Short Stories

We’re here to help unpack the themes, motifs, and main ideas behind some of the greatest work of short fiction, to help you understand the stories of Faulkner, Hemingway, O’Connor, and more.

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Ordered by Title

Order by Author

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A
B
C
D
E
F
G
H
I
J
K
L
M
N
O
P
Q
R
S
T
U
V
W
X
Y
Z

A

B

Babylon Revisited
F. Scott Fitzgerald
Barn Burning
William Faulkner
Bartleby the Scrivener
Herman Melville
The Bear Came Over the Mountain

Alice Munro
Benito Cereno
Herman Melville
Bernice Bobs Her Hair
F. Scott Fitzgerald
The Birds

Daphne du Maurier
The Birthmark
Nathaniel Hawthorne
The Black Cat
Edgar Allan Poe
The Boarding House
James Joyce
The Body Snatcher
Robert Louis Stevenson
Brokeback Mountain

Annie Proulx
Bullet in the Brain

Tobias Wolff

C

The Call of Cthulhu

H. P. Lovecraft
The Cask of Amontillado
Edgar Allan Poe
Cat Person

Kristen Roupenian
Cathedral

Raymond Carver
The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County
Mark Twain
The Chrysanthemums
John Steinbeck
Clay
James Joyce
A Clean, Well-Lighted Place
Ernest Hemingway
Continuity of Parks

Julio Cortázar
A Country Doctor

Franz Kafka
The Curious Case of Benjamin Button
F. Scott Fitzgerald

D

E

The Elephant Vanishes

Haruki Murakami
Eleven
Sandra Cisneros
Emergency
Denis Johnson
An Encounter
James Joyce
Eveline
James Joyce
Everyday Use
Alice Walker
Everything That Rises Must Converge

Flannery O’Connor

F

The Fall of The House of Usher
Edgar Allan Poe
The Fly

Katherine Mansfield

G

The Garden of Forking Paths

Jorge Luis Borges
The Garden Party

Katherine Mansfield
The Gift of the Magi

O. Henry
Girl

Jamaica Kincaid
Good Country People

Flannery O’Connor
A Good Man Is Hard To Find

Flannery O’Connor
Greasy Lake
T.C. Boyle

H

Happy Endings
Margaret Atwood
Harrison Bergeron

Kurt Vonnegut
A Haunted House
Virginia Woolf
Hills Like White Elephants
Ernest Hemingway
House Taken Over

Julio Cortázar
A Hunger Artist

Franz Kafka

I

I Have No Mouth and I Must Scream

Harlan Ellison
I Stand Here Ironing

Tillie Olsen
In the Penal Colony

Franz Kafka
Interpreter of Maladies

Jhumpa Lahiri

J

The Jilting of Granny Weatherall

Katherine Anne Porter
A Jury of Her Peers

Susan Glaspell

K

L

The Lady with the Dog

Anton Chekhov
The Lady, or the Tiger?

Frank R. Stockton
The Landlady
Roald Dahl
The Last Leaf

O. Henry
The Last Question

Isaac Asimov
The Legend of Sleepy Hollow

Washington Irving
The Lesson

Toni Cade Bambara
The Library of Babel

Jorge Luis Borges
The Life You Save May Be Your Own

Flannery O’Connor
Ligeia
Edgar Allan Poe
A Little Cloud
James Joyce
The Lottery

Shirley Jackson

M

The Man Who Was Almost a Man

Richard Wright
Marigolds

Eugenia Collier
The Masque of the Red Death
Edgar Allan Poe
Miss Brill

Katherine Mansfield
The Monkey’s Paw

W. W. Jacobs
The Most Dangerous Game

Richard Connell
MS. Found in a Bottle
Edgar Allan Poe
The Murders in the Rue Morgue
Edgar Allan Poe

N

The Necklace

Guy de Maupassant
The Nutcracker and the Mouse-King

E. T. A. Hoffmann

O

An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge

Ambrose Bierce
Odour of Chrysanthemums

D. H. Lawrence
On the Bridge

Todd Strasser
The Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas

Ursula K. Le Guin
The Open Boat
Stephen Crane
The Oval Portrait
Edgar Allan Poe
The Overcoat

Nikolai Gogol

P

A Painful Case
James Joyce
The Palace Thief

Ethan Canin
The Passing of Grandison
Charles W. Chesnutt
Passion

Alice Munro
Paul’s Case: A Study in Temperament

Willa Cather
A Perfect Day for Bananafish
J. D. Salinger
The Pit and the Pendulum
Edgar Allan Poe
The Purloined Letter
Edgar Allan Poe

R

Recitatif
Toni Morrison
The Red Convertible

Louise Erdrich
The Red-Headed League
Arthur Conan Doyle
Rikki-Tikki-Tavi

Rudyard Kipling
Rita Hayworth and the Shawshank Redemption
Stephen King
The Rocking-Horse Winner

D.H. Lawrence
A Rose for Emily
William Faulkner

S

Saboteur

Ha Jin
Salvatore

W. Somerset Maugham
The Sandman

E. T. A. Hoffmann
A Scandal in Bohemia
Arthur Conan Doyle
The Scarlet Ibis

James Hurst
The School
Donald Barthelme
The Secret Life of Walter Mitty

James Thurber
Shiloh

Bobbie Ann Mason
The Sisters
James Joyce
The Sniper

Liam O'Flaherty
Sonny's Blues
James Baldwin
A Sound of Thunder
Ray Bradbury
Speech Sounds

Octavia E. Butler
Spunk
Zora Neale Hurston
The Storm
Kate Chopin
The Story of an Hour
Kate Chopin
Story of Your Life

Ted Chiang
Super-Frog Saves Tokyo

Haruki Murakami
The Swimmer

John Cheever

T

U

The Use of Force

William Carlos Williams

V

A Very Old Man with Enormous Wings
Gabriel García Márquez

W

What We Talk About When We Talk About Love

Raymond Carver
Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?

Joyce Carol Oates
A White Heron

Sarah Orne Jewett
Why I Live at the P.O.

Eudora Welty
William Wilson
Edgar Allan Poe
Winter Dreams
F. Scott Fitzgerald
Woman Hollering Creek
Sandra Cisneros

Y

Young Goodman Brown
Nathaniel Hawthorne