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Looking for great American short stories you can read for free? Whether they’re written by American authors, set in the USA, or just have that ever-elusive quality of Americana, this is the page you’re looking for.
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- The Gift of the Magi (1905) by O. Henry. This tender story -- one of the most famous titles in the short story genre -- is a must-read. The story is about a young couple and how they meet the challenge of buying each other a Christmas gifts when they don't have enough money.
- The Little Match Girl (1845) by Hans Christian Andersen. This is a special seasonal selection for The Holiday Season. It's a story to read for perspective, and is also featured in our Christmas Stories collection.
- To Build a Fire (1908) by Jack London. A classic Man versus Nature story set in the Yukon Territory in Northwestern Canada. "The dog did not know anything about thermometers" but it had the sense to know "that it was no time for travelling."
- An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge (1890, 1891) by Ambrose Bierce. A short story masterpiece: This a suspenseful story about a Civil War soldier, Petyon Farquhar, who has been captured by enemy troops.
Read History’s Best, Anytime, Anywhere. A free, online library for reading and downloading public domain short stories.
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- “The Library of Babel” by Jorge Luis Borges
- “The Lottery” by Shirley Jackson
- “A Good Man Is Hard to Find” by Flannery O’Connor
- “In The Penal Colony” by Franz Kafka
- “The Devil in America” by Kai Ashante Wilson
- “The City Born Great” by N.K. Jemisin
- “Spider The Artist” by Nnedi Okorafor
- “Exhalation” by Ted Chiang
- “The Daughters of The Moon” by Italo Calvino
- “The Embassy of Cambodia” by Zadie Smith
The world is a library that contains all the books that have ever been written, but most of them are indecipherable. Many people venture to the library to find the meaning of life. It reminded me of Terry Pratchett’s Discworld library. “Perhaps my old age and fearfulness deceive me, but I suspect that the human species—the unique species—is about t...
This used to be my favorite short story, and I might only think that because I read it when I was a freshman in high school and I remember being shocked by the ending. It’s always stayed with me.
Another story with an ending that you won’t forget anytime soon. O’Connor was a master. If you’ve never read any of her work I would start here.
It’s a chilling story. A man known as the Traveller is visiting a foreign penal colony where he is shown a special machine used to execute prisoners. The machine inscribes the prisoner’s crime onto their body until they die (kind of sounds familiar if you’ve read the fifth Harry Potter book). It takes twelve hours of torture before the prisoner die...
Kai Ashante Wilson has quite a talent. This ties present day police brutality towards African Americans to post-emancipation America and a family of freed slaves that are living with the Devil that followed them from Africa.
Cities, once they are old enough, must be born. New York City is ready to be born, and must be led into the world by a reluctant midwife.
Okorafor is a wonderful storyteller, and if you’ve never read her books, this would be a great place to start. And if you like this short story, Binti: The Complete Trilogywas released in February!
Oh, you’ve never read Ted Chiang? Well, you must go out now and read this story and then read Stories of Your Life and Others and his new collection Exhalation: Stories, which comes out in May. I was shocked by how good and complex his writing was. I had no idea that the movie The Arrivalwas based on one of his short stories.
I don’t know. It’s either Zadie Smith’s “The Embassy of Cambodia” or this story that is my favorite on the list… I can’t decide. I think it’s this story. A story about the people of Earth deciding to throw away the Moon. It’s a story of consumerism. Luckily, I own “The Complete Cosmicomics“, so I can continue reading Calvino’s magnificent short sto...
After you read “The Devil in America” read this story and see if you can find the parallels. This was my first time reading Zadie Smith because I’d always heard mixed reviews, but if her longer fiction is anything like this short story, I’m in love. If you need help figuring out where to start with Zadie Smith’s books, check out our Reading Pathway...
- Sarah Ullery
Click a button to find the best short stories from the authors below. We also have a great collection of Short Stories for Students and a library full of Children's Stories .
Read from 1000+ Short Stories. Filter by genre, author and length or search directly by title. Arthur Conan Doyle, Edgar Allan Poe, H.P. Lovecraft and many more.
Nov 10, 2021 · Collects forty short stories published between 1915 and 2015, from writers that include Ernest Hemingway, John Updike, and Alice Munro that exemplify their era and stand the test of time.
