100 Great Short Stories

A collection of short story masterpieces from the world's finest storytellers

150 Timeless Tales

The Gift of the Magi

One dollar and eighty-seven cents. That was all. And sixty cents of it was in pennies. Pennies saved one and two at a time by bulldozing the grocer...
Read Story

The Monkey's Paw

"Be careful what you wish for, you may receive it." -- Anonymous Part I Without, the night was cold and wet, but in the small parlour of Laburnum v...
Read Story

The Necklace

The girl was one of those pretty and charming young creatures who sometimes are born, as if by a slip of fate, into a family of clerks. She had no ...
Read Story

The Aged Mother

Long, long ago there lived at the foot of the mountain a poor farmer and his aged, widowed mother. They owned a bit of land which supplied them wit...
Read Story

The Selfish Giant

Every afternoon, as they were coming from school, the children used to go and play in the Giant's garden. It was a large lovely garden, with soft g...
Read Story

An Angel in Disguise

Idleness, vice, and intemperance had done their miserable work, and the dead mother lay cold and still amid her wretched children. She had fallen u...
Read Story

It's a Good Life

Aunt Amy was out on the front porch, rocking back and forth in the high­backed chair and fanning herself, when Bill Soames rode his bicycle up the ...
Read Story

The Sniper

The long June twilight faded into night. Dublin lay enveloped in darkness but for the dim light of the moon that shone through fleecy clouds, casti...
Read Story

The Happy Prince

High above the city, on a tall column, stood the statue of the Happy Prince. He was gilded all over with thin leaves of fine gold, for eyes he had ...
Read Story

Araby

North Richmond Street, being blind, was a quiet street except at the hour when the Christian Brothers' School set the boys free. An uninhabited hou...
Read Story

The Man In A Case

AT the furthest end of the village of Mironositskoe some belated sportsmen lodged for the night in the elder Prokofy's barn. There were two of them...
Read Story

Sir Philip Sidney

A cruel battle was being fought. The ground was covered with dead and dying men. The air was hot and stifling. The sun shone down without pity on t...
Read Story

Gentlemen: The King!

The room was large, but with a low ceiling, and at one end of the lengthy, broad apartment stood a gigantic fireplace, in which was heaped a pile o...
Read Story

Dracula's Guest

When we started for our drive the sun was shining brightly on Munich, and the air was full of the joyousness of early summer. Just as we were about...
Read Story

Fur

"You look worried, dear," said Eleanor. "I am worried," admitted Suzanne; "not worried exactly, but anxious. You see, my birthday happens next week...
Read Story

A Society

THIS IS HOW it all came about. Six or seven of us were sitting one day after tea. Some were gazing across the street into the windows of a milliner...
Read Story

Absent Treatment

I want to tell you all about dear old Bobbie Cardew. It's a most interesting story. I can't put in any literary style and all that; but I don't hav...
Read Story

Man About Town

There were two or three things that I wanted to know. I do not care about a mystery. So I began to inquire. It took me two weeks to find out what w...
Read Story

Love of Life

"This out of all will remain - They have lived and have tossed: So much of the game will be gain, Though the gold of the dice has been lost." THEY ...
Read Story

All Gold Canyon

It was the green heart of the canyon, where the walls swerved back from the rigid plan and relieved their harshness of line by making a little shel...
Read Story

Just Meat

He strolled to the corner and glanced up and down the intersecting street, but saw nothing save the oases of light shed by the street lamps at the ...
Read Story

A Love-Knot

Mr. Nathaniel Clark and Mrs. Bowman had just finished their third game of draughts. It had been a difficult game for Mr. Clark, the lady's mind hav...
Read Story

The $25,000 Jaw

"Rather thirsty this morning, eh, Mr. Addicks?" inquired Cowdin, the chief purchasing agent. The "Mister" was said with a long, hissing "s" and was...
Read Story

A Horse Story

Herminia, mounted upon a dejected looking sorrel pony, was climbing the gradual slope of a pine hill one morning in summer. She was a ‘Cadian girl ...
Read Story

White Magic

One September afternoon in the year of grace 1840 Avery and Janet Sparhallow were picking apples in their Uncle Daniel Sparhallow's big orchard. It...
Read Story

The Fool-Killer

Down South whenever any one perpetrates some particularly monumental piece of foolishness everybody says: "Send for Jesse Holmes." Jesse Holmes is ...
Read Story

Political Economy

Political Economy is the basis of all good government. The wisest men of all ages have brought to bear upon this subject the-- [Here I was interrup...
Read Story

The Science vs Luck

[Written about 1867.] At that time, in Kentucky (said the Hon. Mr. K-----); the law was very strict against what is termed "games of chance." About...
Read Story

Laura

"You are not really dying, are you?" asked Amanda. "I have the doctor's permission to live till Tuesday," said Laura. "But to-day is Saturday; this...
Read Story

My Uncle Jules

A white-haired old man begged us for alms. My companion, Joseph Davranche, gave him five francs. Noticing my surprised look, he said: "That poor un...
Read Story

A Portrait

Hello! there's Milial!" said somebody near me. I looked at the man who had been pointed out as I had been wishing for a long time to meet this Don ...
Read Story

Jack London

I was born in San Francisco in 1876. At fifteen I was a man among men, and if I had a spare nickel I spent it on beer instead of candy, because I t...
Read Story

Cupid's Arrows

Pit where the buffalo cooled his hide,By the hot sun emptied, and blistered and dried;Log in the reh-grass, hidden and alone;Bund where the earth-r...
Read Story

The Last Spin

The boy sitting opposite him was his enemy. The boy sitting opposite him was called Tigo, and he wore a green silk jacket with an orange stripe on ...
Read Story

No Story

To avoid having this book hurled into corner of the room by the suspicious reader, I will assert in time that this is not a newspaper story. You wi...
Read Story

Blind Man's Holiday

Alas for the man and for the artist with the shifting point of perspective! Life shall be a confusion of ways to the one; the landscape shall rise ...
Read Story

Best-Seller

I One day last summer I went to Pittsburgh--well, I had to go there on business. My chair-car was profitably well filled with people of the kind on...
Read Story

At Twilight

A breeze from the May world without blew through the class-room, and as it lifted his papers he had a curious sense of freshness and mustiness meet...
Read Story

The Kiss

AT eight o'clock on the evening of the twentieth of May all the six batteries of the N---- Reserve Artillery Brigade halted for the night in the vi...
Read Story

The Bishop

ITHE evening service was being celebrated on the eve of Palm Sunday in the Old Petrovsky Convent. When they began distributing the palm it was clos...
Read Story

The Black Monk

I ANDREY VASSILITCH KOVRIN, who held a master's degree at the University, had exhausted himself, and had upset his nerves. He did not send for a do...
Read Story

A Son of the Gods

A Study in the Present Tense A breezy day and a sunny landscape. An open country to right and left and forward; behind, a wood. In the edge of this...
Read Story

Grisha

GRISHA, a chubby little boy, born two years and eight months ago, is walking on the boulevard with his nurse. He is wearing a long, wadded pelisse,...
Read Story

The Beautiful Suit

There was once a little man whose mother made him a beautiful suit of clothes. It was green and gold, and woven so that I cannot describe how delic...
Read Story

A New Crime

LEGISLATION NEEDED This country, during the last thirty or forty years, has produced some of the most remarkable cases of insanity of which there i...
Read Story

Jessamine

When the vegetable-man knocked, Jessamine went to the door wearily. She felt quite well acquainted with him. He had been coming all the spring, and...
Read Story

Springtime a la Carte

It was a day in March. Never, never begin a story this way when you write one. No opening could possibly be worse. It is unimaginative, flat, dry a...
Read Story

Coco

Throughout the whole countryside the Lucas farm, was known as "the Manor." No one knew why. The peasants doubtless attached to this word, "Manor," ...
Read Story

The Mortal Immortal

JULY 16, 1833. --This is a memorable anniversary for me; on it I complete my three hundred and twenty-third year! The Wandering Jew?--certainly not...
Read Story

A New Pathology

It has long been vaguely understood that the condition of a man's clothes has a certain effect upon the health of both body and mind. The well-know...
Read Story

The Olive

He laughed involuntarily as the olive rolled towards his chair across the shiny parquet floor of the hotel dining-room. His table in the cavernous ...
Read Story

The Devoted Friend

One morning the old Water-rat put his head out of his hole. He had bright beady eyes and stiff grey whiskers and his tail was like a long bit of bl...
Read Story

A Joke

IT was a bright winter midday. . . . There was a sharp snapping frost and the curls on Nadenka's temples and the down on her upper lip were covered...
Read Story

The Blue Hotel

I THE Palace Hotel at Fort Romper was painted a light blue, a shade that is on the legs of a kind of heron, causing the bird to declare its positio...
Read Story

An Arrest

Having murdered his brother-in-law, Orrin Brower of Kentucky was a fugitive from justice. From the county jail where he had been confined to await ...
Read Story

Alexandre

At four o'clock that day, as on every other day, Alexandre rolled the three-wheeled chair for cripples up to the door of the little house; then, in...
Read Story

About Smells

In a recent issue of the "Independent," the Rev. T. De Witt Talmage, of Brooklyn, has the following utterance on the subject of "Smells": I have a ...
Read Story

A Happy Ending

LYUBOV GRIGORYEVNA, a substantial, buxom lady of forty who undertook matchmaking and many other matters of which it is usual to speak only in whisp...
Read Story

Beyond the Bayou

The bayou curved like a crescent around the point of land on which La Folle's cabin stood. Between the stream and the hut lay a big abandoned field...
Read Story

The Sphinx

DURING the dread reign of the Cholera in New York, I had accepted the invitation of a relative to spend a fortnight with him in the retirement of h...
Read Story

Lasting Love

It was the end of the dinner that opened the shooting season. The Marquis de Bertrans with his guests sat around a brightly lighted table, covered ...
Read Story

After

My darlings," said the comtesse, "you might go to bed." The three children, two girls and a boy, rose and kissed their grandmother. Then they said ...
Read Story

The Fiddler

So my poem is damned, and immortal fame is not for me! I am nobody forever and ever. Intolerable fate! Snatching my hat, I dashed down the criticis...
Read Story

A Mysterious Visit

The first notice that was taken of me when I "settled down" recently was by a gentleman who said he was an assessor, and connected with the U. S. I...
Read Story

About Play-Acting

I I have a project to suggest. But first I will write a chapter of introduction. I have just been witnessing a remarkable play, here at the Burg Th...
Read Story

The Mansion

There was an air of calm and reserved opulence about the Weightman mansion that spoke not of money squandered, but of wealth prudently applied. Sta...
Read Story

A Brave Heart

"That was truly his name, m'sieu'--Raoul Vaillantcoeur--a name of the fine sound, is it not? You like that word,--a valiant heart,-- it pleases you...
Read Story

Love on the Bon-Dieu

UPON the pleasant veranda of Père Antoine's cottage, that adjoined the church, a young girl had long been seated, awaiting his return. It was the e...
Read Story