Free summaries
Short Stories — page 3
134 public-domain short stories books, summarised. Page 3 of 3.
The Nest, The White Pagoda, The Suicide, A Forsaken Temple, Miss Jones and the Masterpiece
Anne Douglas Sedgwick
A dying husband, an interior designer out-maneuvered, and a tragic triangular love affair reveal the quiet, desperate struggles hidden behind polite Edwardian façades.
Adam & Eve & Pinch Me
A. E. (Alfred Edgar) Coppard
A woman sits by a windy wood, a wanderer roams the Cotswolds in search of a dry hedge, and a ghost watches his own children play in a sunlit garden.
Dreams and delights
L. Adams (Lily Adams) Beck
Through stories set in mountain fastnesses, island sanctuaries, and shadowy imperial courts, the human soul seeks a single timeless truth—that earthly love and divine devotion are one and the same.
Earth's Enigmas: A Volume of Stories
Roberts, Charles G. D., Sir
Deep within the wild Canadian wilderness, human ambition and raw nature clash in a series of haunting, sharply etched spectral tales.
A Book
Djuna Barnes
In these sketches and stories, human desire acts like an untamed animal, prowling the boundaries of social decorum and the inevitable approach of death. It is a collection that maps the interior landscape of the lonely and the obsessed.
Âmona
Louis Becke
The natural world and human cruelty collide in these accounts from the South Pacific, where the vulnerable suffer under the whims of the powerful and the wild.
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.
Molly and Kitty, or Peasant Life in Ireland
Maria Burg
This collection of three distinct narratives offers a window into the moral and sentimental landscape of mid-19th-century juvenile fiction, exploring themes of resilience, faith, and the rewards of virtuous conduct. Through tales of hardship, wandering, and historical strife, the stories emphasize that character is…
As holy and enchanted
Kris Neville
This brief, poignant fantasy follows a lonely city mechanic who meets an ethereal woman in a park on a Sunday morning, only to discover that their worlds are fundamentally incompatible.
Short story classics (Foreign), Vol. 2, Italian and Scandinavian
Unknown
In a world where choices echo past their moment, a single decision can rewrite a life entirely.
Pan's garden
Algernon Blackwood
This is a collection of strange, atmospheric tales where the boundary between human consciousness and the wild, untamed forces of the natural world dissolves into something both beautiful and terrifying.
Fires - Book 2: The Ovens, and Other Tales
Wilfrid Wilson Gibson
The heavy machinery of the industrial North swings out over shattered lives, casting a stark warmth across those who have nowhere else to turn.
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.
Kafir Stories: Seven Short Stories
W. C. (William Charles) Scully
Crossing cultural frontiers in late nineteenth-century South Africa, these seven tales lay bare the collisions of human greed, tribal custom, and imperial authority.
Civilization: Tales of the Orient
Ellen N. (Ellen Newbold) La Motte
Under a thin veneer of imperial progress, white settlers and local elites across East Asia trade their dignity and humanity for petty status and transient power.
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.
Susâni: 1901
Louis Becke
A fragile girl, touched by both illness and what some call divinity, binds the souls of two transient observers in a remote Pacific lagoon. This brief, meditative narrative captures the fading twilight of a native community through the lens of a singular, haunting life.
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.
A Little Book of Christmas
John Kendrick Bangs
A collection of four gentle, interconnected tales, this volume explores the transformative power of kindness during the Christmas season. It captures the spirit of early twentieth-century New York through stories of compassion, charity, and unexpected connection.
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.
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.