The Count and the Wedding Guest
O. HenryA boarder in mourning attracts a would-be suitor with a tale of a dead count, but wedding plans bring other secrets to light.
11 min · Humorous
The story shelf
Follow your curiosity.
A name you know. A mood you’re in. Ten minutes to yourself. Start anywhere.
The Furnished Room
O. HenryA young man searching for a vanished singer rents a decaying room whose lingering traces seem to answer his longing.
11 min · Melancholy
The Gift of the Magi
O. HenryDella has one dollar and eighty-seven cents, and one day left to buy her husband a Christmas present worth giving.
9 min · Tender
The Green Door
O. HenryA young man devoted to adventure follows a mysterious green door and finds a chance to make romance matter.
13 min · Romantic
The Last Leaf
O. HenryIn a Greenwich Village artists' colony, a gravely ill young painter ties her fate to the last leaf on a neighboring vine.
11 min · Bittersweet
The Love-Philtre of Ikey Schoenstein
O. HenryA timid pharmacist helps his rival elope with the woman they both love by preparing a very questionable love potion.
8 min · Humorous
The Octopus Marooned
O. HenryTwo confidence men corner a flood-bound town, but their monopoly faces an unexpected challenge from inside the partnership.
12 min · Humorous
The Pendulum
O. HenryWhen his wife unexpectedly leaves for the night, a bored husband discovers how much of his ordinary life he has taken for granted.
8 min · Humorous
The Princess and the Puma
O. HenryA ranch foreman tries to impress a fearless cattle king's daughter when a dangerous lion interrupts their evening in the prairie.
11 min · Adventurous
The Roads We Take
O. HenryAfter a daring train robbery, two partners must decide who gets the only horse capable of carrying them away.
8 min · Suspenseful
The Romance of a Busy Broker
O. HenryA relentlessly busy Wall Street broker finally pauses long enough to make a romantic gesture to his quiet stenographer.
6 min · Humorous
The Skylight Room
O. HenryA struggling typist finds a small, private universe in the star she watches through the skylight of her attic room.
10 min · Melancholy
The Whirligig of Life
O. HenryA mountain couple arrives at a makeshift court demanding a divorce, only to discover that separation may be harder than marriage.
10 min · Humorous
Tobin’s Palm
O. HenryA grieving Irishman treats a palmist’s predictions as a treasure map and pursues the stranger meant to bring him luck.
13 min · Humorous
Transients in Arcadia
O. HenryTwo working New Yorkers spend a week pretending to be wealthy guests at a Broadway hotel and find an unexpected kindred spirit.
9 min · Romantic
Two Thanksgiving Day Gentlemen
O. HenryEvery Thanksgiving, a wealthy old man takes a homeless stranger to dinner, preserving a private tradition neither can bear to break.
9 min · Tender
While the Auto Waits
O. HenryA chance meeting in a city park lets two strangers imagine love beyond the boundaries of wealth and social rank.
9 min · Romantic
Witches’ Loaves
O. HenryA lonely baker imagines that a quiet customer is a struggling artist and finds a tender way to help him.
6 min · Humorous
A Little Journey
Ray BradburyAfter a Mars-based spiritual grifter strands a group of elderly women, their leader decides they will take the promised journey anyway.
11 min · Bittersweet
Don’t Get Technatal
Ray BradburyIn a crime-free future, a pulp writer discovers that a perfect society has left him dangerously short of material.
4 min · Humorous
I, Mars
Ray BradburySixty years after being stranded on Mars, an old man receives a phone call from the younger self he recorded to survive the silence.
14 min · Melancholy
The Fight of the Good Ship Clarissa
Ray BradburyA Venus-bound rocket crew blunders into battle in a delirious send-up of space-adventure pulp.
3 min · Humorous
The Pendulum
Ray BradburyAfter a catastrophic time-machine demonstration, an inventor is condemned to become the living pendulum of the device he built.
8 min · Bleak
The Piper
Ray BradburyOn a colonized, dying Mars, an exiled musician plays a tune that may summon a violent reckoning for Earth’s occupiers.
7 min · Foreboding