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Approximate Reading Times

Quick Read: under 5 minutes
Short Story: 5 to 30 minutes
Novelette: 30 to 90 minutes
Novella: 1.5 to 2.5 hours

Some Other Stories You May Like

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  • Tuesday of the Other June

    Grade 5-6 Story by Norma Fox Mazer. A girl is being bullied. Should she follow her mother’s advice to “turn the other cheek, smile at the world, and the world'll smile back”, follow her dream of “kicking, punching, and biting her (the bully) like a dog” or try something else?

  • Little Claus and Great Claus

    Grade 5-6 Story by H. C. Andersen. A poor farmer who develops a talent for swindling people invents stories to explain the source of his newfound wealth to an envious neighbor. When the greedy neighbor tries to make money the same way, he suffers greatly.

  • Was it a Dream?

    Short Story by Guy de Maupassant. The question in the title could refer to two things: the blissful year the protagonist shared with his lover before her unexpected death, or the vision of a message her ghost wrote on her tombstone as he was visiting her grave.

  • Wicked Girl

    Short Story by Isabel Allende. A solitary, prepubescent eleven-year-old tries to sexually arouse her mother’s sleeping lover. When he wakes and realizes who it is, he violently casts her aside. She is sent to a convent, after which the profoundly affected man develops an unhealthy attraction towards young girls.

  • A January Night / Poos Ki Raat

    Short Story by Premchand. An Indian farmer, forced to pay his debts with money he had saved to buy a blanket, watches over his crops one night in freezing temperatures. Although he manages to survive the night, his crops do not. His wife is devastated, but he is happy.

  • The King is Dead, Long Live the King!

    Short Story by Mary Coleridge. After a king dies of fever, his spirit dreams that his life will be restored if it can locate three people who wish that he was still alive within an hour of his death. The spirit’s findings are not what it had expected.

  • The Man That Corrupted Hadleyburg

    Novella by Mark Twain. The citizens of Hadleyburg, which is regarded as “the most honest and upright town in all the region”, manage to offend a vindictive passing stranger. The visitor was so upset that he came up with and elaborate plan to destroy the town’s image.

  • Blacksoil Country

    Short Story by David Malouf. An early Australian settler shoots an innocent Aborigine bearing a gift from a neighbor. Shortly afterwards, his twelve-year-old son is brutally murdered. This triggers a racially driven killing spree, which elevates the man from a surly loner nobody wanted to associate with to hero status.

  • The Two Brothers and the Gold

    Quick Read by Leo Tolstoy. Two brothers react differently to finding a heap of gold. One runs away; the other uses it to build an asylum for widows and orphans, a hospital, and a hospice for the poor and pilgrims. Tolstoy suggests that the second brother’s actions were wrong.

  • The Piece of String

    Short Story by Guy de Maupassant. A frugal farmer’s reputation is forever tarnished after being falsely accused of finding and failing to return a lost pocketbook. No matter how much he denies, it nobody will believe him. This weighs heavily on the proud man’s mind, leading to his early death.

  • Blackberry Winter

    Novelette by Robert Penn Warren. A nine-year-old boy is affected for life when a menacing-looking tramp with a large switchblade in his pocket, carrying a mysterious newspaper-wrapped package, visits his family farm. The stranger’s visit and other events of the day shatter the impressionable lad’s ordered view of the world.

  • Mitya’s Love

    Novella by Ivan Bunin. A young Russian is so hopelessly in love with a woman that his jealousy stifles their relationship. They decide to separate for a short period to test their feelings. When she fails to respond to his increasingly desperate letters, things don’t end well.

  • The Visitor

    Quick Read by Lydia Davis. After foreshadowing a visitor to his/her home who will require around the clock care, the narrator recalls two similar experiences involving old men whose bodily functions had collapsed, leaving them totally dependent on others. The story takes an unexpected twist in the heart-warming final paragraph.

  • The Fiddler

    Short Story by Herman Melville. A struggling writer is in a desperate mood after negative reviews of his latest work. His life changes when he learns the secret of a “commonplace” man who appears to have no special talents but is able to live life to the fullest.

  • The Golden Kite, the Silver Wind

    Short Story by Ray Bradbury. In an allegory of the nuclear arms race the Mandarins of two Chinese cities compete to see which has the most threatening wall design, impoverishing their citizens in the process. Fortunately, sanity prevails. They talk and agree to adopt complementary designs.

  • Identities

    Quick Read by W. D. Valgardson. A man decides to leave his up-market neighborhood and go for a drive. When he finds himself lost in a seedy, seemingly dangerous neighborhood, he makes the fatal decision to call home and tell his family that he will be late for dinner.

  • The Fly

    Short Story by Katherine Mansfield. Two old friends handle their sons' wartime deaths differently. Six years have passed. One, in poor health physically and mentally, has come to terms with the loss of his son. The other, healthy and successful, still grieves... but not for the boy!

  • The Grandfather and the Python

    Grade 3-4 Story by Ruskin Bond. On a whim, the narrator’s grandfather buys a python at a bazaar and brings it home. The python falls in love with its own reflection and, when grandmother says it must go, the snake’s vanity assists in its capture and release into the jungle.

  • Some Families, Very Large

    Short Story by Jose Dalisay Jr. It is Christmas, but nine-year-old Sammy’s father is more interested in gambling than celebrating it with him. Later a grieving mother, desperate for company, welcomes them into her “family”. In a moment of reflection, the three close their eyes and imagine a better life.

  • Big Black Good Man

    Short Story by Richard Wright. An elderly man working the night desk at a seedy waterfront hotel is used to handling all kinds of rough customers. However, when the “biggest, strangest, and blackest” sailor he’d ever seen asks for a room, he is irrationally terrified.

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