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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

In the Middle of the Fields
Short Story by Mary Lavin. A widow living with three young children on an isolated farm is visited one night by a neighbor seeking to defer promised tractor work. He reluctantly agrees to meet the original schedule after she asserts herself, but then makes an inappropriate advance.
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.
The Wedding Dance
Short Story by Amador Daguio. Set in pre-colonial Philippines, a villager follows tribal custom and remarries when his wife fails to conceive. Despite their pledges of love, neither challenges this unwritten law with tribal elders. Instead, the woman "lets go" and flees into the fields during his second wedding dance.

The Bass, the River, and Sheila Mant
Young Adult Story by W.D. Wetherell. A boy whose passion is fishing becomes infatuated with an older girl holidaying next door. Although she is a self-absorbed tease, he initially takes his infatuation too far. The story was published in 1983. These days, his actions could see him arrested for stalking.
The Erlking
Short Story by Angela Carter. A magical being living in harmony with nature seduces young women traveling through his forest domain. The women are powerless to resist. When he tires of one, he transforms her into a bird, cages her, and adds the cage to his collection of other "birds".
Youth
Novelette by Joseph Conrad. A young seaman on his first voyage as second mate demonstrates leadership ability in temporarily taking command of the crew’s evacuation from his sinking ship, followed by recklessness bordering on dereliction of duty when piloting his “first command” (one of its lifeboats) to shore.
Women in Their Beds
Short story by Gina Berriault. A struggling young actress has just begun a day job as a social worker in the women’s ward of a city hospital. With no formal training, she cannot maintain clinical detachment and begins to identify with the suffering, often troubled women in the ward.

When Anklets Tinkle
Novelette by Anjana Appachana. A detached, opinionated Indian husband and his hard-working, under-appreciated wife struggle to deal with a noisy ghost, their visiting, unmarried daughter who defies tradition and asserts her independence and sexuality, and the idiosyncrasies of their long-time servant and his astute, seemingly ever-pregnant wife
Why I Live at the P.O.
Short Story by Eudora Welty. A comical account of a squabble in a dysfunctional family. When a prodigal daughter returns with a two-year-old child in tow her sister, who has remained at home, is far from welcoming. Past jealousy flares up, forcing one of them to live at the “P.O.”
After Twenty Years
Quick Read by O. Henry. Two boyhood friends lose touch after one decides to “go West” to make his fortune. When he leaves, the two make a solemn promise to meet again outside their favorite New York restaurant in twenty years. Both men keep the promise, and both regret it.