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The Best Fiction Short Stories. Short fiction stories are a fantastic way to access the literary world in compact, bite-sized reading sessions. The short story as we know it today began in the 19th century, when the increasing interest in print literary magazines led to many authors like Arthur Conan Doyle and Charles Dickens writing and publishing stories.
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From classics published in the 1900s to a short story that...
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Read online some of the best very short stories by Chekhov, Chopin, Kafka, Woolf, and more. These stories are concise, witty, and thought-provoking, and showcase the literary genius of their authors.
- "The Dead" by James Joyce. The stories in Dubliners are depictions of life in Dublin around 1910. T. S. Eliot, amongst others, described The Dead as "one of the greatest short stories ever written."
- "The Lottery" by Shirley Jackson. Who knew that a story about a village lottery could cause so much anger and outrage? Yet Jackson’s dark, modern gothic tale caused a flood of complaints to The New Yorker.
- "The Swimmer" by John Cheever. Cheever’s short stories veer from realism to satire to fantasy, often in the space of the same sentence. Below the surface of the cocktail parties that greet new readers, are puzzling fables about radio transmissions of private conversations (The Enormous Radio) or brothers attacking one another unexpectedly (Goodbye My Brother).
- “A Good Man Is Hard to Find” by Flannery O’Connor. It is almost cast in stone that any list of great short story writers must mention Carver, Cheever, and O’Connor together, as the greats of American short story writing.
Short Stories to enjoy when you have 5 minutes to spare, sorted by category so you can find what suits your mood. Stories average 1,000 words, including morality tales, feel-good/love stories, other-worldly stories, witty stories, dramatic stories, and farce/political stories.
1. E. T. A. Hoffmann, ‘The Golden Pot’. Before Poe, there was Hoffmann (1776-1822), who was an even earlier pioneer of the short story form as well as an influential early writer of what we now call fantasy literature. He was associated with the Romantic movement, and Hoffmann’s work shows a fascination with the romance and folklore ...
Jul 13, 2017 · George Saunders, “ Sticks ”. This story slays me. Saunders builds meaning out of nothing, slowly, it seems—although in a story this short there’s hardly room for slowness—and then rips it all away from you in the end, leaving you gutted and empty, which is just the sort of abject cruelty you really want from a writer. Lucy Corin ...
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