Short Stories

The Works of Edgar Allan Poe

The works of American author Edgar Allan Poe include many poems, short stories, and one novel. His fiction spans multiple genres, including horror fiction, adventure, science fiction, and detective fiction, a genre he is credited with inventing. These works are generally considered part of the Dark romanticism movement, a literary reaction to Transcendentalism.

The Fall of the House of Usher

"The Fall of the House of Usher" is a short story by Edgar Allan Poe.

The Gift of the Magi

"The Gift of the Magi" is a short story written by O. Henry , about a young married couple and how they deal with the challenge of buying secret Christmas gifts for each other with very little money. As a sentimental story with a moral lesson about gift-giving, it has been a popular one for adaptation, especially for presentation at Christmas time. The plot and its "twist ending" are well-known, and the ending is generally considered an example of cosmic irony. It was allegedly written at Pete's Tavern on Irving Place in New York City.

Dubliners

Dubliners is a collection of 15 short stories by James Joyce, first published in 1914. They form a naturalistic depiction of Irish middle class life in and around Dublin in the early years of the 20th century.

Just So Stories

The Just So Stories for Little Children are a collection written by the British author Rudyard Kipling. Highly fantasised origin stories, especially for differences among animals, they are among Kipling's best known works.

The Happy Prince and Other Tales

The Happy Prince and Other Tales is a collection of stories for children by Oscar Wilde first published in May 1888. It contains five stories, "The Happy Prince", "The Nightingale and the Rose", "The Selfish Giant", "The Devoted Friend", and "The Remarkable Rocket". It is most famous for its title story, "The Happy Prince".

Short Stories

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The Sea Wolf

The Sea-Wolf is a 1904 psychological adventure novel by American novelist Jack London about a literary critic, survivor of an ocean collision, who comes under the dominance of Wolf Larsen, the powerful and amoral sea captain who rescues him. Its first printing of forty thousand copies were immediately sold out before publication on the strength of London's previous The Call of the Wild. Ambrose Bierce wrote, "The great thing—and it is among the greatest of things—is that tremendous creation, Wolf Larsen... the hewing out and setting up of such a figure is enough for a man to do in one lifetime... The love element, with its absurd suppressions, and impossible proprieties, is awful."

An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge

"An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge" or "A Dead Mans Dream" is a short story by American author Ambrose Bierce . Originally published by the The San Francisco Examiner in 1890, it was first collected in Bierce's 1891 book Tales of Soldiers and Civilians. The story, which is set during the Civil War, is famous for its irregular time sequence and twist ending. It is Bierce's most anthologized story.

The Mysterious Stranger

The Mysterious Stranger is the final novel attempted by the American author Mark Twain. He worked on it periodically from 1897 through 1908. The body of work is a serious social commentary by Twain addressing his ideas of the Moral Sense and the "damned human race".

2 B R 0 2 B

2BR02B is a science fiction short story by Kurt Vonnegut, originally published in the digest magazine Worlds of If Science Fiction, January 1962, and collected in Vonnegut's Bagombo Snuff Box . The title is pronounced "2 B R naught 2 B", referencing the famous phrase "to be, or not to be" from William Shakespeare's Hamlet, Prince of Denmark. In this story, the title refers to the telephone number one dials to schedule an assisted suicide with the Federal Bureau of Termination. Vonnegut's 1965 novel God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater describes a story by this name, attributing it to his recurring character Kilgore Trout, although the plot summary given is closer in nature to the eponymous tale from the short-story collection Welcome to the Monkey House.

The King in Yellow

The King in Yellow is a collection of tales of the supernatural by Robert W. Chambers, named after a fictional play with the same title that recurs as a motif through some of its stories and first published by F. Tennyson Neely in 1895. Described by S.T. Joshi as a classic in the field of the supernatural, it contains 10 stories, the first four of which, "The Repairer of Reputations", "The Mask", "In the Court of the Dragon" and "The Yellow Sign", mention The King in Yellow, a forbidden play which induces despair or madness in those who read it. "The Yellow Sign" inspired a film of the same name released in 2001.

Flappers and Philosophers

Flappers and Philosophers was the first collection of short stories written by F. Scott Fitzgerald, published in 1920. It includes eight stories: 1. "The Offshore Pirate" 2. "The Ice Palace" 3. "Head and Shoulders" 4. "The Cut-Glass Bowl" 5. "Bernice Bobs Her Hair" 6. "Benediction" 7. "Dalyrimple Goes Wrong" 8. "The Four Fists"

Twice Told Tales

Twice-Told Tales is a short story collection in two volumes by Nathaniel Hawthorne. The first was published in the spring of 1837, and the second in 1842. The stories had all been previously published in magazines and annuals, hence the name.

Tales of the Jazz Age

Tales of the Jazz Age is a collection of eleven short stories by F. Scott Fitzgerald. Divided into three separate parts, according to subject matter, it includes one of his better-known short stories, "The Curious Case of Benjamin Button". All of the stories had been published earlier, independently, in either Metropolitan Magazine , Saturday Evening Post, Smart Set, Collier's, Chicago Sunday Tribune, or Vanity Fair.

The Kreutzer Sonata and Other Stories

The Kreutzer Sonata is a novella by Leo Tolstoy, named after Beethoven's Kreutzer Sonata. The novella was published in 1889 and promptly censored by the Russian authorities. The work is an argument for the ideal of sexual abstinence and an in-depth first-person description of jealous rage. The main character, Pozdnyshev, relates the events leading up to his killing his wife; in his analysis, the root cause for the deed were the "animal excesses" and "swinish connection" governing the relation between the sexes.

Dracula's Guest

A collection of short stories by Bram Stoker, the author of Dracula, first published in 1914, two years after Stoker's death.

The Man with Two Left Feet, and Other Stories

The Man With Two Left Feet, and Other Stories is a collection of short stories by P. G. Wodehouse, first published in the United Kingdom on March 8, 1917 by Methuen & Co., London, and in the United States on 1 February 1933 by A.L. Burt and Co., New York. All the stories had previously appeared in periodicals, usually the Strand in the U.K. and the Red Book magazine or the Saturday Evening Post in the U.S.

Beyond Lies the Wub

"Beyond Lies the Wub" is a science fiction short story by Philip K. Dick. It was his first published story, originally appearing in Planet Stories in July, 1952.

The Big Trip Up Yonder

"Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow" is a short story by Kurt Vonnegut written in 1953, and first published in Galaxy Science Fiction magazine in January 1954. The title comes from Shakespeare's famous line from the play Macbeth "Tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow." The name "Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow" appears in Vonnegut's collection of short stories, Welcome to the Monkey House. The story was originally titled "The Big Trip Up Yonder" when published in Galaxy Science Fiction magazine.

The Piazza Tales

The Piazza Tales is a collection of short stories by Herman Melville, which he published with Dix & Edwards in 1856 in the United States. A British edition followed shortly afterward. Except for the title story, "The Piazza," all of the stories had appeared in Putnam's Monthly over the years before. It was the only such collection published during Melville's lifetime. Originally, Melville had intended to entitle the volume Benito Cereno and Other Sketches, but it was The Encantadas, his sketches of the Galápagos Islands, that garnered the most attention from critics. Even though The Piazza Tales received largely favorable reviews, it did not sell well enough to get Melville out of his financial straits.

The Skull

"The Skull" is a science fiction short story by Philip K. Dick, first published in 1952 in If, and later in The Collected Stories of Philip K. Dick. It has since been republished several times, including in Beyond Lies the Wub in 1988.

American Fairy Tales

American Fairy Tales is the title of a collection of twelve fantasy stories by L. Frank Baum, published in 1901 by the George M. Hill Company, the firm that issued The Wonderful Wizard of Oz the previous year. The cover, title page, and page borders were designed by Ralph Fletcher Seymour; each story was furnished with two full-page black-and-white illustrations, by either Harry Kennedy, Ike Morgan, or Norman P. Hall.

The Crystal Crypt

The Crystal Crypt is a science fiction short story by Philip K. Dick, first published in the January 1954 edition of Planet Stories and later published in Beyond Lies the Wub in 1988.

The 30,000 Dollar Bequest and Other Stories

The $30,000 Bequest and Other Stories is an 1906 comic short story collection by American humorist and writer Mark Twain.