Featured Stories

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The Monkey’s Paw

The Monkey's Paw: Short story by W. W. JacobsToday we are bringing you The Monkey’s Paw by W. W. Jacobs, one of the most famous horror stories of all time. First published in 1902, it has since appeared in many forms including live plays, movies, TV shows, radio plays, books, comics and cartoons (even a Simpsons episode!). In the story, a man makes a wish upon an enchanted monkey’s paw with disastrous results for his family. First, some advice before you start to read. Don’t do it sitting at home alone on a dark and stormy night! Themes: family, greed, tempting fate, industrialization (work safety), death, the supernatural.

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The Moustache

The Moustache: Short story by Robert CormierIn this coming of age story by Robert Cormier, seventeen-year-old Mike grew a moustache to prove he could. He likes the look, and wants to keep it. When he visits his grandmother, who lives in a nursing home and is losing her memory, he is worried she won’t recognize him. However, when she sees him she smiles and calls him by name. Later, he realizes she has mistaken him for his late grandfather who he was named after and also wore a moustache. She then tells him a secret that affects him greatly. Themes: identity, family, aging, guilt, forgiveness, communication.

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Nobody Will Laugh

Nobody Will Laugh: Novelette by Milan KunderaIn this story by Milan Kundera, a Czechoslovakian college lecturer “rewards” an amateur researcher’s gushing praise by going to great lengths to avoid telling the truth about a substandard paper he has submitted for review. Having spent several years on the paper, the man needs the lecturer’s endorsement to have it published. He refuses to give up, resulting in a comic series of events that culminate in the lecturer not only being charged with immoral conduct by his local communist party committee, but losing his job and the partner he belatedly realizes he loves. Themes include hubris, deception, manipulation, persistence.

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The Adventure of the Speckled Band

The Adventure of the Speckled Band: Short story by Arthur Conan DoyleThis story, considered by Arthur Conan Doyle to be his best Sherlock Holmes mystery, features one of his most creative (and unlikeliest) murder plots. Thirty-year-old Helen, Holmes’s client, is a victim of Victorian attitudes towards women. Fearing for their future, her dead mother had decided that she and twin sister Julia would not receive their inheritances until they married. Their violent stepfather, who manages the money, will become destitute should either of them wed. After announcing her engagement, Julia dies under mysterious circumstances. Helen fears that she will be next. Themes: decay, isolation, fear, murder, class, greed, hasty judgement, justice.

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Mrs. Frola and Mr. Ponza, Her Son-in-Law

Mrs. Frola and Mr. Ponza, Her Son-in-Law: Short story by Luigi PirandelloIn this story by Luigi Pirandello, a respected civil servant rents an apartment for himself and his wife, and another for his mother-in-law. Gossip rages when he doesn’t allow his wife to leave their apartment, or her mother to visit. He explains to a “ladies’ group” that his first wife (the mother-in-law’s daughter) is dead, and he is supporting her mother, who is crazy. The “mother-in-law” later argues that her son-in-law is the crazy one. Readers are left to decide which of the equally plausible stories is true. Themes include gossip vs. the right to privacy, judging by appearances, relativism.

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America and I

America and I: Short story by Anzia YezierskaIn this semi-autobiographical story, Anzia Yezierska begins by outlining her expectations of life in America as a young Russian immigrant in the late 1800s. Instead of a land of acceptance, equality and opportunity, she experiences alienation, exploitation and poverty. Although her situation improves as she develops English proficiency and vocational skills, her factory job is not satisfying. Fortunately, the study of American history leads to the revelation that her adopted country is a world still in the making, and helps her find a fulfilling purpose in life. Themes include innocence, poverty, immigration and cultural diversity, assimilation, opportunity, fulfilment.

The world, and America’s need for unskilled migrants, has changed. Yezierska laments the fact that America was unable to tap the human and cultural potential of many other immigrants of her day. Sadly, the poor woman would turn in her grave if she knew how far off the mark the idealistic prediction expressed in her last paragraph has proved to be.

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The Grave

The Grave: Short story by Katherine Anne PorterIn this coming of age story by Katherine Anne Porter, a motherless nine-year-old girl defies social convention by wearing similar day clothes to her brother, and wandering the woods freely with him. Two events bring about an epiphany in her life. Trading of an object she finds in an open grave for a gold ring brings about the first stirrings of womanhood. Seeing unborn kittens in the womb of a dead rabbit adds to the picture of what it is to be female. Themes include the cycle of life (youthful innocence, adulthood, birth and death), matriarchy, gender roles, poverty.

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The Library of Babel

The Library of Babel: Short story by Jorge BorgesJorge Borges is known for his unusual and sometimes complex stories which connect things that don’t seem real or possible with the themes of metaphysics and religion. The Library of Babel also includes several other themes commonly found in Borges’s work: infinity, language and order vs. randomness. The Library, which is composed of a seemingly endless number of galleries, is an allegory for the universe. The books within the galleries are incomprehensible. The librarians, who represent mankind, search for the gallery of a mythical “Man of Books” (God?), thought to contain a compendium volume which may unlock the Library’s secrets.

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