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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

See top menu for all 1,400+ stories

  • 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.

  • Native Land / Lupang Tinubuan

    Short Story by Narciso G. Reyes. A young boy attends a funeral in his father’s home village. He bonds with extended family he has never met, connects with his father’s childhood, and comes to love and find peace in the land others describe as having “nothing beautiful except the sky”.

  • Wise Folks

    German Folktale. A cruel farmer is angry with his wife for being cheated out of two cows. He promises not beat her for it if can find someone more foolish. He soon finds one: a widow who is worried about how well her dead husband is doing in Heaven.

  • The Yellow Wallpaper

    Short Story by Charlotte Gilman. A chilling psychological horror story about a woman suffering post-natal depression. Following her physician husband’s medical advice, she takes a holiday “resting” in a colonial mansion amid idyllic countryside. While there, her fragile mind becomes obsessed with the creepy wallpaper in her prison-like bedroom.

  • The Treasure of Lemon Brown

    Grade 7-8 Story by Walter Dean Myers. Lemon Brown’s ‘Treasure’ comprises press clippings and an old harmonica he gave his son before he went off to war. Helping the old man protect it from thugs teaches a boy to better appreciate the value of family and education.

  • Donkey Skin

    French Folktale. Donkey Skin deals with sexual abuse in the form of incest between father and daughter. A powerful king wants to marry his daughter, as this is the only way he can keep a promise he made to his dying wife. Fortunately, the brave girl has other ideas.

  • The Homemaker / Gharwali

    Short Story by Ismat Chughtai. An orphan growing up on the streets learns that her body is her only asset. Alluring and without shame, she would provide sex for money, on credit, or as charity. Things change when a friend suggests that a respectable shopkeeper employ her as a housemaid.

  • Soldier’s Home

    Short Story by Ernest Hemingway. An American soldier has difficulty “fitting in” after returning from World War 1, finding himself alienated from his culture, community, friends, and family. He falls into depression and lethargy, obsessed with watching local girls go by, but avoiding contact with them.

  • A Simple Heart / Soul

    Novelette by Gustav Flaubert. Set in nineteenth century France an uneducated, simple-minded girl lives through fifty years of drudgery as house servant to a “disagreeable” woman. Although she is shamelessly exploited, endures years of disappointment and loss, and suffers a painful, lonely death, she never gives in to despair.

  • Zita

    Short Story by Arturo B. Rotor. A broken-hearted young man seeks solace teaching on an off-the-grid Philippine island. One of his students, an adolescent girl, develops a crush on the man. Although devastated when he decides to return to his former lover, she learns a valuable life lesson.

  • Roman Fever

    Short Story by Edith Wharton. Two American widows, lifelong friends, meet up in Rome. The pair have been measuring themselves against each other for most of their lives. In an effort to hurt the other, one of them reveals a cruel secret from the past. In the shattering conclusion, an even crueler secret is thrown back at her.

  • The Rats in the Walls

    Novelette by H. P. Lovecraft. The sound of a swarm of rats in the walls of a recently restored family castle causes its owner to lead a group of scientists to explore its long-sealed lower chambers. What they find drives the seemingly normal man to cannibalism.

  • April in Paris

    Short Story by Ursula Le Guin. A 15th century French scientist, frustrated with being unable to prove a theory he had developed, decides to experiment with black magic. His first spell is a “success”, allowing him to teleport kindred spirits from the past and future to join him.

  • The White Umbrella

    Grade 7-8 Story by Gish Jen. A Chinese-American girl admires a beautiful white umbrella at piano class. She knows that if she asked for one, her mother would say: “All you want is things, just like an American”. Her kind teacher gives her the umbrella. Shortly afterwards, she throws away!

  • Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?

    Short Story by Joyce Carol Oates. A psychological thriller that gradually develops into a horror story. The plot in a nutshell: an attractive, self-absorbed, rebellious teen suffering from “why can’t you be like your big sister syndrome” meets a satanic, predatory psychopath with (one imagines) predictable results.

  • The Magic Barrel

    Short Story by Bernard Malamud. A young, introverted rabbinical student hires a matchmaker to find a wife. His first meeting with a potential match reveals an embarrassing truth: he can’t explain the reason for his calling. He finds possible redemption in a woman whose photograph carries an “impression of evil”.

  • The Open Boat

    Novelette by Stephen Crane. 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. A defining feature is the way men from such diverse backgrounds were able to maintain their self-discipline and work together.

  • Dante and the Lobster

    Short Story by Samuel Beckett. An absurdist comedy spanning an afternoon in the life of a solitary, eccentric student having trouble understanding Dante’s Divine Comedy. He is fanatical about unimportant things (such as making the perfect toasted sandwich) and apathetic towards the things that matter.

  • Black Tickets

    Short Story by Jayne Anne Phillips. An imprisoned drug dealer recalls his obsessive love for and unpredictable, often violent relationship with, his girlfriend and partner in crime. It is unclear whether she, their supplier, or even the owner of the seedy theatre they sold the drugs in, set him up.

  • All the Years of Her Life

    Grade 7-8 Story by Morley Callaghan. A mother convinces a drugstore owner not to press charges against her son for pilfering goods. The young man’s attitude to life changes when he sees the contrast between her calm, dignified manner at the drugstore and the trembling, nervous wreck she becomes at home.

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