the effect of your abrupt advent here—under the circumstances.
- [Love in the Cornhusks - Original Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/love-in-the-cornhusks/) - My lover is true to me. He never meant to desert me. Amado, she thought. Amado. And she cried, remembering the young girl she was less than two years ago...
- [How My Brother Leon Brought Home a Wife - Original Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/brother-leon/) - "I am afraid. He may not like me." "Does that worry you still, Maria?" my brother Leon said. "From the way you talk, he might be an ogre...
- [A Night in the Hills - Original Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/night-in-the-hills/) - How Gerardo Luna came by his dream no one could have told, not even he... For his dream concerned the forest.. He had wanted to go ever since he could remember.
- [Land Deal - Original Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/land-deal/) - ...it went without saying that what existed in the one sense could never exist in the other. Almost anything was possible except, of course, the actual.
- [The Sheriff's Children - Original Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/sheriffs-children/) - I learned to feel that no degree of learning or wisdom will change the color of my skin... I shall always wear what in my own country is a badge of degradation
- [The Wife's Story - Original Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/wifes-story/) - I saw the changing. In his feet, first. They got longer, the toes stretching out and the foot getting long, and fleshy, and white. And no hair on them.
- [The Direction of the Road - Original Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/direction-of-the-road/) - We drive past it (the tree) several times a year, and it has never failed to uphold Relativity with dignity and the skill of long practice.
- [Abuela Invents the Zero - Original Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/abuela/) - “Your grandmother says to tell you that of all the hurtful things you can do to a person, the worst is to make them feel as if they are worth nothing.”
- [President Cleveland, Where Are You? - Original Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/president-cleveland/)
- [Tuesday of the Other June - Original Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/tuesday-other-june/) - Then my mother spoke quickly in my ear: Turn the other cheek, my Junie; smile at the world, and the world'll surely smile back.
- [Bright and Morning Star - Original Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/bright-morning-star/)
- [The New Dress - Original Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/new-dress/) - ...she went straight to the far end of the room, to a shaded corner where a looking-glass hung and looked. No! It was not RIGHT.
- [Greyhound People - Original Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/greyhound-people/) - I read his greeting as a very good sign. And it further occurred to me that traveling all over California on the Greyhound I could meet anyone at all.
- [Ringing the Changes - Robert Aickman](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/ringing-the-changes/) - He had never been among those many who deeply dislike church bells, but the ringing that evening at Holihaven changed his view.
- [The Goophered Grapevine - Original Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/goophered-grapevine/) - “Wen dey tole ’im ‘bout de goopher on de grapevimes, he ‘uz dat tarrified dat he turn pale, en look des like he gwine ter die right in his tracks.
- [The Destructors - Original Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/destructors/) - One moment the house had stood there with such dignity between the bomb-sites like a man in a top hat, and then, bang, crash, there wasn’t anything left.
- [The End of the Party - Original Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/end-of-the-party/) - ... she was not the first to notice Francis Morton's stillness, where he had collapsed against the wall at the touch of his brother's hand.
- [Rikki-Tikki-Tavi - Original Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/rikki-tikki-tavi/) - ...he kept that garden as a mongoose should keep it, with tooth and jump and spring and bite, till never a cobra dared show its head inside the walls.
- [Camp Cataract - Original Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/camp-cataract/) - When Beryl returned her face was dead white; she stared at Harriet in silence, and even when Harriet ... shook her hard, she would not say anything.
- [A Shocking Accident - Original Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/shocking-accident/) - ‘I was wondering,’ Sally said, ‘what happened to the poor pig?’ ‘They almost certainly had it for dinner,’ Jerome said happily and kissed the dear child again.
- [The Pearl - Story](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/pearl/story/) - “This pearl has become my soul,” said Kino. “If I give it up I shall lose my soul.
- [The Pearl - Original Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/pearl/)
- [The Undertaker - Original Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/undertaker/) - “Have you taken leave of your senses, master, or have you not yet recovered from the effects of yesterday’s drinking-bout? What funeral was there yesterday?"
- [The Night the Ghost Got In - Original Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/night-the-ghost-got-in/) - The ghost that got into our house raised such a hullabaloo of misunderstandings that I am sorry I didn’t just let it keep on walking, and go to bed.
- [The Night the Bed Fell - Original Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/night-the-bed-fell/) - “What in the name of God is going on here?” asked father. The situation was finally put together like a gigantic jigsaw puzzle.
- [The Ghost of Michael Jackson - Original Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/michael-jackson/)
- [The Catbird Seat - Original Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/catbird-seat/) - It was just a week to the day since Mr. Martin had decided to rub out Mrs. Ulgine Barrows. The term “rub out” pleased him ...
- [The Postmaster (Alexander Pushkin) - Original Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/postmaster-pushkin/) - What is a postmaster? A veritable martyr of the fourteenth class, only protected by his rank from blows, and that not always.
- [April in Paris - Original Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/april-in-paris/)
- [The Princess and the Tin Box - Original Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/tin-box/)
- [The Secret Life of Walter Mitty - Original Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/walter-mitty/) - "We're going through!" The Commander's voice was like thin ice breaking. He wore his full-dress uniform, with the heavily braided white cap pulled down...
- [Mowgli's Brothers - Original Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/mowglis-brothers/) - The dawn was beginning to break when Mowgli went down the hillside alone to the crops to meet those mysterious things that are called men.
- [Holiday - Original Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/holiday/) - It was not a society or a class that pampered its invalids and the unfit. So long as one lived, one did one’s share. Suffering went with life...
- [The Last Lovely City - Original Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/last-lovely-city/) - “You know, the whole city seems so corrupt these days... I’ll be awfully glad to get back to Mexico. At least I more or less understand the corruption there.”
- [Fleur - Original Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/fleur/) - Women didn't usually play with men, so the evening that Fleur drew a chair up to the men's table without being so much as asked, there was a shock of surprise.
- [The Life You Save May Be Your Own - Original Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/life-you-save/) - The body, lady, is like a house: it don't go anywhere; but the spirit, lady, is like a automobile: always on the move, always...The Life You Save May Be Your Own - Flannery O’Connor Online Flip Book / Download Back to our Information Page Unfortunately your browser does not appear to support the audio tag. The old woman and her daughter were sitting on their porch when Mr. Shiftlet came up their road for the first time. The old
- [Birthmates - Original Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/birthmates/) - He would not want to sound like he was calling from a welfare hotel, years too late, to say, "Yes, that was a baby we had together, it would have been a baby.
- [The Fat Girl - Original Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/fat-girl/) - He truly believed they were arguing about her weight. She knew better: she knew that beneath the argument lay the question of who Richard was.
- [Kitchen - Original Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/kitchen/)
- [Journey into a Dark Heart - Original Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/journey-into-a-dark-heart/) - Above him Libra crossed the zenith of the night sky and dropped toward the horizon. European justice descending over tropical Africa.
- [The Blues I'm Playing - Original Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/blues-im-playing/) - The girl at the piano heard the white woman saying, “Is this what I spent thousands of dollars to teach you?” “No,” said Oceola simply. “This is mine. Listen!
- [Slave on the Block - Original Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/slave-on-the-block/) - He glanced impudently and grinned that wide, beautiful, white-toothed grin that made Anne say when she first saw him, “He looks like the jungle.”
- [The Money-Box - Original Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/money-box/) - They didn't set eyes on 'im agin until they all signed on aboard the Planet, and they didn't set eyes on their money until they was two miles below Gravesend.
- [Railroad Standard Time - Original Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/railroad-standard-time/) - “This was your grandfather’s," Ma said. I was twelve, maybe fourteen years old when Grandma died. Ma put it on the table. The big railroad watch, Elgin.
- [The Birthmark - Original Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/birthmark/) - He need not thus have flung away the happiness which would have woven his mortal life of the selfsame texture with the celestial.
- [A Point at Issue! - Original Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/point-at-issue/) - Faraday thought, “I love her none the less for it, but my Nellie is only a woman, after all.” ... he had quite forgotten the episode of the portrait.
- [I am Bigfoot - Original Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/i-am-bigfoot/) - I never steal them, but I do call them away, and they come with me. I know my powers and I use my powers. And when I call a woman, she comes.
- [Bigfoot Stole My Wife - Original Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/bigfoot-stole-my-wife/) - The problem, as I’m finding out over the last few weeks, is basic credibility. It makes me sad to see it, the look of disbelief in each person’s eye.
- [Dahong Palay - Original Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/dahong-palay/) - Slowly his eyes closed. But before unconsciousness came he had seen their eyes. And they told him that never again would he be called “Sebiong Pasmado"
- [Zita - Original Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/zita/) - Slowly, painfully, she tried to put the pieces together and as she did so a sob escaped deep from her breast – a great understanding had come to her.Zita - Arturo B. Rotor Online Flip Book / Download Back to our Information Page Unfortunately your browser does not appear to support the audio tag. Turong brought him from Pauambang in his small sailboat, for the coastwise steamer did not stop at any little island of broken cliffs and coconut palms. It was almost midday:
- [User Friendly - Original Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/user-friendly/) - I took the papers from my father and read: How do I love thee? Let me compute the ways: On the last page, in color graphics was a stylized heart.
- [Lajwanti (Rajinder Singh Bedi) - Original Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/lajwanti-bedi/) - “Let us forget the past! Our society is guilty because it refuses to honour women like you. It ought to be ashamed of itself. You shouldn’t feel dishonoured.”
- [What the Old Man Does is Always Right - Original Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/always-right/) - "Well, I like all this," said both the Englishmen; "always going down the hill, and yet always merry; it's worth the money to see it."
- [Gudbrand on the Hillside - Original Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/gudbrand/) - "Heaven be thanked that I have got you safely back again, you who do everything so well that I want neither rooster nor goose, neither pigs nor cows. "
- [The Grasshopper and the Bell Cricket - Original Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/grasshopper-and-bell-cricket/) - ,,,when you have become a young man, laugh with pleasure at a girl's delight when, told that it's a grasshopper, she is given a bell cricket.
- [The Aleph - Original Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/aleph/) - The Aleph’s diameter was probably little more than an inch, but all space was there, actual and undiminished. ... I felt infinite wonder, infinite pity.
- [Tennessee's Partner - Original Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/tennessees-partner/) - Thar—I told you so!—thar he is—coming this way, too—all by himself, sober, and his face a-shining. Tennessee! Pardner!" And so they met.
- [A Tale of the Tontlawald - Original Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/tontlawald/) - Long, long ago there stood in the midst of a country covered with lakes a vast stretch of moorland called the Tontlawald, on which no man ever dared set foot.
- [Foreign Shores - Original Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/foreign-shores/) - The idea that there is an unearned happiness, that certain people find their way to it, nearly made her sick ... But then nothing really made sense anymore.
- [Wasps' Nest - Original Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/wasps-nest/) - There was a moment’s pause and Harrison drew himself up. There was a new dignity in his face—the look of a man who has conquered his own baser self.
- [The Best Girlfriend You Never Had - Original Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/best-girlfriend/) - ... it might be the first step—in fifty-five or a thousand—toward something like a real life, the very first step toward something that will last.
- [The Fall of the House of Usher - Original Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/house-of-usher/) - I saw the mighty walls rushing asunder, and the deep and dank tarn at my feet closed sullenly and silently over the fragments of the "House of Usher."
- [Usher II - Original Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/usher-2/) - I came to Mars ...to teach you a fine lesson for what you did to Mr Poe on Earth. As of this day, beware. The House of Usher is open for business!
- [A Sound of Thunder - Literary Analysis](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/sound-of-thunder/analysis/) - Setting, Point of View & Tone, Themes, Characters & Conflicts, Dramatic Structure & Mood, Literary Techniques
- [The 400-Pound CEO - Original Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/400-pound-ceo/) - And I will emerge again from between the legs of my mother, a slighter and more beautiful baby, destined for a different life...
- [The Luck of Roaring Camp - Original Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/roaring-camp/) - Such was the golden summer of Roaring Camp. They were "flush times," and the luck was with them. The claims had yielded enormously.
- [Bliss - Original Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/bliss/) - “I’m too happy–too happy!” she murmured. And she seemed to see on her eyelids the lovely pear tree with its wide open blossoms as a symbol of her own life.
- [The Selfish Giant - Original Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/selfish-giant/) - And the child smiled on the Giant, and said to him, 'You let me play once in your garden, to-day you shall come with me to my garden, which is Paradise.'
- [A Cup of Tea - Original Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/cup-of-tea/) - They were rich, really rich, not just comfortably well off... if Rosemary wanted to shop she would go to Paris as you and I would go to Bond Street.
- [The Toll-House - Original Story](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/toll-house/)
- [The Outcasts of Poker Flat - Original Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/outcasts-of-poker-flat/) - ...still calm as in life, beneath the snow lay he who was at once the strongest and yet the weakest of the outcasts of Poker Flat.
- [Lullaby - Original Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/lullaby/) - Remembering how it was when Ella was with her, she felt the rush so big inside her heart for the babies. And she sang the only song she knew to sing for babies.
- [The Chrysanthemums - Original Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/chrysanthemums/) - She whispered to herself sadly, “He might have thrown them off the road. That wouldn’t have been much trouble, not very much. But he kept the pot,”
- [Odour of Chrysanthemums - Original Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/odour-of-chrysanthemums/) - She knew she submitted to life, which was her immediate master. But from death, her ultimate master, she winced with fear and shame.
- [A Job for Valentin - Original Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/valentin/) - Valentín looks at me for an answer. I see that I’m going to have to put up with him in this new job too. I don’t think anyone else would have the patience.
- [Going Fishing - Original Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/going-fishing/) - A place in the world where she can be as big and strong and loud — as Grace — as she was born, as she naturally is? Is there such a place? Is it possible?
- [Diary of a Madman (Guy de Maupassant) - Original Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/diary-of-a-madman-maupassant/) - Alienist physicians... declare that there are in the world many undiscovered madmen as adroit and as much to be feared as this monstrous lunatic.
- [Eleonora - Original Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/eleonora/) - "Sleep in peace! -- for the Spirit of Love reigneth, and thou art absolved, for reasons which shall be made known to thee in Heaven, of thy vows unto Eleonora."
- [The Stonecutter - Original Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/the-stone-cutter/) - And as he never asked for things he did not have, or desired to be greater and mightier than other people, he was happy at last...
- [The Killers - Original Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/the-killers/) - “I can’t stand to think about him waiting in the room and knowing he’s going to get it. It’s too awful.” “Well,” said George, “you better not think about it.”
- [The Man Who Lived Underground - Original Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/man-who-lived-underground/) - I’VE GOT TO HIDE, he told himself. His chest heaved as he waited, crouching in a dark corner of the vestibule. He was tired of running and dodging.
- [Nothing Ever Breaks Except the Heart - Original Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/nothing-ever-breaks/) - McCloskey was saying nothing in French or in any other language. He simply stood there looking at her with a rather faded, hopeless look around his eyes.
- [Blacksoil Country - Original Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/blacksoil-country/) - And me lying quiet in the heart of the country, slowly sinking into it, making it mine, grain by grain blending my white grains with its many black ones
- [Why I Live at the P.O. - Original Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/why-live-at-the-po/) - And that's the last I've laid eyes on any of my family or my family laid eyes on me for five solid days and nights. ... But here I am, and here I'll stay.
- [The Barber's Trade Union - Original Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/barbers-trade-union/) - ...it was time that the elders of the village came to them to be shaved rather than that they should dance attendance upon their lords and masters
- [The Beautiful People - Original Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/beautiful-people/) - "Where are these people?" Mary asked half to herself. "What has happened to them and don't they miss themselves, these manufactured things?"
- [Tiny, Smiling Daddy - Original Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/tiny-smiling-daddy/) - When a father dies, he is gone; there is no tiny, smiling daddy who appears, waving happily, in a secret pocket in your chest.
- [First Confession - Original Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/first-confession/) - ‘Lord God,’ she wailed bitterly, ‘some people have all the luck! ’Tis no advantage to anybody trying to be good. I might just as well be a sinner like you.’
- [The Californian's Tale - Original Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/californians-tale/) - "When do you expect her back?" "This is Wednesday. She'll be back Saturday, in the evening--about nine o'clock, likely." I felt a sharp sense of disappointment.
- [Roman Fever - Original Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/roman-fever/) - "I suppose I did it as a sort of joke—" "A joke?" "Well, girls are ferocious sometimes, you know. Girls in love especially."
- [The Red Bow - Original Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/red-bow/) - Kill every dog, every cat, she said very slowly. Kill every mouse, every bird. Kill every fish. Anyone objects, kill them too.
- [A Christmas Story - Original Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/christmas-story/) - You see the people in the street all wishing each other a Merry Christmas and dressed up in their churchgoing clothes... you get a different picture of them.
- [The Middleman - Original Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/middleman/) - Someone in the capital will be happy to know about Santa Simona, about Bud, Clovis. There must be something worth trading in the troubles I have seen.
- [The Fall of Edward Barnard - Original Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/edward-barnard/) - ‘You seldom see beauty face to face. Look at it well, since the moment is transitory. But it will be an imperishable memory in your heart. You touch eternity.’
- [The Fifty-first Dragon - Original Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/fifty-first-dragon/) - (They) agreed that it would be best not to tell how Gawaine had achieved his record, and how he came to die. It might have a bad effect on school spirit.
- [Smells and Jingles - Original Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/smells-and-jingles/) - Japanese Folktale. A greedy merchant saves money every day by eating his boiled rice while enjoying the smell of broiled eels coming from a neighbor’s shop.
- [Phikul Thong - Original Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/phikul-thong/) - A popular Thai folktale that appears to an early variant of the Charles Perrault story, Toads and Diamonds (The Fairies).
- [The Two Cakes - Original Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/two-cakes/) - Marziella was as charming and beauteous of face as she was beautiful of heart; Puccia, by the same rule, had a face of ugliness and an heart of pestilence...
- [The She-Bear - Original Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/she-bear/) - O thou beauteous morsel fit for kings, why dost thou hide thy passing beauty in a bear's hide? O light of love, why art thou closed in such an hairy lantern?
- [Sun, Moon, and Talia - Original Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/sun-moon-talia/) - Talia began to excuse herself, saying that it was not her fault because the king had taken possession of her territory when she was drowned in sleep
- [Cenerentola - Original Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/cenerentola/) - The stepsisters, departed quite quietly towards their mother's home confessing, in spite of themselves, that 'Tis a madman's deed to dispute the stars' decree.'
- [Little Red Cap - Original Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/red-riding-hood/little-red-cap/) - "As long as I live, I will never by myself leave the path, to run into the wood, when my mother has forbidden me to do so."
- [The Darling - Original Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/the-darling/) - She wanted a love that would absorb her whole being, her whole soul and reason — that would give her ideas and an object in life, and would warm her old blood.
- [In the Garden of the North American Martyrs - Original Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/north-american-martyrs/) - Mary had more to say, much more; she waved back at Louise, then turned off her hearing aid so that she would not be distracted again.
- [The Monkey and the Crocodile - Original Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/monkey-and-crocodile/) - Then the monkey laughed, and scolded him, saying: You fool! You traitor! How can anyone have two hearts? Go home, and never come back under the rose-apple tree.
- [The Monkey's Heart - Original Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/monkeys-heart/) - The crocodile, feeling as sad and miserable as if he had lost a thousand pieces of money, went back sorrowing to the place where he lived.
- [The Griffin and the Minor Canon - Original Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/griffin-and-minor-canon/) - The equinox day came round, and the monster ate nothing. If he could not have the Minor Canon, he did not care for anything. He gradually declined, and died.
- [Armistice - Original Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/armistice/) - Gus sat up straight, his face grim. His truck was a massive tank rumbling through the wide boulevards. The French, on the sidewalks, were overpowered with fear.
- [Animal Farm - Original Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/animal-farm/) - Man is the only real enemy we have. Remove Man from the scene, and the root cause of hunger and overwork is abolished for ever.
- [Customs - Original Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/customs/) - She felt a surprising tenderness. Why hadn't it struck her before? Some things did come of being part gringa. She had (almost) sprung free of the old customs.
- [Zebra - Original Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/zebra/) - He had not walked along Franklin Avenue since the accident; had not gone down that steep hill. Yes, he would walk carefully down that hill to the corner...
- [Supper - Original Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/supper/) - I just don’t like boys. But I definitely would never tell my grandmother. She already thinks there’s something wrong with me, and I guess maybe there is.
- [Nadia the Willful - Original Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/nadia-the-willful/) - When all were assembled Tarik said, “From this day forward, let my daughter Nadia be known not as willful but as wise for she has given me back my beloved son.”
- [Someone to Talk To - Original Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/someone-to-talk-to/) - They’ll be so happy. I know they will. Because everyone has something, some little thing, my darling, they’ve been waiting so long to tell you…
- [Animal Farm - Story](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/animal-farm/story/) - The creatures outside looked from pig to man, and from man to pig, and from pig to man again; but already it was impossible to say which was which.
- [The Stains - Original Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/the-stains/) - 'He's directly above us. He's poised.' Curiously enough, it was at the verge of the small, lustrous pool that Stephen's body was ultimately found.
- [The Hospice - Original Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/hospice/) - The nearness of death compelled silence and Maybury alighted when a bus stop was reached. One of the undertaker's men said that he should not have to wait long.
- [The Pardon of Becky Day - Original Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/becky-day/) - "I know whar Jim is... An' I'll—git—thar—first." With that whisper went Becky's last breath, but the smile was there, even when her lips were cold.
- [Folie à Deux - Original Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/folie-a-deux/) - For Anthony, the betrayal matters, the folly, the carelessness, the cruelty. The haunted sea is all the truth there is, what he honours because it matters still.
- [Johnny Mnemonic - Original Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/johnny-mnemonic/) - I decided to stay up here. When I looked out across the Killing Floor, before he came, I saw how hollow I was. And I knew I was sick of being a bucket.
- [The Beast in the Jungle - Original Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/beast-in-the-jungle/) - He saw the Beast. His eyes darkened—it was close; and, instinctively turning, in the hallucination, to avoid it, he flung himself, on his face, on the tomb.”
- [The Bottom-Pincher - Original Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/bottom-pincher/) - I am not a bottom-pincher. I am a respected member of the community. This inhibits me from taking any liberties with female bottoms save with my eyes.
- [The Rockpile - Original Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/rockpile/) - She heard the scrape and jangle of the lunchbox as he picked it up, bending his dark head near the toe of his father’s heavy shoe.
- [Glory - Original Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/glory/) - She could not afford to get it wrong again. Looking at the ring, resentment and elation warred till one overcame the other and Glory made another decision.
- [Town and Country Lovers - Original Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/town-and-country-lovers/) - The black girl, speaking in her own language, was quoted beneath her photograph: “It was a thing of our childhood, we don’t see each other anymore.”
- [Yellow Woman - Original Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/yellow-woman/) - I was sorry that old Grandpa wasn’t alive to hear my story because it was the Yellow Woman stories he liked to tell best.
- [The Half-Skinned Steer - Original Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/half-skinned-steer/) - It tossed its head and in the howling, wintry light he saw he’d been wrong again, that the half-skinned steer’s red eye had been watching for him all this time.
- [Four O'clock - Original Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/four-oclock/) - In ten little minutes, when I say the word, all the evil people all over the world will become half their present size, so they can be known.
- [The Lagoon - Original Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/the-lagoon/) - Was she not there in that canoe? And could I not with her find a country where death is forgotten — where death is unknown!”
- [The Judgment - Original Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/the-judgment/) - Essentially you’ve been an innocent child, but even more essentially you’ve been a devilish human being! And therefore I sentence you now to death by drowning!”
- [All Kinds of Fur - Original Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/all-kinds-of-fur/) - A strange animal, like none we have ever seen before, is lying in the hollow tree. There are a thousand kinds of fur on its skin. It is just lying there asleep.
- [The Aged Mother - Original Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/aged-mother/) - “Shining needs more than strength of youth,” he said. “Ah, that I should have forgotten the well-known saying, “with the crown of snow, there cometh wisdom!”
- [Donkey Skin - Original Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/donkey-skin/) - Thus only by marrying his daughter could he satisfy the promise he had made to his dying wife, and so he forthwith proposed marriage to her.
- [Who Will Greet You At Home - Original Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/who-will-greet-you/) - Let this child be born in sorrow, she told herself. Let this child live in sorrow. Let this child not grow into a foolish, hopeful girl with joy to barter.Who Will Greet You At Home - Lesley Nneka Arimah Online Flip Book / Download Back to our Information Page Unfortunately your browser does not appear to support the audio tag. The yarn baby lasted a good month, emitting dry, cotton-soft gurgles and pooping little balls of lint, before Ogechi snagged its thigh on a nail
- [The Willows - Original Story](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/the-willows/)
- [The Stone - Original Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/the-stone/) - He and his wife and children and grandchildren lived many years, and Maibon was as proud of his white hair and long beard as he had been of his sturdy arms and legs.
- [The Empty House - Original Story](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/empty-house/) - ...they were conscious that someone followed them; step by step; when they went faster IT was left behind, and when they went more slowly IT caught them up
- [In the Middle of the Fields - Original Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/middle-of-the-fields/) - He stood for a moment at the open door. ‘God rest her soul,’ he said, without looking back, and he stepped into the night.
- [Long Walk to Forever - Original Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/long-walk-to-forever/) - Catharine knew that if he stopped and turned now, if he called to her, she would run to him. Newt did stop. He did turn. He did call. “Catharine,” he called.
- [Death in Venice - Original Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/death-in-venice/) - It seemed to him the pale and lovely Summoner out there smiled at him and beckoned; as though he pointed outward into an immensity of richest expectation.
- [The Woman Who Came at Six O'Clock - Original Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/six-oclock/) - ‘Don’t you think they ought to lay off a woman who kills a man because after she’s been with him she feels disgust with him and everyone who’s been with her?’
- [The Dream of a Ridiculous Man - Original Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/ridiculous-man/) - The consciousness of life is higher than life, the knowledge of the laws of happiness is higher than happiness — that is what one must contend against.
- [The Eye - Original Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/the-eye/) - I let him off with a sense of disappointment. What constitutes a crime? There was no criminal intent—only a mother moving in the darkness of ancient ignorance.
- [Immortality - Original Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/immortality/) - “It [a loudspeaker on their roof] says we are going to have a new life from now on,” the young wife says. “New or old, life is the same,” the husband replies.
- [Markheim - Original Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/markheim/) - "If I be condemned to evil acts," he said, "there is still one door of freedom open — I can cease from action. If my life be an ill thing, I can lay it down."
- [All the King's Horses - Original Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/all-the-kings-horses/) - "...the time and the place are up to you,” said Colonel Kelly wearily. “If you insist on arranging another game, issue an invitation, Major, and I’ll be there.”
- [You're Ugly, Too - Original Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/youre-ugly-too/) - "I'm sorry to say you've got six weeks to live," says the doctor. "I want a second opinion," says the guy. "You want a second opinion? OK, you're ugly, too."
- [The Bloody Chamber - Original Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/bloody-chamber/) - No paint nor powder, no matter how thick or white, can mask that red mark on my forehead; I am glad he cannot see it, because it spares my shame.
- [Ribbons - Original Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/ribbons/) - Suddenly I felt as if there were an invisible ribbon binding us, tougher than silk and satin, stronger even than steel; and it joined her to Mom and Mom to me.
- [Grandad's Gifts - Original Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/grandads-gifts/) - The fox stared at us. Unafraid. Its large blue eyes drank us in. They looked deep into me. I knew what they were saying. ‘Thank you. And farewell.’
- [Greyling - Original Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/greyling/) - “It is a selchie,” he cried. “They are men upon the land and seals in the sea." “Then he shall remain a man upon the land,” said the fisherman’s wife...”
- [The Goodness of Matt Kaizer - Original Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/matt-kaizer/) - “I have to face it,” he said, turning to look at us, his pals, with real grief in his eyes. "I’m good.” You can’t believe how miserable he looked.
- [The Lady or the Tiger - Original Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/lady-or-tiger/) - Would it not be better for him to die at once, and go to wait for her in the blessed regions of futurity? And yet, that awful tiger, those shrieks, that blood!
- [Liberty - Original Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/liberty/) - Papi came home with a dog. “We will call him Liberty. Life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. Eh, Liberty, you are a lucky sign!”
- [The Great Rat Hunt - Original Text](https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/rat-hunt/) - I was walking away when I realized he had said “our.” I turned and said, “That rat was doomed from the start.” I heard my parents laughing as I hurried away.

## 3D FlipBook

- [Shells](https://xpressenglish.com/3d-flip-book/shells/)
- [Rose-Garden](https://xpressenglish.com/3d-flip-book/rose-garden/)

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- [Buck](https://xpressenglish.com/tag/buck/)
- [Fansler](https://xpressenglish.com/tag/fansler/)
- [Lang (John)](https://xpressenglish.com/tag/lang-john/)
- [Twain](https://xpressenglish.com/tag/twain/)
- [Harrison](https://xpressenglish.com/tag/harrison/)
- [Khin Mya](https://xpressenglish.com/tag/mya/)
- [Poe](https://xpressenglish.com/tag/poe/)
- [Cisneros](https://xpressenglish.com/tag/cisneros/)
- [Asimov](https://xpressenglish.com/tag/asimov/)
- [King](https://xpressenglish.com/tag/king/)
- [Tyler](https://xpressenglish.com/tag/tyler/)
- [Head](https://xpressenglish.com/tag/head/)
- [Barthelme](https://xpressenglish.com/tag/barthelme/)
- [O'Flaherty](https://xpressenglish.com/tag/oflaherty/)
- [Carter](https://xpressenglish.com/tag/carter/)
- [Achebe](https://xpressenglish.com/tag/achebe/)
- [Ghost](https://xpressenglish.com/tag/ghost/)
- [Carver](https://xpressenglish.com/tag/carver/)
- [Marquez](https://xpressenglish.com/tag/marquez/)
- [Babel](https://xpressenglish.com/tag/babel/)
- [Jen](https://xpressenglish.com/tag/jen/)
- [Rylant](https://xpressenglish.com/tag/rylant/)
- [Bisson](https://xpressenglish.com/tag/bisson/)
- [Woolf](https://xpressenglish.com/tag/woolf/)
- [Salinas](https://xpressenglish.com/tag/salinas/)
- [Bambara](https://xpressenglish.com/tag/bambara/)
- [Soto](https://xpressenglish.com/tag/soto/)
- [Thomas](https://xpressenglish.com/tag/thomas/)
- [Cormier](https://xpressenglish.com/tag/cormier/)
- [Salih](https://xpressenglish.com/tag/salih/)
- [Weber](https://xpressenglish.com/tag/weber/)
- [Cavanaugh](https://xpressenglish.com/tag/cavanaugh/)
- [Kafka](https://xpressenglish.com/tag/kafka/)
- [Sartre](https://xpressenglish.com/tag/sartre/)
- [Adichie](https://xpressenglish.com/tag/adichie/)
- [Alvarez](https://xpressenglish.com/tag/alvarez/)
- [Beattie](https://xpressenglish.com/tag/beattie/)
- [Boyle (T. C.)](https://xpressenglish.com/tag/boyle-t-c/)
- [Oates](https://xpressenglish.com/tag/oates/)
- [Dick](https://xpressenglish.com/tag/dick/)
- [Leacock](https://xpressenglish.com/tag/leacock/)
- [Hoshi](https://xpressenglish.com/tag/hoshi/)
- [Gaiman](https://xpressenglish.com/tag/gaiman/)
- [Ihimaera](https://xpressenglish.com/tag/ihimaera/)
- [Hawthorne](https://xpressenglish.com/tag/hawthorne/)
- [Akutagawa](https://xpressenglish.com/tag/akutagawa/)
- [Joyce](https://xpressenglish.com/tag/joyce/)
- [Wells](https://xpressenglish.com/tag/wells/)
- [Camus](https://xpressenglish.com/tag/camus/)
- [Davis](https://xpressenglish.com/tag/davis/)
- [Gurley](https://xpressenglish.com/tag/gurley/)
- [Brown (Fredric)](https://xpressenglish.com/tag/brown-fredric/)
- [Weir](https://xpressenglish.com/tag/weir/)
- [Gilman](https://xpressenglish.com/tag/gilman/)
- [Hoch](https://xpressenglish.com/tag/hoch/)
- [Myers](https://xpressenglish.com/tag/myers/)
- [Roy](https://xpressenglish.com/tag/roy/)
- [Sher](https://xpressenglish.com/tag/sher/)
- [Daudet](https://xpressenglish.com/tag/daudet/)
- [Ellison (Harlan)](https://xpressenglish.com/tag/ellison-harlan/)
- [Lardner](https://xpressenglish.com/tag/lardner/)
- [Silverstein](https://xpressenglish.com/tag/silverstein/)
- [Wilde](https://xpressenglish.com/tag/wilde/)
- [Pramoj](https://xpressenglish.com/tag/pramoj/)
- [Baudis](https://xpressenglish.com/tag/baudis/)
- [Linn](https://xpressenglish.com/tag/linn/)
- [de Vet](https://xpressenglish.com/tag/de-vet/)
- [Sorrentino](https://xpressenglish.com/tag/sorrentino/)
- [Das (Manoj)](https://xpressenglish.com/tag/das-manoj/)
- [Mosca](https://xpressenglish.com/tag/mosca/)
- [Howells](https://xpressenglish.com/tag/howells/)
- [Thurber](https://xpressenglish.com/tag/thurber/)
- [Jacobs (W. W.)](https://xpressenglish.com/tag/jacobs-w-w/)
- [London](https://xpressenglish.com/tag/london/)
- [Richards](https://xpressenglish.com/tag/richards/)
- [Paterson](https://xpressenglish.com/tag/paterson/)
- [Bierce](https://xpressenglish.com/tag/bierce/)
- [Baynton](https://xpressenglish.com/tag/baynton/)
- [Kincaid](https://xpressenglish.com/tag/kincaid/)
- [Salter](https://xpressenglish.com/tag/salter/)
- [Quiller-Couch](https://xpressenglish.com/tag/quiller-couch/)
- [Alden](https://xpressenglish.com/tag/alden/)
- [Vivante](https://xpressenglish.com/tag/vivante/)
- [Bosman](https://xpressenglish.com/tag/bosman/)
- [Perrault](https://xpressenglish.com/tag/perrault/)
- [Tolstoy](https://xpressenglish.com/tag/tolstoy/)
- [Orwell](https://xpressenglish.com/tag/orwell/)
- [Lawrence](https://xpressenglish.com/tag/lawrence/)
- [Blyton](https://xpressenglish.com/tag/blyton/)
- [Vonnegut](https://xpressenglish.com/tag/vonnegut/)
- [Mansfield](https://xpressenglish.com/tag/mansfield/)
- [Jackson](https://xpressenglish.com/tag/jackson/)
- [Lawson](https://xpressenglish.com/tag/lawson/)
- [Faulkner](https://xpressenglish.com/tag/faulkner/)
- [Maugham](https://xpressenglish.com/tag/maugham/)
- [Borges](https://xpressenglish.com/tag/borges/)
- [Chopin](https://xpressenglish.com/tag/chopin/)
- [O. Henry](https://xpressenglish.com/tag/o-henry/)
- [Dahl](https://xpressenglish.com/tag/dahl/)
- [Saki](https://xpressenglish.com/tag/saki/)
- [Maupassant](https://xpressenglish.com/tag/maupassant/)
- [Bradbury](https://xpressenglish.com/tag/bradbury/)
- [Wetherell](https://xpressenglish.com/tag/wetherell/)
- [Tan (Amy)](https://xpressenglish.com/tag/tan-amy/)
- [Aiken (Joan)](https://xpressenglish.com/tag/aiken-joan/)
- [Gordimer](https://xpressenglish.com/tag/gordimer/)
- [Cortázar](https://xpressenglish.com/tag/cortazar/)
- [Mishima](https://xpressenglish.com/tag/mishima/)
- [Wolff](https://xpressenglish.com/tag/wolff/)
- [Le Guin](https://xpressenglish.com/tag/le-guin/)
- [Matheson](https://xpressenglish.com/tag/matheson/)
- [de Mille](https://xpressenglish.com/tag/de-mille/)
- [Heym](https://xpressenglish.com/tag/heym/)
- [Pushkin](https://xpressenglish.com/tag/pushkin/)
- [Pitman](https://xpressenglish.com/tag/pitman/)
- [Clarke](https://xpressenglish.com/tag/clarke/)
- [Murakami](https://xpressenglish.com/tag/murakami/)
- [Bolano](https://xpressenglish.com/tag/bolano/)
- [Kipling](https://xpressenglish.com/tag/kipling/)
- [Rulfo](https://xpressenglish.com/tag/rulfo/)
- [Narayan](https://xpressenglish.com/tag/narayan/)
- [Nabokov](https://xpressenglish.com/tag/nabokov/)
- [Boccaccio](https://xpressenglish.com/tag/boccaccio/)
- [Dinesen](https://xpressenglish.com/tag/dinesen/)
- [Calvino](https://xpressenglish.com/tag/calvino/)
- [Bond](https://xpressenglish.com/tag/bond/)
- [Keret](https://xpressenglish.com/tag/keret/)
- [Glaspell](https://xpressenglish.com/tag/glaspell/)
- [Irving](https://xpressenglish.com/tag/irving/)
- [Cheever](https://xpressenglish.com/tag/cheever/)
- [Gogol](https://xpressenglish.com/tag/gogol/)
- [Lovecraft](https://xpressenglish.com/tag/lovecraft/)
- [Turgenev](https://xpressenglish.com/tag/turgenev/)
- [Avi](https://xpressenglish.com/tag/avi/)
- [Dickens](https://xpressenglish.com/tag/dickens/)
- [Warung](https://xpressenglish.com/tag/warung/)
- [Max](https://xpressenglish.com/tag/max/)
- [Lispector](https://xpressenglish.com/tag/lispector/)
- [Walker](https://xpressenglish.com/tag/walker/)
- [Valenzuela](https://xpressenglish.com/tag/valenzuela/)
- [Collier (John)](https://xpressenglish.com/tag/collier-john/)
- [Coleridge](https://xpressenglish.com/tag/coleridge/)
- [Bandi](https://xpressenglish.com/tag/bandi/)
- [Marechera](https://xpressenglish.com/tag/marechera/)
- [Morrell](https://xpressenglish.com/tag/morrell/)
- [Machado de Assis](https://xpressenglish.com/tag/machado/)
- [Anand](https://xpressenglish.com/tag/anand/)
- [Fish](https://xpressenglish.com/tag/fish/)
- [Thiong'o](https://xpressenglish.com/tag/thiongo/)
- [Sun-won](https://xpressenglish.com/tag/sun-won/)
- [Finlayson](https://xpressenglish.com/tag/finlayson/)
- [Winton](https://xpressenglish.com/tag/winton/)
- [Murnane](https://xpressenglish.com/tag/murnane/)
- [Tan (Lucy)](https://xpressenglish.com/tag/tan-lucy/)
- [O'Connor (Frank)](https://xpressenglish.com/tag/oconnor-frank/)
- [Ellis](https://xpressenglish.com/tag/ellis/)
- [Stewart](https://xpressenglish.com/tag/stewart/)
- [Namioka](https://xpressenglish.com/tag/namioka/)
- [Sneve](https://xpressenglish.com/tag/sneve/)
- [Northcutt](https://xpressenglish.com/tag/northcutt/)
- [Johnston](https://xpressenglish.com/tag/johnston/)
- [Conrad](https://xpressenglish.com/tag/conrad/)
- [Bowen](https://xpressenglish.com/tag/bowen/)
- [Foer](https://xpressenglish.com/tag/foer/)
- [Melville](https://xpressenglish.com/tag/melville/)
- [O'Brien (Tim)](https://xpressenglish.com/tag/obrien-tim/)
- [Meinke](https://xpressenglish.com/tag/meinke/)
- [Anderson](https://xpressenglish.com/tag/anderson/)
- [Fitzgerald](https://xpressenglish.com/tag/fitzgerald/)
- [Estrada](https://xpressenglish.com/tag/estrada/)
- [Buzzati](https://xpressenglish.com/tag/buzzati/)
- [Atwood](https://xpressenglish.com/tag/atwood/)
- [Colette](https://xpressenglish.com/tag/colette/)
- [Keyes](https://xpressenglish.com/tag/keyes/)
- [Carlson](https://xpressenglish.com/tag/carlson/)
- [Malouf](https://xpressenglish.com/tag/malouf/)
- [Santos](https://xpressenglish.com/tag/santos/)
- [Proulx](https://xpressenglish.com/tag/proulx/)
- [Joaquin](https://xpressenglish.com/tag/joaquin/)
- [Salinger](https://xpressenglish.com/tag/salinger/)
- [Mahfouz](https://xpressenglish.com/tag/mahfouz/)
- [Tagore](https://xpressenglish.com/tag/tagore/)
- [Stockton](https://xpressenglish.com/tag/stockton/)
- [Hughes](https://xpressenglish.com/tag/hughes/)
- [Stanton](https://xpressenglish.com/tag/stanton/)
- [War](https://xpressenglish.com/tag/war/)
- [Berlin](https://xpressenglish.com/tag/berlin/)
- [Humor](https://xpressenglish.com/tag/humor/)
- [Romance](https://xpressenglish.com/tag/romance/)
- [Fantasy](https://xpressenglish.com/tag/fantasy/)
- [Adventure](https://xpressenglish.com/tag/adventure/)
- [Crime](https://xpressenglish.com/tag/crime/)
- [Jewett](https://xpressenglish.com/tag/jewett/)
- [Connell](https://xpressenglish.com/tag/connell/)
- [Finney](https://xpressenglish.com/tag/finney/)
- [Ozick](https://xpressenglish.com/tag/ozick/)
- [Wolfe](https://xpressenglish.com/tag/wolfe/)
- [Valgardson](https://xpressenglish.com/tag/valgardson/)
- [Kawabata](https://xpressenglish.com/tag/kawabata/)
- [Pirandello](https://xpressenglish.com/tag/pirandello/)
- [Premchand](https://xpressenglish.com/tag/premchand/)
- [Peck](https://xpressenglish.com/tag/peck/)
- [Alexander (Lloyd)](https://xpressenglish.com/tag/alexander-lloyd/)
- [Singer](https://xpressenglish.com/tag/singer/)
- [Yep](https://xpressenglish.com/tag/yep/)
- [Sperry](https://xpressenglish.com/tag/sperry/)
- [Collier (Eugenia)](https://xpressenglish.com/tag/collier-eugenia/)
- [Aiken (Conrad)](https://xpressenglish.com/tag/aiken-conrad/)
- [Updike](https://xpressenglish.com/tag/updike/)
- [Baldwin (James 1924-1987)](https://xpressenglish.com/tag/baldwin-james-1924-1987/)
- [Johnson (Denis)](https://xpressenglish.com/tag/johnson-denis/)
- [Hurston](https://xpressenglish.com/tag/hurston/)
- [Danticat](https://xpressenglish.com/tag/danticat/)
- [Fuentes](https://xpressenglish.com/tag/fuentes/)
- [Allende](https://xpressenglish.com/tag/allende/)
- [Lahiri](https://xpressenglish.com/tag/lahiri/)
- [Cather](https://xpressenglish.com/tag/cather/)
- [Basile](https://xpressenglish.com/tag/basile/)
- [Straparola](https://xpressenglish.com/tag/straparola/)
- [Basho](https://xpressenglish.com/tag/basho/)
- [Gardner (Emelyn)](https://xpressenglish.com/tag/gardner-emelyn/)
- [Gardner (Mona)](https://xpressenglish.com/tag/gardner-mona/)
- [Herodutis](https://xpressenglish.com/tag/herodutis/)
- [Bedi](https://xpressenglish.com/tag/bedi/)
- [Rao](https://xpressenglish.com/tag/rao/)
- [Paley](https://xpressenglish.com/tag/paley/)
- [Porter (Katherine)](https://xpressenglish.com/tag/porter-katherine/)
- [Cooper](https://xpressenglish.com/tag/cooper/)
- [Naoya](https://xpressenglish.com/tag/naoya/)
- [Yolen](https://xpressenglish.com/tag/yolen/)
- [Cofer](https://xpressenglish.com/tag/cofer/)
- [Manto](https://xpressenglish.com/tag/manto/)
- [Lessing](https://xpressenglish.com/tag/lessing/)
- [Erdrich](https://xpressenglish.com/tag/erdrich/)
- [Saunders](https://xpressenglish.com/tag/saunders/)
- [Benét](https://xpressenglish.com/tag/benet/)
- [Desai](https://xpressenglish.com/tag/desai/)
- [Rangkuti](https://xpressenglish.com/tag/rangkuti/)
- [Olsen](https://xpressenglish.com/tag/olsen/)
- [Munro](https://xpressenglish.com/tag/munro/)
- [Malamud](https://xpressenglish.com/tag/malamud/)
- [Crane](https://xpressenglish.com/tag/crane/)
- [James (Henry)](https://xpressenglish.com/tag/james-henry/)
- [Trevor](https://xpressenglish.com/tag/trevor/)
- [Llana](https://xpressenglish.com/tag/llana/)
- [Liu](https://xpressenglish.com/tag/liu/)
- [Agüeros](https://xpressenglish.com/tag/agueros/)
- [Aldrich](https://xpressenglish.com/tag/aldrich/)
- [Hurst](https://xpressenglish.com/tag/hurst/)
- [Huxley](https://xpressenglish.com/tag/huxley/)
- [Ogot](https://xpressenglish.com/tag/ogot/)
- [Balzac](https://xpressenglish.com/tag/balzac/)
- [Bauer](https://xpressenglish.com/tag/bauer/)
- [Welty](https://xpressenglish.com/tag/welty/)
- [Anaya](https://xpressenglish.com/tag/anaya/)
- [Broun](https://xpressenglish.com/tag/broun/)
- [Jennings](https://xpressenglish.com/tag/jennings/)
- [Spark](https://xpressenglish.com/tag/spark/)
- [Beckett](https://xpressenglish.com/tag/beckett/)
- [McGahern](https://xpressenglish.com/tag/mcgahern/)
- [Ha Jin](https://xpressenglish.com/tag/ha-jin/)
- [Hamilton](https://xpressenglish.com/tag/hamilton/)
- [Allen](https://xpressenglish.com/tag/allen/)
- [Wright (Richard)](https://xpressenglish.com/tag/wright-richard/)
- [Sargeson](https://xpressenglish.com/tag/sargeson/)
- [Averchenko](https://xpressenglish.com/tag/averchenko/)
- [Dunbar](https://xpressenglish.com/tag/dunbar/)
- [Archer](https://xpressenglish.com/tag/archer/)
- [Chandra](https://xpressenglish.com/tag/chandra/)
- [Böll](https://xpressenglish.com/tag/boll/)
- [Boyle (Kay)](https://xpressenglish.com/tag/boyle-kay/)
- [Stephenson](https://xpressenglish.com/tag/stephenson/)
- [Toudouze](https://xpressenglish.com/tag/toudouze/)
- [Bellow](https://xpressenglish.com/tag/bellow/)
- [Gaskell](https://xpressenglish.com/tag/gaskell/)
- [Kiš](https://xpressenglish.com/tag/kis/)
- [Borowski](https://xpressenglish.com/tag/borowski/)
- [Capote](https://xpressenglish.com/tag/capote/)
- [Forster](https://xpressenglish.com/tag/forster/)
- [Bloom](https://xpressenglish.com/tag/bloom/)
- [Xun](https://xpressenglish.com/tag/xun/)
- [Jie](https://xpressenglish.com/tag/jie/)
- [Butler (Robert)](https://xpressenglish.com/tag/butler-robert/)
- [McCullers](https://xpressenglish.com/tag/mccullers/)
- [Grahame](https://xpressenglish.com/tag/grahame/)
- [Williams (Margery)](https://xpressenglish.com/tag/williams-margery/)
- [Mystery](https://xpressenglish.com/tag/mystery/)
- [Dystopian](https://xpressenglish.com/tag/dystopian/)
- [Magical Realism](https://xpressenglish.com/tag/magical-realism/)
- [Western](https://xpressenglish.com/tag/western/)
- [The Supernatural](https://xpressenglish.com/tag/supernatural/)
- [Coppard](https://xpressenglish.com/tag/coppard/)
- [Heinlein](https://xpressenglish.com/tag/heinlein/)
- [Mason](https://xpressenglish.com/tag/mason/)
- [Survival](https://xpressenglish.com/tag/survival/)
- [Zweig](https://xpressenglish.com/tag/zweig/)
- [Psychological Realism](https://xpressenglish.com/tag/psychological-realism/)
- [Divakaruni](https://xpressenglish.com/tag/divakaruni/)
- [Day](https://xpressenglish.com/tag/day/)
- [Ballard](https://xpressenglish.com/tag/ballard/)
- [Lagerlöf](https://xpressenglish.com/tag/lagerlof/)
- [Coming of Age](https://xpressenglish.com/tag/coming-of-age/)
- [Social Commentary](https://xpressenglish.com/tag/social-commentary/)
- [Detective](https://xpressenglish.com/tag/detective/)
- [Doyle](https://xpressenglish.com/tag/doyle/)
- [Gallant](https://xpressenglish.com/tag/gallant/)
- [Ellison (Ralph)](https://xpressenglish.com/tag/ellison-ralph/)
- [Parker](https://xpressenglish.com/tag/parker/)
- [Moore](https://xpressenglish.com/tag/moore/)
- [Alexie](https://xpressenglish.com/tag/alexie/)
- [Singh](https://xpressenglish.com/tag/singh/)
- [Stevenson](https://xpressenglish.com/tag/stevenson/)
- [Li](https://xpressenglish.com/tag/li/)
- [Bowles (Paul)](https://xpressenglish.com/tag/bowles-paul/)
- [Mann](https://xpressenglish.com/tag/mann/)
- [Lavin](https://xpressenglish.com/tag/lavin/)
- [Blackwood](https://xpressenglish.com/tag/blackwood/)
- [Freeman](https://xpressenglish.com/tag/freeman/)
- [Dorson](https://xpressenglish.com/tag/dorson/)
- [Cole](https://xpressenglish.com/tag/cole/)
- [Nachtigal](https://xpressenglish.com/tag/nachtigal/)
- [Arimah](https://xpressenglish.com/tag/arimah/)
- [Tragedy](https://xpressenglish.com/tag/tragedy/)
- [Historical Fiction](https://xpressenglish.com/tag/historical-fiction/)
- [Dostoevsky](https://xpressenglish.com/tag/dostoevsky/)
- [Gibson](https://xpressenglish.com/tag/gibson/)
- [Fox](https://xpressenglish.com/tag/fox/)
- [Aickman](https://xpressenglish.com/tag/aickman/)
- [Eisenberg](https://xpressenglish.com/tag/eisenberg/)
- [Alexander (Sue)](https://xpressenglish.com/tag/alexander-sue/)
- [Newman](https://xpressenglish.com/tag/newman/)
- [Potok](https://xpressenglish.com/tag/potok/)
- [Mazer](https://xpressenglish.com/tag/mazer/)
- [Gaitskill](https://xpressenglish.com/tag/gaitskill/)
- [Beaumont](https://xpressenglish.com/tag/beaumont/)
- [Benitez](https://xpressenglish.com/tag/benitez/)
- [Steinbeck](https://xpressenglish.com/tag/steinbeck/)
- [Silko](https://xpressenglish.com/tag/silko/)
- [Harte](https://xpressenglish.com/tag/harte/)
- [Paulsen](https://xpressenglish.com/tag/paulsen/)
- [Birch](https://xpressenglish.com/tag/birch/)
- [Crutcher](https://xpressenglish.com/tag/crutcher/)
- [Wharton](https://xpressenglish.com/tag/wharton/)
- [Mukherjee](https://xpressenglish.com/tag/mukherjee/)
- [Christie](https://xpressenglish.com/tag/christie/)
- [Houston](https://xpressenglish.com/tag/houston/)
- [Bethancourt](https://xpressenglish.com/tag/bethancourt/)
- [Rotor](https://xpressenglish.com/tag/rotor/)
- [Chin](https://xpressenglish.com/tag/chin/)
- [Høeg](https://xpressenglish.com/tag/hoeg/)
- [Yoshimoto](https://xpressenglish.com/tag/yoshimoto/)
- [Dubus](https://xpressenglish.com/tag/dubus/)
- [Adams](https://xpressenglish.com/tag/adams/)
- [Greene](https://xpressenglish.com/tag/greene/)
- [Chesnutt](https://xpressenglish.com/tag/chesnutt/)
- [Bowles (Jane)](https://xpressenglish.com/tag/bowles-jane/)
- [Arguilla](https://xpressenglish.com/tag/arguilla/)
- [Rivera-Ford](https://xpressenglish.com/tag/rivera-ford/)
- [Rivera (Beatriz)](https://xpressenglish.com/tag/rivera-beatriz/)
- [du Maurier](https://xpressenglish.com/tag/du-maurier/)
- [Le Fanu](https://xpressenglish.com/tag/le-fanu/)
- [Galsworthy](https://xpressenglish.com/tag/galsworthy/)
- [Vedol](https://xpressenglish.com/tag/vedol/)
- [Johnson (Dana)](https://xpressenglish.com/tag/johnson-dana/)
- [Pyle](https://xpressenglish.com/tag/pyle/)
- [Saramago](https://xpressenglish.com/tag/saramago/)
- [Daguio](https://xpressenglish.com/tag/daguio/)
- [Devlin](https://xpressenglish.com/tag/devlin/)
- [Wideman](https://xpressenglish.com/tag/wideman/)
- [Butler (Octavia)](https://xpressenglish.com/tag/butler-octavia/)
- [Berriault](https://xpressenglish.com/tag/berriault/)
- [Wolf](https://xpressenglish.com/tag/wolf/)
- [Hempel](https://xpressenglish.com/tag/hempel/)
- [Jones (Raymond)](https://xpressenglish.com/tag/jones-raymond/)
- [Baum](https://xpressenglish.com/tag/baum/)
- [Highsmith](https://xpressenglish.com/tag/highsmith/)
- [Far](https://xpressenglish.com/tag/far/)
- [Phillips](https://xpressenglish.com/tag/phillips/)
- [Religion](https://xpressenglish.com/tag/religion/)
- [Toomer](https://xpressenglish.com/tag/toomer/)
- [Morrison](https://xpressenglish.com/tag/morrison/)
- [Gaines](https://xpressenglish.com/tag/gaines/)
- [Rushdie](https://xpressenglish.com/tag/rushdie/)
- [Bates](https://xpressenglish.com/tag/bates/)
- [Warren](https://xpressenglish.com/tag/warren/)
- [Eliot](https://xpressenglish.com/tag/eliot/)
- [Mérimée](https://xpressenglish.com/tag/merimee/)
- [Gardner (John)](https://xpressenglish.com/tag/gardner-john/)
- [Glasgow](https://xpressenglish.com/tag/glasgow/)
- [Solzhenitsyn](https://xpressenglish.com/tag/solzhenitsyn/)
- [Taylor](https://xpressenglish.com/tag/taylor/)
- [Gilchrist](https://xpressenglish.com/tag/gilchrist/)
- [Kundera](https://xpressenglish.com/tag/kundera/)
- [Wodehouse](https://xpressenglish.com/tag/wodehouse/)
- [Scott](https://xpressenglish.com/tag/scott/)
- [Strasser](https://xpressenglish.com/tag/strasser/)
- [Wilkinson](https://xpressenglish.com/tag/wilkinson/)
- [Mphahlele](https://xpressenglish.com/tag/mphahlele/)
- [Roth](https://xpressenglish.com/tag/roth/)
- [Absurdist](https://xpressenglish.com/tag/absurdist/)
- [Sayers](https://xpressenglish.com/tag/sayers/)
- [Feminism](https://xpressenglish.com/tag/feminism/)
- [Paz](https://xpressenglish.com/tag/paz/)
- [Rivera (Vicente)](https://xpressenglish.com/tag/rivera-vicente/)
- [Brown (Jason)](https://xpressenglish.com/tag/brown-jason/)
- [Apocalyptic](https://xpressenglish.com/tag/apocalyptic/)
- [Vargas Llosa](https://xpressenglish.com/tag/vargas-llosa/)
- [Yamamoto](https://xpressenglish.com/tag/yamamoto/)
- [Tolstaya](https://xpressenglish.com/tag/tolstaya/)
- [Saroyan](https://xpressenglish.com/tag/saroyan/)
- [Proust](https://xpressenglish.com/tag/proust/)
- [Hendel](https://xpressenglish.com/tag/hendel/)
- [Villanueva](https://xpressenglish.com/tag/villanueva/)
- [Yezierska](https://xpressenglish.com/tag/yezierska/)
- [Rivera (Tomás)](https://xpressenglish.com/tag/rivera-tomas/)
- [Robbe-Grillet](https://xpressenglish.com/tag/robbe-grillet/)
- [Marshall (Paule)](https://xpressenglish.com/tag/marshall-paule/)
- [Johnson (Charles)](https://xpressenglish.com/tag/johnson-charles/)
- [Das (Kamala)](https://xpressenglish.com/tag/das-kamala/)
- [Diaz (Rony)](https://xpressenglish.com/tag/diaz-rony/)
- [El-Bisatie](https://xpressenglish.com/tag/el-bisatie/)
- [Kohler](https://xpressenglish.com/tag/kohler/)
- [Edwards (Kim)](https://xpressenglish.com/tag/edwards-kim/)
- [Callaghan](https://xpressenglish.com/tag/callaghan/)
- [Smiley](https://xpressenglish.com/tag/smiley/)
- [Okri](https://xpressenglish.com/tag/okri/)
- [Unamuno](https://xpressenglish.com/tag/unamuno/)
- [Existentialism](https://xpressenglish.com/tag/existentialism/)
- [Díaz (Junot)](https://xpressenglish.com/tag/diaz-junot/)
- [Ambai](https://xpressenglish.com/tag/ambai/)
- [Sharma](https://xpressenglish.com/tag/sharma/)
- [Stafford](https://xpressenglish.com/tag/stafford/)
- [Gonzalez (Néstor)](https://xpressenglish.com/tag/gonzalez-nestor/)
- [Mistry](https://xpressenglish.com/tag/mistry/)
- [Flaubert](https://xpressenglish.com/tag/flaubert/)
- [Grace](https://xpressenglish.com/tag/grace/)
- [Davies (Peter Ho)](https://xpressenglish.com/tag/davies-peter/)
- [Tien](https://xpressenglish.com/tag/tien/)
- [Quan](https://xpressenglish.com/tag/quan/)
- [Waters](https://xpressenglish.com/tag/waters/)
- [Ortiz](https://xpressenglish.com/tag/ortiz/)
- [Upadhyay](https://xpressenglish.com/tag/upadhyay/)
- [Mahapaoraya](https://xpressenglish.com/tag/mahapaoraya/)
- [Surangkhanang](https://xpressenglish.com/tag/surangkhanang/)
- [Gustafsson](https://xpressenglish.com/tag/gustafsson/)
- [Hemon](https://xpressenglish.com/tag/hemon/)
- [Enriquez](https://xpressenglish.com/tag/enriquez/)
- [Gorodischer](https://xpressenglish.com/tag/gorodischer/)
- [McPherson](https://xpressenglish.com/tag/mcpherson/)
- [Dybek](https://xpressenglish.com/tag/dybek/)
- [Ferrell](https://xpressenglish.com/tag/ferrell/)
- [Jones (Thom)](https://xpressenglish.com/tag/jones-thom/)
- [Rojas](https://xpressenglish.com/tag/rojas/)
- [Ocampo](https://xpressenglish.com/tag/ocampo/)
- [Orringer](https://xpressenglish.com/tag/orringer/)
- [Appachana](https://xpressenglish.com/tag/appachana/)
- [Lively](https://xpressenglish.com/tag/lively/)
- [Helmer](https://xpressenglish.com/tag/helmer/)
- [Jiménez](https://xpressenglish.com/tag/jimenez/)
- [Plath](https://xpressenglish.com/tag/plath/)
- [Hannah](https://xpressenglish.com/tag/hannah/)
- [Yates](https://xpressenglish.com/tag/yates/)
- [Barrett](https://xpressenglish.com/tag/barrett/)
- [McCorkle](https://xpressenglish.com/tag/mccorkle/)
- [Superstition](https://xpressenglish.com/tag/superstition/)
- [Haslett](https://xpressenglish.com/tag/haslett/)
- [Leffland](https://xpressenglish.com/tag/leffland/)
- [Ozaki](https://xpressenglish.com/tag/ozaki/)
- [Brillantes](https://xpressenglish.com/tag/brillantes/)
- [Rajaratnam](https://xpressenglish.com/tag/rajaratnam/)
- [Lim](https://xpressenglish.com/tag/lim/)
- [Wallace](https://xpressenglish.com/tag/wallace/)
- [Ochsner](https://xpressenglish.com/tag/ochsner/)
- [Quiroga](https://xpressenglish.com/tag/quiroga/)
- [Atmowiloto](https://xpressenglish.com/tag/atmowiloto/)
- [Toer](https://xpressenglish.com/tag/toer/)
- [Heker](https://xpressenglish.com/tag/heker/)
- [Block](https://xpressenglish.com/tag/block/)
- [Ng](https://xpressenglish.com/tag/ng/)
- [Nye](https://xpressenglish.com/tag/nye/)
- [Bagdasarian](https://xpressenglish.com/tag/bagdasarian/)
- [Che Huna](https://xpressenglish.com/tag/che-husna/)
- [Hap](https://xpressenglish.com/tag/hap/)
- [Chong](https://xpressenglish.com/tag/chong/)
- [Abbas (Ghulam)](https://xpressenglish.com/tag/abbas-ghulam/)
- [Packer](https://xpressenglish.com/tag/packer/)
- [Sait Faik](https://xpressenglish.com/tag/sait-faik/)
- [McCracken](https://xpressenglish.com/tag/mccracken/)
- [Abbas (Khwaja)](https://xpressenglish.com/tag/abbas-khwaja/)
- [Baida](https://xpressenglish.com/tag/baida/)
- [Helprin](https://xpressenglish.com/tag/helprin/)
- [Lee (Don)](https://xpressenglish.com/tag/lee-don/)
- [Bender](https://xpressenglish.com/tag/bender/)
- [Reyes](https://xpressenglish.com/tag/reyes/)
- [Barnard](https://xpressenglish.com/tag/barnard/)
- [Minco](https://xpressenglish.com/tag/minco/)
- [Burke (Norah)](https://xpressenglish.com/tag/burke-norah/)
- [Sleator](https://xpressenglish.com/tag/sleator/)
- [Aidoo](https://xpressenglish.com/tag/aidoo/)
- [Stern](https://xpressenglish.com/tag/stern/)
- [Bailey](https://xpressenglish.com/tag/bailey/)
- [Dalisay](https://xpressenglish.com/tag/dalisay/)
- [Alfon](https://xpressenglish.com/tag/alfon/)
- [Williams (Joy)](https://xpressenglish.com/tag/williams-joy/)
- [Alcock](https://xpressenglish.com/tag/alcock/)
- [Farizan](https://xpressenglish.com/tag/farizan/)
- [Aichinger](https://xpressenglish.com/tag/aichinger/)
- [Azzam](https://xpressenglish.com/tag/azzam/)
- [Jacobson](https://xpressenglish.com/tag/jacobson/)
- [Feng](https://xpressenglish.com/tag/feng/)
- [Doerr](https://xpressenglish.com/tag/doerr/)
- [Basheer](https://xpressenglish.com/tag/basheer/)
- [Banaphool](https://xpressenglish.com/tag/banaphool/)
- [Shanmughalingam](https://xpressenglish.com/tag/shanmughalingam/)
- [Gatbonton](https://xpressenglish.com/tag/gatbonton/)
- [White](https://xpressenglish.com/tag/white/)
- [Hopkinson](https://xpressenglish.com/tag/hopkinson/)
- [Benedetti](https://xpressenglish.com/tag/benedetti/)
- [Acker](https://xpressenglish.com/tag/acker/)
- [Powell](https://xpressenglish.com/tag/powell/)
- [Beerbohm](https://xpressenglish.com/tag/beerbohm/)
- [Andric](https://xpressenglish.com/tag/andric/)
- [Appelfeld](https://xpressenglish.com/tag/appelfeld/)
- [Agualusa](https://xpressenglish.com/tag/agualusa/)
- [Aksyonov](https://xpressenglish.com/tag/aksyonov/)
- [Lobato](https://xpressenglish.com/tag/lobato/)
- [Bei Dao](https://xpressenglish.com/tag/bei-dao/)
- [Kantor](https://xpressenglish.com/tag/kantor/)
- [Fitzpatrick](https://xpressenglish.com/tag/fitzpatrick/)
- [Silver](https://xpressenglish.com/tag/silver/)
- [Chughtai](https://xpressenglish.com/tag/chughtai/)
- [Moe Moe](https://xpressenglish.com/tag/moe-moe/)
- [Nyi Pu Lay](https://xpressenglish.com/tag/nyi-pu-lay/)
- [Bulosan](https://xpressenglish.com/tag/bulosan/)
- [Brett](https://xpressenglish.com/tag/brett/)
- [Wright (Judith)](https://xpressenglish.com/tag/wright-judith/)
- [Téllez](https://xpressenglish.com/tag/tellez/)
- [Lewis](https://xpressenglish.com/tag/lewis/)
- [Arreola](https://xpressenglish.com/tag/arreola/)
- [James (M. R.)](https://xpressenglish.com/tag/james-m-r/)
- [Uchida](https://xpressenglish.com/tag/uchida/)
- [Bjørnson](https://xpressenglish.com/tag/bjornson/)
- [Nayeri](https://xpressenglish.com/tag/nayeri/)
- [Bulawayo](https://xpressenglish.com/tag/bulawayo/)
- [Bunin](https://xpressenglish.com/tag/bunin/)
- [Lee (Krys)](https://xpressenglish.com/tag/lee-krys/)
- [Reynolds](https://xpressenglish.com/tag/reynolds/)
- [Davis (Rebecca)](https://xpressenglish.com/tag/davis-rebecca/)
- [Ishiguro](https://xpressenglish.com/tag/ishiguro/)
- [Wilson (Budge)](https://xpressenglish.com/tag/wilson-budge/)
- [Khan (Anwar)](https://xpressenglish.com/tag/khan-anwar/)
- [Chiangkun](https://xpressenglish.com/tag/chiangkun/)
- [Khamhom](https://xpressenglish.com/tag/khamhom/)
- [Villa](https://xpressenglish.com/tag/villa/)
- [Astley](https://xpressenglish.com/tag/astley/)
- [Carey](https://xpressenglish.com/tag/carey/)
- [Slesar](https://xpressenglish.com/tag/slesar/)
- [Casares](https://xpressenglish.com/tag/casares/)
- [Butler (Ellis Parker)](https://xpressenglish.com/tag/butler-ellis-parker/)
- [Romace](https://xpressenglish.com/tag/romace/)
- [Chattopadhyay](https://xpressenglish.com/tag/chattopadhyay/)
- [José](https://xpressenglish.com/tag/jose/)
- [Krasznahorkai](https://xpressenglish.com/tag/krasznahorkai/)
- [Alarcón](https://xpressenglish.com/tag/alarcon/)
- [Jensen](https://xpressenglish.com/tag/jensen/)