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A collection of classic and contemporary stories by American authors, ranging from O. Henry to Kate Chopin. Read about love, war, horror, humor, and more in these short stories that span different genres and eras.
- The Night Came Slowly
Short Stories for Children; Fairy Tales by Age; Mother...
- 75 Short Short Stories
Short Stories to enjoy when you have 5 minutes to spare,...
- 100 Great Short Stories
100 Great Short Stories! There are thousands of short...
- The Night Came Slowly
- Overview
- Stories
- An Idle Fellow
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This article provides a list of stories grouped by category to suit the reader's mood, including Witty Stories, Introspective Stories, Morality Tales, Other-Worldly Stories, Feel-Good/Love Stories, Dramatic Stories and Political Farce Stories. The article lists 50 great feel-good stories along with comforting foodie stories.
A collection of stories grouped by category, including Witty, Introspective, Morality Tales and more.
A metaphysical story about the search for truth.
Enjoy a variety of short-short stories by famous American writers, grouped by category to suit your mood. Find witty, introspective, moral, other-worldly, feel-good, dramatic, and political stories by Mark Twain, O. Henry, Oscar Wilde, and more.
- Washington Irving, “Rip Van Winkle” (1819) and “The Legend of Sleepy Hollow” (1820) I agonized over whether I should pick “Rip Van Winkle” or “The Legend of Sleepy Hollow” from Irving’s oeuvre.
- Edgar Allan Poe, “The Tell-Tale Heart” (1843) Poe’s early stream-of-consciousness horror story, unreliable narrator and heart beating under the floorboards and all, is certainly one of the most adapted—and even more often referenced—short stories in popular culture, and which may or may not be the source for all of the hundreds of stories in which a character is tormented by a sound only they can hear.
- Herman Melville, “Bartleby, the Scrivener” (1853) Once, while I was walking in Brooklyn, carrying my Bartleby tote bag, a woman in an SUV pulled over (on Atlantic Avenue, folks) to excitedly wave at me and yell “Melville!
- Ambrose Bierce, “An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge” (1890) I will leave it to Kurt Vonnegut, who famously wrote, “I consider anybody a twerp who hasn’t read the greatest American short story, which is “Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge,” by Ambrose Bierce.
100 Great Short Stories! There are thousands of short stories in our short story library, but with so many stories and so little time, we did you the favor of collecting our favorite 100 short stories in one place for you to enjoy.
- “Rip Van Winkle” by Washington Irving, 1820. Irving shot to international fame by importing plot devices of German folk tales into American settings. He also uses “Rip Van Winkle” to showcase how American culture changed from a slow-moving rural culture to a bustling, politically-oriented culture after the Revolutionary War brought Americans independence from Britain.
- “The Fall of the House of Usher,” by Edgar Allen Poe, 1839.
- “The Tell-Tale Heart” by Edgar Allen Poe, 1843. Great examples of the American romance (not the love-story kind of romance, but the supernatural, spooky-story kind).
- “The Birthmark,” by Nathaniel Hawthorne, 1843.
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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A curated collection of American Literature. Hundreds of short stories and audio editions from classic heavy weights like Twain, Hawthorne, Poe and Porter, to contemporary stars like Miranda July, Denis Johnson, Tobias Wolf and more.
