A lovely place to begin
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…”
Settle in and read →A hidden nook. A world of stories.
Come in.
Get comfortable.
Stay for a story.
Great short fiction for a little time away. Find a familiar voice, or a new favorite.
Find your next storyFree to read. No account needed.
134 stories to get lost in10 authors to keep you companyRead a little. Take something with you.
A little time, well spent.
Four very different worlds. Each less than fifteen minutes away.
The Cask of Amontillado
Edgar Allan PoeA connoisseur leads his insulter down into the family catacombs to settle a score over a rare sherry.
11 min · Foreboding
The Masque of the Red Death
Edgar Allan PoeA prince walls his court inside a castellated abbey to outparty a plague — through seven colored rooms.
11 min · Foreboding
A Canary for One
Ernest HemingwayOn a train to Paris, a proudly controlling mother carries a caged bird home while unknowingly passing the wreckage of her daughter’s love.
8 min · Bittersweet
A Divine Gesture
Ernest HemingwayIn a garden cluttered with bathtubs and boot jacks, a very busy God tries to keep order.
3 min · Humorous
Meet your next favorite writer
Great voices. Good places to start.
A few hand-picked doors into each author’s work.
The Gift of the Magi
9 min · TenderDella has one dollar and eighty-seven cents, and one day left to buy her husband a Christmas present worth giving.
The Last Leaf
11 min · BittersweetIn a Greenwich Village artists' colony, a gravely ill young painter ties her fate to the last leaf on a neighboring vine.
Mammon and the Archer
11 min · RomanticA millionaire father bets that money can solve his son's romantic dilemma, while the young lover searches for one uninterrupted moment.
Ray Bradbury
Science fiction and fantasy about technology, war, childhood, and fear.
Explore 16 stories →Zero Hour
14 min · ForebodingAcross peaceful future suburbs, children take up a new game called Invasion—and their parents cannot decide whether to take it seriously.
The Creatures That Time Forgot
71 min · WondrousOn a world where people are born, grow old, and die within eight days, a boy races against his own lifetime to find a way beyond it.
Hills Like White Elephants
7 min · ClaustrophobicWhile waiting for a train through Spain, a couple circles the life-changing decision neither can name directly.
Indian Camp
7 min · UnsettlingA boy accompanies his doctor father across a dark lake to help a woman in labor, entering a night of pain, birth, and adult mystery.
The Three Day Blow
14 min · MelancholyAs an autumn storm lashes Michigan, Nick Adams and Bill drink by the fire and talk around the breakup Nick cannot quite explain.
Mary Shelley
Gothic stories about ambition, grief, supernatural bargains, and isolation.
Explore 18 stories →The Mortal Immortal
25 min · MelancholyAfter drinking an alchemist's unfinished elixir, a lovesick young man begins to outlive everyone he knows.
The Invisible Girl
26 min · EerieA grieving traveler follows an unexplained beacon to an abandoned Welsh tower.
Transformation
32 min · ChillingExiled by his own pride, a reckless nobleman accepts a stranger's miraculous bargain.
Ryūnosuke Akutagawa
Older Japanese and Chinese tales about pride, cruelty, and moral judgment.
Explore 13 stories →Rashōmon
12 min · EerieIn a ruined Kyoto gate, a hungry servant encounters a stranger whose desperate act forces him to decide what survival permits.
The Badger
5 min · DreamlikeA moonlit song outside a village house becomes the first chapter in a legend about Japan’s shape-shifting badgers.
The Nose
13 min · HumorousA Buddhist priest’s determined campaign to shorten his extraordinary nose brings him the attention he thought he wanted—and a new humiliation.