The Big List of the Best Short Stories to Read Online
We’re building the ultimate list of short stories you can read online for free. We’ll update the list with more free stories to read online every month. Make sure you bookmark this page and come back every month to check out the new stories!
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The Library of Babel
Jorge Luis Borges
The Library of Babel is a 1941 short story by the Argentinian writer Jorge Luis Borges. The story brings together a number of trademark Borgesian ideas, such as the infinite, and the paradoxical nature of the world.
The Last Night of the World
Ray Bradbury
In Ray Bradbury's The Last Night of the World, a husband and wife realise that they and all the adults they know have been having identical dreams: that tonight will be the last night of the world. They find themselves surprisingly calm as they discuss why the world is ending, how they feel about it, and what they should do with their remaining time.
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The Daughters of the Moon
Italo Calvino
On a parallel earth similar to ours, consumerism is rampant. Now the moon of this world has withered too. It has lost mass, orbit, & is on its way down to earth.
Exhalation
Ted Chiang
The story starts in an atmosphere of mesmerising strangeness, its narrator an intelligent alien citizen of a sophisticated civilization with long-established traditions. The location of the civilization relative to Earth is never revealed.
The Hunter’s Wife
Anthony Doerr
In his story The Hunter’s Wife, Anthony Doerr fulfils a whole series of wishes expressed by his two main characters, a hunter and the magician’s assistant who becomes the hunter’s wife.
The Soul is Not a Smithy
David Foster Wallace
David Foster Wallace's The Soul is Not a Smithy is a short story that fully encompasses the entire range of existential fear.
A Lady’s Maid
Sarah Gailey
The story stars Nadia, an advanced android who doesn’t realise that she is an android while everyone else is human; Isaac, who created Nadia to be his wife with only a few months left of work on her for that to be viable; Stephen, the man Nadia has brought home as her fiance; and Ada, the kitchen girl who hopes for a promotion to lady’s maid.
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Hills Like White Elephants
Ernest Hemingway
The story focuses on a conversation between an American man and a young woman, described as a "girl," at a Spanish train station while waiting for a train to Madrid. The girl compares the nearby hills to white elephants. The pair indirectly discuss an "operation" that the man wants the girl to have, which is implied to be an abortion.
The Lottery
Shirley Jackson
The Lottery is a short story written by Shirley Jackson, first published in the June 26, 1948, issue of The New Yorker. The story describes a fictional small town which observes an annual rite known as "the lottery", in which a member of the community is selected by chance. The shocking consequence of being selected in the lottery is revealed only at the end.
The City Born Great
N.K. Jemisin
In this standalone short story by N. K. Jemisin, author of The Fifth Season, the winner of this year’s Hugo Award for Best Novel, New York City is about to go through a few changes. Like all great metropolises before it, when a city gets big enough, old enough, it must be born; but there are ancient enemies who cannot tolerate new life. Thus New York will live or die by the efforts of a reluctant midwife… and how well he can learn to sing the city’s mighty song.
A Bruise the Size and Shape of a Door Handle
Daisy Johnson
When Salma was nine her mother died and she went to live with the father she knew only through birthday phone calls and from her mother’s steel-lined phraseology…
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Eveline
James Joyce
Eveline is a short story by the Irish writer James Joyce. It was first published in 1904 by the journal Irish Homestead and later featured in his 1914 collection of short stories Dubliners. It tells the story of Eveline, a teenager who plans to leave Dublin for Argentina with her lover.
In the Penal Colony
Franz Kafka
The story is set in an unnamed penal colony and describes the last use of an elaborate torture and execution device that carves the sentence of the condemned prisoner on his skin as he slowly dies over the course of twelve hours. As the plot unfolds, the reader learns more and more about the machine, including its origin and original justification.
The Fruit of My Woman
Han Kang
The Fruit of My Woman is about a woman born in an impoverished fishing village. She wants to go to the ends of the earth on her own but, believing that marriage is ultimately one of the best ways to face the world, she ends up settling down with her husband.
Premium Harmony
Stephen King
Premium Harmony is a short story by American author Stephen King. It was published in the November 2009 issue of The New Yorker magazine. The story is set in Castle Rock, King's famous fictitious city.
The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas
Ursula K. Le Guin
The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas is a 1973 work of short philosophical fiction by American writer Ursula K. Le Guin. With deliberately both vague and vivid descriptions, the narrator depicts a summer festival in the utopian city of Omelas, whose prosperity depends on the perpetual misery of a single child.
Chechnya
Anthony Marra
A young woman doctor asked to take in a war orphan when she can barely take care of herself, her patients, and her sister, who has recently escaped from sexual slavery. The piece is Marra's first published story, and here he makes his debut public appearance.
Sweetness
Toni Morrison
The short story Sweetness by Toni Morrison is about a mother's struggle to accept her own daughter. The protagonist "Sweetness' is a very light skinned woman who gave birth to a dark skinned baby Lula Ann. Lula Ann's father is high yellow and the mother never cheated on Lula Ann's father.
On Seeing the 100% Perfect Girl One Beautiful April Morning
Haruki Murakami
This is a love story about a man in Japan who walks down the street one morning and walks past the girl who is perfect for him. He walks past this girl but does nothing and then in the second half he explains a story about what he wished he had done.
Girls, at Play
Celeste Ng
In “Girls, At Play”, Celeste Ng shows that there is no amount of intervention that will stop someone from growing into their true selves. The three girls try their best to keep Grace in the dark about their lifestyle and the Game, and yet she grows into a player of the Game herself.
Symbols and Signs
Vladimir Nabokov
Signs and Symbols is a short story cantering on the severe mental debility of a young man and on the struggle of his elderly parents to cope with it.
A Good Man is Hard to Find
Flannery O'Connor
A Good Man Is Hard to Find is a Southern gothic short story first published in 1953 by author Flannery O'Connor who, in her own words, described it as "the story of a family of six which, on its way driving to Florida, gets wiped out by an escaped convict who calls himself the Misfit."
Spider the Artist
Nnedi Okorafor
In Spider the Artist, Nnedi Okorafor takes us to Nigeria of the future, where Big Oil protects the pipelines with spider-like AIs known as zombies, and tells the tale of a woman who faces down one of the murderous machines armed only with a guitar.
Hollow
Breece D'J Pancake
Hunched on his knees in front of the three-foot coal seam, Buddy was lost in the back-and-forth rhythm of the truck mine’s relay: the glitter of coal and sandstone in his cap light, the setting and lifting…
Haunting Olivia
Karen Russell
The short story, Haunting Olivia, by Karen Russell, portrays two boys looking for their sister, Olivia, who died at sea. The boys stay with their grandmother on an island for the summer, and each night they sneak away to a boat graveyard to search for the girl.
Sea Oak
George Saunders
The ghost story “Sea Oak” presents George Saunders at his most biting and also most tender. The story takes place in a housing development, Sea Oak, and centres around the unnamed narrator, his sister and cousin (Min and Jade, respectively), and their children, Troy and Mac. Also present is Aunt Bernice (Bernie).
The Embassy of Cambodia
Zadie Smith
First published this Spring in the New Yorker, The Embassy of Cambodia is a rare and brilliant story that takes us deep into the life of a young woman, Fatou, domestic servant to the Derawals and escapee from one set of hardships to another. Beginning and ending outside the Embassy of Cambodia, which happens to be located in Willesden, NW London, Zadie Smith's absorbing, moving and wryly observed story suggests how the apparently small things in an ordinary life always raise larger, more extraordinary questions.
The Devil in America
Kai Ashante Wilson
Scant years after the Civil War, a mysterious family confronts the legacy that has pursued them across centuries, out of slavery, and finally to the idyllic peace of the town of Rosetree. The shattering consequences of this confrontation echo backwards and forwards in time, even to the present day.
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