Literature Short Stories

Guilt. The heaviest burden. An old man has for many years borne a weight that runs deeper than survivor’s guilt. He is a survivor, of humanity’s darkest hour, but wouldn’t have lived through it if not for the actions of another. Now he has the opportunity for which he has long yearned: to meet his saviour’s daughter and tell her about her father’s supreme act of selflessness. And maybe, in the telling, one of them will find release.

In Beyond the Bayou, La Folle, an ex-slave, lives on an island cut off from the her old home and is afraid to venture back onto the bayou. When a small drought dries up the shallow waters between her home and the bayou, she spends some time with the son of her former master. When the son, whom she calls “Cheri” accidentally shoots himself in the leg, La Folle must overcome her fear of the unknown and go back to the bayou to alert his parents.

Kate Chopin’s A Reflection is a reflection on the fortunes of life. It is a meditation on how some people succeed by harnessing their energy effectively while others get left behind.

What if life was a punishment? The Persistence of Reality is a short story that examines the individual's relationship with the persisting collective reality.

The devil wants to tell his side of the story of what happened when he and his fallen angels were kicked out of heaven.

It’s Valentine’s Day weekend, and Charlotte and Seth are not looking for romance. Armed with emotional-support bear spray, Charlotte is in self-imposed isolation and on guard from men. Having a stalker can do that to a person’s nerves. Just across the hall and giving off woodsy vibes is Seth, a recently divorced arborist. As in today recently. Heights, he’s fine with. Trust? Not so much.

The Sisters Fen, Mary and Rose, live alone in their family's old estate, Small Stone. They have a meager income that comes from royalties on their father's films. After three attempts, their father succeeds in killing himself, leaving the girls to fend off the outside world alone. When their house catches on fire after an unfortunate gardening accident, it’s up to the older sister, Mary, to find the money to fix the burnt roof. Mary decides to revive their father’s pornography business.

It’s a New Jersey summer in 1967, and thirteen-year-old Ravi Ramanathan has the makings of a tennis prodigy. His surgeon father encourages his ambition, while his mother dreams of their only child following his father’s path. Surrounded by his parents’ love, Ravi chafes a bit at their daily routines and little traditions. Then one unexpected day, everything changes. Realizing how much he took for granted, Ravi must grow up overnight and find a new role in the life of his family.

You never know someone as well as you think you know them… Salem, Massachusetts Bay Colony. 1692. Caroline Choate has lived in Salem for ten years, privately grieving several miscarriages before accusations of witchcraft seize the Puritan community and catch Caroline and her husband, John, in the beginnings of its horror. At first, Caroline’s day-to-day life is left unaltered.

A much-anticipated collection of brilliantly observant short stories from one of the great American masters of the form, performed by a remarkable cast: Deborah Eisenberg, Julianne Moore, Josh Hamilton, and Wallace Shawn. At times raucously hilarious, at times charming and delightful, at times...

This audiobook, read by Audie award-winning narrators, includes unabridged recordings of all Fyodor Dostoyevky's greatest works: 15 novels and novellas, 18 short stories, a short study of Dostoyevsky by Virginia Woolf, and two books of non-fiction - his Letters and European travel journal.

A cop, a cowboy, several fly fishermen, and a reluctant romance novelist inhabit these revealing and often hilarious stories. An old man ends up in a high-speed car chase with the cops after stealing the car that blocks the garbage bin at his apartment building. A stranger gets a job at a sandwich shop and fixes everything in sight: a manual mustard dispenser, a mouthful of crooked teeth, thirty-two parking tickets, and a sexual-identity problem.

The prestigious annual story anthology, featuring prize-winning stories by a diverse and exciting array of writers, including Wendell Berry, Alice Hoffman, Dave Eggers, Ling Ma, Lori Ostlund, and Anthony Marra. Continuing a century-long tradition of cutting-edge literary excellence, this year's...

Nine-tenths of the world’s population is dead. A biological scourge - a dark blight swimming through human veins - was to blame. Adam is thrust into a world of loss and would no sooner set out in search of a woman for whom he is willing to travel across the broken globe to see again, if only to serve as her piece of comfort for a loss that they both share.

M R James is widely regarded as THE master of the ghost story. His stories abound with spectres skulking in the shrubbery, in shadowy corners and dark recesses. 'The Mezzotint' is a whimsical and apparently supernatural tale of art on the move; a dying man devises a gruesome plan for testing his heirs in 'The Tractate Middoth', and something is lurking under the bedclothes in 'Rats'.

Introducing six stories about different prehistoric animals, mainly dinosaurs. This special edition is for any dinosaur-loving child. These stories will most certainly keep the attention of your youngsters.

When Ren Landis goes looking for excitement on her 21st birthday, getting kidnapped is a little more than she bargained for. So is finding out that shifters exist - and that she's one, too. As the last of the dragon shifters, she's got a role to fulfill: Take the alphas of the four shifter groups as her mates and unite all shifter kind. No pressure, right? Too bad Ren's fate isn't as simple as getting it on with four scorching-hot men.

From Oklahoma to California, the heroes of A Calm & Normal Heart are modern-day adventurers—seeking out new places to call their own inside a nation to which they do not entirely belong. A member of the Osage tribe, author Chelsea T. Hicks's stories are compelled by an overlooked diaspora happening inside America itself: that of young Native people.

Fans of L. M. Montgomery's Anne Shirley rejoice! Collected here are six of the original Anne Shirley books in the order they were published. This collection includes Anne of Green Gables, Anne of Avonlea, Anne of the Island, Anne's House of Dreams, Rainbow Valley, and Rilla of Ingleside. Published between 1908 and 1921, these heartwarming tales of hidden hopes and cherished dreams will enchant fans and new listeners alike.

In this heart-warming short story, meet wife and mother Eugeena Patterson. Eugeena has always been the glue keeping her fragmented family together. When her teenage daughter is rushed to the hospital, Eugeena’s usual attempts to maintain peace in her family reach a breaking point. Will her troubled teenage daughter rip the family apart?