Free summaries
Short Stories — page 3
259 public-domain short stories books, summarised. Page 3 of 6.
Christmas in modern story
Unknown
The quiet, enduring magic of the holiday season reveals itself not in grand gestures, but in the small, transformative acts of grace found within these pages. This collection captures the human heart at its most vulnerable and hopeful.
Modern Swedish Masterpieces: Short Stories
Verner von Heidenstam
This collection gathers the sharp, atmospheric pulse of Swedish literature at the turn of the twentieth century, capturing lives caught between private illusions and the harsh, often cold, realities of their era. It is a portrait of a culture in transition, rendered with intense psychological clarity.
Far-away Stories
William John Locke
These tales capture the quiet, often poignant struggles of ordinary people navigating the shifting emotional currents of a world on the brink of profound change. They bridge the divide between gentle sentiment and the stark realities of life.
Around the Yule Log
Willis Boyd Allen
HOOK The Yule log glows, and with it comes a tapestry of winter tales where the spirit of Christmas turns the bitter cold of human sorrow into the warmth of unexpected grace.
Cape Breton Tales
Harry James Smith
A collection of quiet, poignant vignettes, these stories capture the rugged rhythm of life among the Acadian fishing villages of Cape Breton at the turn of the twentieth century.
The Bellman Book of Fiction, 1906-1919
Unknown
This collection serves as a preserved window into the sensibilities of an era, gathering diverse voices from the pages of a defunct but once-beloved literary magazine. It offers a mosaic of human experience, ranging from the domestic struggles of the impoverished to the stark realities of maritime life and the…
Loup-Garou
Wallace West
Surrounded by dark English woods, a veteran knight must face a terrifying curse to rescue the woman he loves.
The Torch and Other Tales
Eden Phillpotts
These vignettes capture the quiet, often prickly, and deeply human rhythms of rural Devon life. They offer a window into a world where reputation is currency and the village clock sets the pace of every morality tale.
A Thoughtless Yes
Helen H. (Helen Hamilton) Gardener
A world of rigid social rules, moral blind spots, and snap judgments is quietly unmasked in these sharp, insightful stories.
Tropic death
Eric Walrond
In the sweltering heat of the Caribbean and the Panama Canal zone, the struggle for survival transforms ordinary lives into haunting, rhythmic portraits of displacement and death.
The hills of the dead
Robert E. (Robert Ervin) Howard
Solomon Kane, a grim Puritan adventurer, ventures into the heart of the African wilderness to combat a race of ancient, soul-sucking vampires inhabiting a forgotten stone city.
Stories from the Chap-Book: Being a Miscellany of Curious and Interesting Tales, Histories, &c
Unknown
These varied, observant sketches capture the quiet intensity of late 19th-century lives, from the melancholy of aging memories to the sudden, sharp disruptions of travel and social expectation.
Mr. Sweet Potatoes, and Other Stories
Anonymous
Global travel and domestic life converge in this evocative 1899 collection of sketches, capturing the customs, landscapes, and curiosities of the world through the eyes of a Victorian-era observer.
Tales of My Native Town
Gabriele D'Annunzio
A visceral, unflinching portrait of a small Adriatic coastal town, this collection captures the intersection of crushing poverty, blinding religious superstition, and the fierce, elemental passions of a people living on the edge of the sea.
The Scarecrow, and Other Stories
G. Ranger (Gwendolyn Ranger) Wormser
Bound by the quiet terror of human isolation, these tales explore how fragile the mind becomes when confronted with the uncanny, the unseen, and the unspoken.
Apes and Angels
Richard Edward Connell
A collection of satirical tales skewers human vanity, showing how easily serious people turn foolish when chasing clout or clinging to pride.
Pickman's model
H. P. (Howard Phillips) Lovecraft
A connoisseur of the macabre grapples with the terrifying realization that a brilliant painter’s nightmarish visions were not born of imagination, but of a hideous, living reality.
Famous mystery stories
Unknown
This collection gathers ten classic tales of the strange and the supernatural, serving as a gateway to the eerie traditions of nineteenth-century European and American literature. It offers a window into a time when mystery meant more than just a crime to be solved; it meant an encounter with the inexplicable.
Lessons in Life, for All Who Will Read Them
T. S. (Timothy Shay) Arthur
This collection of moralizing narratives explores the quiet, often overlooked dilemmas of everyday life, suggesting that true wisdom is found in the deliberate practice of kindness and self-reflection.
The cost of wings, and other stories
Richard Dehan
An aviator's sacrifice, a giantess's desperate rescue, and an arctic quest for a forgotten friend meet in twenty-six vibrant tales of human folly and unexpected grace.
The flying carpet
Unknown
A vast array of childhood wonder unfolds within a single volume, where whimsical verse, historical drama, and fairy-tale enchantments collide.
Luke Barnicott, and Other Stories
William Howitt
The world is vast, filled with both the quiet struggles of humble villages and the shimmering, distant promises of fairy-tale kingdoms. These stories explore the weight of truth, the reach of memory, and the unexpected intersections of disparate lives.
The White Hecatomb, and Other Stories
W. C. (William Charles) Scully
Boundless violence, ancient customs, and the friction of colonial encounters shape a world where individual choices carry heavy, irrevocable costs.
My Fire Opal, and Other Tales
Sarah Warner Brooks
This collection of stories explores the humanity hidden behind prison walls, blending personal observation with fictional narrative to challenge how society treats its "convicted fellow sinners.
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.
Soap bubbles
Max Simon Nordau
This collection of short stories captures the fragility of human vanity and the strange, often cruel, ironies that govern lives across Europe and beyond.
A Loose End and Other Stories
S. Elizabeth Hall
The stories in this collection capture the rugged, isolated lives of inhabitants in the Channel Islands and Brittany, weaving together themes of superstition, unspoken grief, and the quiet endurance of the human spirit.
The Second Class Passenger: Fifteen Stories
Perceval Gibbon
These fifteen stories traverse the margins of the early twentieth-century world, capturing lives caught in the friction between colonial ambition and sudden, internal collapse. They are portraits of people who stand at the precipice of their own undoing.
Indian and Other Tales
M. L. Hope
The wandering spirit of the West travels the globe to witness the interconnectedness of nature, the hardships of colonial life, and the quiet, enduring loyalties found in the most unexpected places.
The Rising of the Court
Henry Lawson
This collection of prose pieces captures the raw, unfiltered pulse of the Australian frontier and the claustrophobic indignity of city police courts. It is a work of deep empathy for the displaced, the weary, and the "cobbers" who stand by their own when the law fails them.
The Elm Tree Tales
F. Burge (Frances Burge) Griswold
Rural life and city slums collide in this mid-nineteenth-century collection of moral tales, where the suffering of the poor serves as a catalyst for the spiritual refinement of the wealthy.
Ilka on the Hill-Top and Other Stories
Hjalmar Hjorth Boyesen
This collection of short stories captures the quiet, often melancholy tensions of lives caught between traditional European roots and the modern, skeptical world. It explores the fragility of human connection with grace and a sharp, observational eye.
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.
Scottish sketches
Amelia E. Barr
These interconnected tales capture the rugged spirit of 19th-century Scotland, where the weight of tradition, the sting of poverty, and the quiet dignity of faith define the lives of its people. Through these portraits, the reader discovers a world governed by honor, conscience, and the lingering echoes of the past.
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.
Crowded Out! and Other Sketches
S. Frances (Susie Frances) Harrison
An ambitious artist stakes everything on conquering London, while in the Canadian wilderness and beyond, others navigate the quiet, crushing weight of their own secrets and social expectations.
Literary Love-Letters and Other Stories
Robert Herrick
Romantic longings and the hard realities of social status collide in this collection of tales, where characters attempt to define their own lives against the rigid expectations of the late 19th-century American elite.
The dreams of Chang and other stories
Ivan Alekseevich Bunin
The world is a vast, indifferent stage where human ambition and suffering play out against the backdrop of an eternal, uncaring sea. These stories capture the fleeting nature of existence with cold, crystalline precision.
Tales of the uneasy
Violet Hunt
A cold wind blows through modern English drawing rooms and lonely moorland farms alike, revealing the rot beneath manners, marriages, and moral pretenses.
The Holy Cross and Other Tales
Eugene Field
This collection of prose pieces moves between the whimsical and the deeply mournful, capturing a Victorian sensibility that finds the miraculous hidden within the mundane. It is a work of contrasts, where the sharp edges of human ambition are softened by the persistent, fragile grace of childhood innocence.
Old Man Savarin, and Other Stories
Edward William Thomson
Against the rugged, windswept backdrops of frontier rivers and military encampments, human nature reveals its true measure through desperate choices and unexpected mercies. These tales capture the raw vitality of a young nation shaped by wilderness, war, and ancestral pride.
At a Winter's Fire
Bernard Capes
This collection of short stories dwells in the borderlands between the waking world and the fever-dream, where the boundaries of reason thin and fracture. It is a work of atmospheric dread, capturing the peculiar psychological terrors that haunt the edges of the human experience.
Stories by Foreign Authors: Italian
Unknown
This collection captures the pulse of a nation in transition, weaving together intimate domestic portraits and the broader, often tumultuous, currents of Italian life.
The black cat, vol. I, no. 5, February 1896
Various
These tales of sudden mystery and unexpected resolution capture the frantic pulse of the late nineteenth-century imagination, where a single cryptic note or an odd coincidence can unravel a life in an afternoon.
Idle Hour Stories
Eugenia Dunlap Potts
A vibrant bouquet of small-town domestic drama, high-stakes suspense, romantic entanglements, and reflective verse offers a nostalgic window into American life at the turn of the twentieth century.
A Lover in Homespun: And Other Stories
F. Clifford (Frank Clifford) Smith
A volume of Canadian short fiction captures the quiet heartbreaks, sudden perils, and romantic sacrifices unfolding across nineteenth-century habitant villages and rugged western frontiers.
Stories by Foreign Authors: Spanish
Unknown
Phantom footsteps on dark streets, a haunting melody played on an empty organ bench, and lost fortunes buried beneath ancient Moorish towers—these nineteenth-century Spanish stories dwell in the fascinating space where human passion, war, and spectral secrets converge.
Tales of a Cruel Country
Gerald Cumberland
A collection of fractured lives in a sun-drenched, volatile land, this work captures the precise moment where human desire curdles into desperation. It is a haunting study of souls adrift in a place where beauty and cruelty are indistinguishable.