A romance with a sailor gives Eveline a chance to escape from her dreary life caring for her widowered father, but when the time comes she hesitates to take the plunge
The story takes the form of a parable, and it concerns a king who wants to find the answers to what he considers the three most important questions in life. When is the best time to do each thing? Who…
After devoting their energies and income for ten years to replacing a borrowed diamond necklace which they have lost, a woman and her husband learn the irony of their efforts.
By the time of his early death in 1988, Raymond Carver had established himself as one of the greatest practitioners of the American short story, a writer who had not only found his own voice but impri…
In these four stories, Kate Chopin subtly captures the intricate interior lives of a generation of women. From the famous proto-feminist tale "The Story of an Hour" to the subtly sexy "A Respectable W…
In a small American town, the local residents are abuzz with excitement and nervousness when they wake on the morning of the twenty-seventh of June. Everything has been prepared for the town’s annual …
A short story from James Joyce's Dubliners. The unnamed protagonist in "Araby" is a boy who is just starting to come into his sexual identity. Through his first-person narration, we are immersed at th…
Sue and Johnsy are two girlfriends who live together in New York City. When Johnsy becomes sick one winter, she makes up her mind to die when the last leaf falls from the ivy plant growing outside her…
"It was quite by accident I discovered this incredible invasion of Earth by lifeforms from another planet. As yet, I haven't done anything about it; I can't think of anything to do."
Through the progress of science, human lifespans have been extended indefinitely, leading the government to enact strict rules to keep the earth's population under control. So when Edward K. Wehling, …
A Good Man Is Hard to Find is Flannery O'Connor's most famous and most discussed story. O'Connor herself singled it out by making it the title piece of her first collection and the story she most ofte…
