A Divine Gesture
Ernest HemingwayIn a garden cluttered with bathtubs and boot jacks, a very busy God tries to keep order.
3 min · Humorous
The story shelf
Follow your curiosity.
A name you know. A mood you’re in. Ten minutes to yourself. Start anywhere.
The False Rhyme
Mary ShelleyA king's cruel rhyme inspires his sister to prove a missing lady's fidelity.
5 min · Playful
Conscience in Art
O. HenryTwo veteran swindlers target a Pittsburgh millionaire’s passion for antiquities, while one partner tries to keep his conscience intact.
10 min · Humorous
Jeff Peters as a Personal Magnet
O. HenryA traveling medicine seller uses personal magnetism to outwit a town's mayor, its doctor, and the law itself.
11 min · Humorous
Lost on Dress Parade
O. HenryA young architect spends his carefully saved evening posing as a wealthy clubman when he invites a stranger to dinner.
11 min · Romantic
Memoirs of a Yellow Dog
O. HenryA yellow dog surveys his unhappy New York home and decides that he and his henpecked master both deserve a better life.
8 min · Humorous
The Coming-Out of Maggie
O. HenryA shy paper-box worker arrives at her Saturday dance with a glamorous escort and suddenly becomes the center of attention.
11 min · Humorous
The Ethics of Pig
O. HenryA traveling swindler recruits a mountain hog thief, only to discover that even a comic partnership has its own ethics.
16 min · Humorous
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 Handbook of Hymen
O. HenryTwo snowbound prospectors educate themselves with very different books, then put their new knowledge to work in a small Montana town.
20 min · Humorous
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 Man Higher Up
O. HenryJeff Peters explains the ethics of graft after teaming up with a burglar and a ruined financier in a town with one tempting bank.
23 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 Pimienta Pancakes
O. HenryA sidelined cowboy asks his camp cook for pancakes and hears the wild story of a recipe, a romance, and a very successful deception.
17 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 Ransom of Red Chief
O. HenryTwo bungling kidnappers discover that their captive is far more trouble than the ransom is worth.
19 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
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
Tobacco and the Devil
Ryūnosuke AkutagawaWhen a devil disguised as a missionary plants a mysterious crop in sixteenth-century Japan, one cattle dealer makes a wager to learn its name.
13 min · Playful
The Legend of Sleepy Hollow
Washington IrvingA gangly schoolmaster courts a farmer’s daughter in a drowsy Hudson Valley town haunted by a headless horseman.
55 min · Eerie
20 stories