Free summaries
Short Stories
144 public-domain short stories books, summarised. Page 1 of 3.
Tales grotesque and curious
Ryūnosuke Akutagawa
The shadows of old Japan and the bright, unsparing light of the modern era collide in these brief, haunting glimpses of human frailty. Behind the masks of tradition and the rigid structures of social status, every character hides a secret shame or an desperate, often ridiculous, impulse.
The bar act
Bud La Mar
To win a prize, a cowboy must outride his rivals, but to win a legend, he must dare to bolt a piece of junk to his saddle and spin like a hurricane.
A municipal feud
Ernest Haycox
The history of two bitter neighbors is a study in how easily pride and malice can be mistaken for principle.
The hand of God
Murray Leinster
HOOK A mob gathers at a dark, stifling jail, desperate to lynch a man accused of a cold-blooded murder. The sheriff stands alone against them, clutching a revolver and praying for a miracle to stop the bloodshed.
The Old Lady flies
Raoul Whitfield
A battered, oil-stained Jenny biplane is all that stands between a veteran stunt pilot and the end of his career. Can a piece of machinery really possess a soul, or is it just the last, desperate hope of a man who refuses to be grounded?
The Monkey's Paw: The Lady of the Barge and Others, Part 2
W. W. (William Wymark) Jacobs
When a cursed talisman grants three wishes to a modest family, their initial, lighthearted desire for a modest sum of money unleashes a devastating chain of unnatural consequences. ---
Lucy Maud Montgomery Short Stories, 1909 to 1922
L. M. (Lucy Maud) Montgomery
A single quiet choice on a lonely road can undo a decade of isolation, proving that forgiveness, unspoken love, and community are always waiting just beyond our stubbornness.
Little Novels of Italy
Maurice Hewlett
A world of sunlit riverbanks and darkened alleyways unfolds, where passion and vanity clash with saintly innocence across the volatile landscapes of Renaissance Italy.
The Ape, the Idiot & Other People
W. C. Morrow
W. C. Morrow’s collection of short stories captures the dark, uncanny edges of late nineteenth-century American life, where sanity and madness often blur under the pressure of intense psychological strain.
Lucy Maud Montgomery Short Stories, 1902 to 1903
L. M. (Lucy Maud) Montgomery
These stories capture the quiet struggles and small triumphs of rural life at the turn of the century, where steadfast character and a touch of wit resolve even the most stubborn of conflicts.
Lucy Maud Montgomery Short Stories, 1907 to 1908
L. M. (Lucy Maud) Montgomery
These tales capture the quiet intensity of small-town life, where simple acts of rebellion, romance, and duty define the human heart. They remain enduringly readable for their keen observation of how character is tested in the ordinary moments of a day.
Stories from Tagore
Rabindranath Tagore
These tales capture the quiet ache of human longing, exploring the profound connections between parents, children, and the strangers we encounter in the fleeting moments of everyday life.
Tales of Two Countries
Alexander Lange Kielland
An idealistic student turns into a comfortable provincial manufacturer while his romantic idealism decays into quiet, unsparing social satire.
The oldest story in the world
Murray Leinster
A white thief in the East trades his soul for a legendary fortune in rubies, only to find that greed and arrogance carry a terrifying, endless price.
Parables from flowers
Gertrude P. Dyer
Resting upon the quiet cycles of the natural world, this collection of moral tales finds spiritual truth in the lives of wild blossoms, birds, and simple country folk.
Modern Short Stories: A Book for High Schools
Unknown
A young mind hungry for vivid action encounters a world of human drama, where brief glimpses into varied lives illuminate the quiet power of the short story.
The Hungry Stones, and Other Stories
Rabindranath Tagore
A collection of stories capturing the pulse of Bengal, this volume explores the fragile boundary between the ordinary world and the haunting mysteries that lie just beneath its surface. Through lives defined by tradition, longing, and sudden departures, it invites the reader into a landscape of profound empathy.
Ennui
Stephen Marlowe
The ability to command reality is the ultimate power, but for one man, the absolute freedom to erase anything that displeases him leads only to an inescapable, infinite vacuum.
Crowd-horror
Robert E. (Robert Ervin) Howard
A naturally gifted but psychologically fragile heavyweight boxer struggles to overcome a debilitating, trance-like obsession with the crowd's roar until the love of a devoted woman becomes his ultimate, stabilizing anchor.
No wonder
W. C. (Wilbur C.) Tuttle
A young tenderfoot comes to a remote Montana town with dreams of turning into a Western hero, leaving two long-suffering locals to clean up the ensuing chaotic mess.
Atmosphere
Murray Leinster
In a remote Hawaiian outpost, a stifling atmosphere of isolation and psychological dread drives a cowardly white settler to commit a monstrous betrayal.
A collection of short-stories
Unknown
A quiet, transformative journey across ten masterworks of short fiction reveals how small choices, strange twists of fate, and hidden psychological depths shape human destiny.
Temperamental people
Mary Roberts Rinehart
A hidden lover’s key, a stolen birthright, a blind sculptor’s dark retreat, and an officer’s petty revenge all collide in a world where intense passion clashes with social expectation.
A battle piece
Ernest Haycox
A raw, visceral account of the 1776 Battle of Long Island, where a quiet Connecticut sergeant and a boisterous Marylander find unity in the face of inevitable destruction.
Between Pike's Peak and a pickle
W. C. (Wilbur C.) Tuttle
The boasts of a local cowboy lead to a wager that spirals into a chaotic, slapstick riot. This Western short story captures a town’s absurdity and the inevitable collapse of a man who claims he can ride anything.
Mogens, and Other Stories
J. P. (Jens Peter) Jacobsen
This collection captures the fragile, often agonizing intersection of human desire and the inevitable decay of time. It explores how individuals define themselves against the crushing weight of expectation, memory, and social propriety.
Fate and a fool
W. C. (Wilbur C.) Tuttle
Fate and a fool are often the only things standing between a town and its own destruction. In this raucous tale, a mysterious, disheveled shepherd and a legendary local vagabond prove that the most unlikely characters are those who truly shape the course of history.
The best short stories of 1925, and the yearbook of the American short story
Unknown
A definitive catalog of a vanished era, this volume serves as both a vibrant anthology of mid-twenties fiction and a meticulous archive of a nation’s literary heartbeat. It captures a fleeting moment when the short story was the primary medium for American creative exploration.
Who Are Happiest? and Other Stories
T. S. (Timothy Shay) Arthur
HOOK This collection of moral tales serves as a nineteenth-century guide to character, exploring how everyday choices shape the soul’s ultimate direction.
Short stories from Life: The 81 prize stories in "Life's" Shortest Story Contest
Unknown
Desperate lovers, scheming dye merchants, weary soldiers, and silver-tongued gamblers cross paths in a collection where every word must earn its keep.
The revenge of Florida Jack
Ernest Haycox
The story follows the calculated, murderous spite of a dismissed, drifting sheepherder who attempts to orchestrate a deadly feud between his former employer and a local mountaineer. It is a stark, rapid-fire Western that interrogates the volatile intersection of pride, isolation, and reputation in the frontier.
A military interlude
Ernest Haycox
HOOK A ragged, starving soldier abandons his post at Valley Forge, only to find that his fierce sense of justice demands he return to the front.
Monkeying with ancestors
W. C. (Wilbur C.) Tuttle
When two broke cowboys dress a runaway circus ape in leather chaps and hand him a loaded revolver, an entire Arizona town plunges into chaotic paranoia.
Norse Tales and Sketches
Alexander Lange Kielland
A razor-sharp gallery of Norwegian portraits where high-society hypocrisy, bourgeois vanity, and the unrelenting tide of human smallness are laid bare with genial yet biting precision.
Mashi, and Other Stories
Rabindranath Tagore
A dying husband clings to his wife’s invented devotion while surrounding lives unravel in silent misunderstandings, quiet sacrifices, and sudden cruelty.
Short Stories for English Courses
Unknown
A curated gateway into classic short fiction showcases how nineteenth- and twentieth-century writers constructed stories that remain vivid, sharp, and structurally complete.
The wisdom of Cyclops
W. C. (Wilbur C.) Tuttle
A tongue-in-cheek tale of ranch hands, mistaken identities, and a coarse-mouthed magpie, where every attempt to avoid trouble brings a fresh layer of chaos.
Great short stories, Volume 2 (of 3)
Unknown
The veil between the living and the dead wears thin in these haunting chronicles, where the past refuses to stay buried and every shadow hides a secret waiting to be told.
Groping
Helen R. (Helen Rose) Hull
A sensitive college student navigates the terrifying, exhilarating threshold between sheltered girlhood and a confusing, adult understanding of desire.
Muley's morals
W. C. (Wilbur C.) Tuttle
Four range-bound friends steal three prize-winning hens for a bunkhouse stew, get fired for the crime, and drift straight into a messy bank-heist conspiracy.
Studying the short-story: Sixteen short-story classics with introductions, notes and a new laboratory study method for individual reading and use in colleges and schools
Unknown
The short story is a precise instrument of art, capable of capturing the breadth of human emotion through the careful marriage of situation and character.
What the Moon Saw: and Other Tales
H. C. (Hans Christian) Andersen
A lonely painter sitting in his night attic receives visits from the night sky, while across distant forests, frozen rivers, and quiet villages, ordinary people and strange creatures learn what it costs to live, love, and die.
While the Billy Boils
Henry Lawson
A wandering swagman carries his world on his back, finding humor, quiet grief, and unspoken brotherhood across a unforgiving sunbaked landscape.
Lords of the Housetops: Thirteen Cat Tales
Unknown
A mysterious feline prowls between shadow and light, commanding households and bending the human heart to its inscrutable, independent will.
The proof
W. C. (Wilbur C.) Tuttle
A hardened drifter stumbles into a snow-dusted town on Christmas Eve, seeking a lost past only to disarm a brewing tragedy and reclaim his own family.
Dream Life and Real Life: A Little African Story
Olive Schreiner
The ache of childhood dreams, the fierce pride of youth, and the quiet, heavy resolve of maturity collide in these portraits of women standing at the precipice of their own lives.
Pirates from Piperock
W. C. (Wilbur C.) Tuttle
The high-altitude town of Horse Heaven is a vertical trap of crooked saloons, where law is nonexistent and life is cheap. Two wandering drifters stumble into the mayhem, only to find themselves orchestrating the final, explosive cleanup.
Joe Wilson and His Mates
Henry Lawson
These stories capture the raw, sun-baked struggle of Australian frontier life, where the deepest loyalties are forged in poverty and the quiet ache of domestic longing.