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

  • Home
  • Short Stories
  • Younger Readers
  • Folklore
  • Contact
  • About / Privacy

Sidebar

Share the joy of reading...

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

See top menu for all 1,500+ stories

  • The Last Class / Lesson

    Short Story by Alphonse Daudet. Following the Franco-Prussian War of 1870-71, the Berlin government ordered that only German could be taught in Alsace schools. The story explores the disheartened reactions of local villagers, children and their teacher to this attempt to wipe out the French language in the region.

  • Daisy Miller: A Study in Two Parts

    Novella by Henry James. The behaviour of a young, free-spirited American socialite traveling through Southern Europe is scandalous by the standards of the American expat community. A question in the mind of a man smitten by her is whether the enigmatic woman could possibly be as innocent as she appears.

  • He

    Short Story by Katherine Porter. A poor farm family are forced to institutionalize their ailing special needs son. The story questions whether his mother’s tears are the result of losing him, a sense of failure/shame as a mother, and/or (as the narrator cruelly suggests) wishing he had never been born.

  • The Disk

    Quick Read by Jorge Borges. A traveler arrives at an isolated woodcutter’s hut claiming to be an exiled king descended from Odin, the Norse king of the gods. He then makes a fatal mistake, showing the woodcutter the disk of Odin, the only one-dimensional object in the universe.

  • My Sweet Sixteenth

    Young Adult Story by Brenda Wilkinson. A school friend helps a young girl deliver her unwanted baby in her upstairs bedroom while a house-full of guests celebrate her “Sweet Sixteenth” birthday downstairs. She had planned to have the child adopted, but her family encourages her to keep it.

  • Solitude

    Short Story by Miguel De Unamuno. 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. After a failed love affair and the death of her father, the girl lives up to her name.

  • The Kitemaker

    Quick Read by Ruskin Bond. An old man in a once rural Indian village lays back and reflects on how much the world has changed and his life as a professional kitemaker . His only joy in life is spending time with and making kites for his young grandson.

  • In the Region of Ice

    Short Story by Joyce Carol Oates. A nun teaching at a Jesuit university is confident in her academic role but feels confused and alienated by the outside world. Tragedy follows when a brilliant but mentally disturbed Jewish graduate student exhibits a need for emotional support beyond her comfort zone.

  • Like the Sun

    Quick Read by R. K. Narayan. A man believes that life is not worth living without telling nothing but the truth at least one day each year. On one such day, his honesty upsets three people. The first two are needlessly hurt; the third, although unhappy, benefits from his frankness.

  • A Hunger Artist

    Short Story by Franz Kafka. A performance artist seeks artistic recognition and spiritual fulfillment by fasting for weeks on end in a traveling show. When public tastes change, he joins a circus and becomes a sideshow. Here, he attracts little attention from onlookers and withers away in his cage.

  • Tom Tit Tot / Rumpelstiltskin

    English Folktale. A mother lies to the king by saying her lazy daughter is a whiz with a spinning wheel. Strangely, this is just the kind of girl he is looking to marry. To avoid losing her head, the girl accepts an offer of help from a small magical creature.

  • One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich

    Novella by Alexandr Solzhenitsyn. A fictional account of life in a former Soviet Gulag (forced labor camp). The system is designed to break inmates through a combination of harsh conditions, brutality and absurd rules. Some survive with dignity, others through theft, scavenging, and snitching. Many don’t survive.

  • The Fisherman and His Wife

    European Folktale. When a fisherman is granted a wish by an enchanted fish, his greedy wife sends him back several times asking for more. Her final wish is so outrageous that the fish either will not or cannot grant it. The fisherman is no doubt happy with what happens next.

  • Adam and Eve and Pinch Me

    Short Story by A. E. Coppard. A confused man awakens from a daydream about being a ghost and not being able to communicate with his three children. He has a different identity, and the third child featured in the dream, who had special powers, has not yet been born.

  • Meneseteung

    Novelette by Alice Munro. Alone in the world following the death of her father, a frontier woman publishes a book of poems and lives an ordered, contented life. One morning a traumatic discovery introduces her to the dark side of humanity and drives her into isolation and madness.

  • The Pig That Went to Market

    Grade 3-4 Story by Enid Blyton. A man with no money decides that selling his pet pig is a better idea than getting a job. However, his forgetfulness causes problems in taking the pig to market. When he finally does get it there, he receives a beating for his trouble.

  • The Treasure in the Forest

    Short Story by H. G. Wells. Two men kill another to get their hands on a map that shows the location of a buried treasure. They find the treasure and, as they carry some of it away, learn why its owner was smiling as they killed him.

  • Chivalry

    Short Story by Neil Gaiman. Mrs. Whitaker is a nice old lady with nice friends, who lives in a nice house in a nice neighborhood. She was also living a nice, peaceful life until Sir Galahad interrupted her routine on his quest to find the Holy Grail.

  • A New England Nun

    Short Story by Mary E. Wilkins Freeman. An engaged couple find that circumstances have changed when the man returns after a fourteen-year break trying to make his fortune. Although each has a good reason not to marry, neither wants to admit it out of respect for the other’s loyalty.

  • How My Brother Leon Brought Home a Wife

    Short Story by Manuel E. Aguilla. A son brings his city-based bride home to the countryside to “meet the family”, only to have the poor woman tested by his father before she even arrives. The apprehensive but charming girl (in high heels no less!) passes with flying colors.

Stories by Author    Latest Stories

Featured Stories

Share the joy of reading...

Stories by Author

Authors by Region / Ethnicity

Abbas (Ghulam) Abbas (Khwaja) Achebe Acker Adams Adichie Agualusa Agüeros Aichinger Aickman Aidoo Aiken (Conrad) Aiken (Joan) Aksyonov Akutagawa Alcock Alden Aldrich Alexander (Lloyd) Alexander (Sue) Alexie Alfon Allen Allende Alvarez Ambai Anand Anaya Andersen Anderson Andric Appachana Appelfeld Archer Arguilla Arimah Arreola Asimov Astley Atmowiloto Atwood Averchenko Avi Azzam Babel Bagdasarian Baida Bailey Baldwin (James 1841-1925) Baldwin (James 1924-1987) Ballard Balzac Bambara Banaphool Bandi Barnard Barrett Barthelme Basheer Bates Bauer Baum Baynton Beattie Beaumont Beckett Bedi Beerbohm Bei Dao Bellow Bender Benedetti Benitez Benét Berlin Berriault Bethancourt Bierce Birch Bisson Bjørnson Blackwood Block Bloom Blyton Bolano Bond Borges Borowski Bosman Bowen Bowles (Jane) Bowles (Paul) Boyle (Kay) Boyle (T. C.) Bradbury Brett Brillantes Broun Brown (Fredric) Brown (Jason) Buck Bulawayo Bulosan Bunin Burke (Norah) Butler (Octavia) Butler (Robert) Buzzati Böll Callaghan Calvino Camus Capote Carey Carlson Carter Carver Cather Cavanaugh Chandra Cheever Che Huna Chekhov Chesnutt Chiangkun Chin Chong Chopin Christie Chughtai Cisneros Clarke Cofer Coleridge Colette Collier (Eugenia) Collier (John) Connell Conrad Cooper Coppard Cormier Cortázar Crane Crutcher Daguio Dahl Dalisay Danticat Das (Kamala) Das (Manoj) Daudet Davies (Peter Ho) Davis Davis (Rebecca) Day de Mille Desai de Vet Devlin Diaz (Junot) Diaz (Rony) Dick Dickens Dinesen Divakaruni Doerr Dostoevsky Doyle Dubus du Maurier Dunbar Dybek Edwards (Kim) Eisenberg El-Bisatie Eliot Ellis Ellison (Harlan) Ellison (Ralph) Enriquez Erdrich Estrada Far Farizan Faulkner Feng Ferrell Finlayson Finney Fish Fitzgerald Fitzpatrick Flaubert Foer Forster Fox Freeman Fuentes Gaiman Gaines Gaitskill Gallant Galsworthy Gardner (John) Gardner (Mona) Gaskell Gatbonton Gibson Gilchrist Gilman Glasgow Glaspell Gogol Gonzalez (Néstor) Gordimer Gorodischer Grace Grahame Greene Gurley Gustafsson Ha Jin Hamilton Hannah Hap Harrison Harte Haslett Hawthorne Head Heinlein Heker Helmer Helprin Hemingway Hemon Hempel Hendel Heym Highsmith Hoch Hopkinson Hoshi Houston Howells Hughes Hurst Hurston Huxley Høeg Ihimaera Irving Ishiguro Jackson Jacobs (W. W.) Jacobson James (Henry) James (M. R.) Jen Jennings Jewett Jie Jiménez Joaquin Johnson (Charles) Johnson (Dana) Johnson (Denis) Johnston Jones (Raymond) Jones (Thom) Joyce Kafka Kantor Kawabata Keret Keyes Khamhom Khan (Anwar) Khin Mya Kincaid King Kipling Kiš Kohler Kundera Lagerlöf Lahiri Lang (John) Lardner Lavin Lawrence Lawson Leacock Lee (Don) Lee (Krys) Le Fanu Leffland Le Guin Lessing Lewis Li Lim Linn Lispector Liu Lively Llana Lobato London Long Lovecraft Machado de Assis Mahapaoraya Mahfouz Malamud Malouf Mann Mansfield Manto Marechera Marquez Marshall (Paule) Mason Matheson Maugham Maupassant Max Mazer McCorkle McCracken McCullers McGahern McPherson Meinke Melville Minco Mishima Mistry Moe Moe Moore Morrell Morrison Mosca Mphahlele Mukherjee Munro Murakami Murnane Myers Mérimée Nabokov Namioka Naoya Narayan Nayeri Newman Ng Northcutt Nye Nyi Pu Lay O'Brien (Tim) O'Connor (Flannery) O'Connor (Frank) O'Flaherty O. Henry Oates Ocampo Ochsner Ogot Okri Olsen Orringer Ortiz Orwell Ozick Packer Paley Parker Paterson Paulsen Paz Peck Perrault Phillips Pirandello Plath Poe Porter (Katherine) Potok Powell Pramoj Premchand Proulx Proust Pushkin Pyle Quan Quiller-Couch Quiroga Rajaratnam Rangkuti Rao Reyes Reynolds Richards Rivera (Beatriz) Rivera (Tomás) Rivera (Vicente) Rivera-Ford Robbe-Grillet Rojas Roth Rotor Roy Rulfo Rushdie Rylant Sait Faik Saki Salih Salinas Salinger Salter Santos Saramago Sargeson Saroyan Sartre Saunders Sayers Scott Shanmughalingam Sharma Sher Silko Silver Silverstein Singer Singh Sleator Slesar Smiley Sneve Solzhenitsyn Sorrentino Soto Spark Sperry Stafford Stanton Steinbeck Stephenson Stern Stevenson Stewart Stockton Strasser Sun-won Surangkhanang Tagore Tan (Amy) Tan (Lucy) Taylor Thiong'o Thomas Thurber Tien Toer Tolstaya Tolstoy Toomer Toudouze Trevor Turgenev Twain Tyler Téllez Uchida Unamuno Upadhyay Updike Valenzuela Valgardson Vargas Llosa Vedol Villa Villanueva Vivante Vonnegut Walker Wallace Warren Warung Waters Weber Weir Wells Welty Wetherell Wharton White Wideman Wilde Wilkinson Williams (Joy) Williams (Margery) Wilson (Budge) Winton Wodehouse Wolf Wolfe Wolff Woolf Wright (Judith) Wright (Richard) Xun Yamamoto Yates Yep Yezierska Yolen Yoshimoto Zweig

Stories by Genre / Topic

  • Adventure
  • Christmas
  • Crime
  • Detective
  • Dystopia
  • Fantasy
  • Ghost
  • Historical Fiction
  • Horror
  • Humor
  • Magical Realism
  • Mystery
  • Psychological Realism
  • Romance
  • Science Fiction
  • Social Commentary
  • Superstition/The Supernatural
  • Survival
  • War
  • Western
© 2008-2025 xpressenglish.com