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Conrad Aiken, "Silent Snow, Secret Snow" in The Norton Book of American Short Stories. 813.0108 Nor
A boy's mind drifts more and more frequently into a dream world filled with snow.

Ryunosuke Akutagawa, "In a Grove" in Adaptations: From Short Story to Big Screen. 791.436 Ada
This story of seven varying accounts of a samurai's murder is the basis for the classic film Rashomon.

Sherwood Anderson, "Mother" in Winesburg, Ohio.
A mother wants her son to achieve his dreams as she never could but is unable to express herself.

Ambrose Bierce, "An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge" in Shadows of Blue & Gray.
A Confederate sympathizer is sentenced to be hanged for trying to burn down a bridge.

Anton Chekhov, "The Steppe" in Early Short Stories.
A boy embarks on a journey across the Steppe of southern Russia.

Kate Chopin, "The Story of an Hour" in The Awakening and Selected Stories.
A woman with a heart condition is informed that her husband was killed in an accident.

Joseph Conrad, "The Secret Sharer" in The Shorter Tales of Joseph Conrad.
A captain lets a stranger from the sea aboard his ship and an unusual bond forms between them.

Ralph Ellison, "The King of the Bingo Game" in Flying Home and Other Stories.
An African-American man who moved from the South to the city sits in a movie theater and thinks about his life and his dying wife.

William Faulkner, "A Rose for Emily" in Selected Short Stories of William Faulkner.
An eccentric spinster in a small southern town hides a terrible secret.

F. Scott Fitzgerald, "Bernice Bobs Her Hair" in Before Gatsby.
A girl who is jealous of her cousin's newfound popularity tricks her into cutting her hair.

Charlotte Perkins Gilman, "The Yellow Wallpaper."
A woman who is depressed after giving birth is confined to a room with yellow wallpaper in which she begins to see things.

Nikolai Gogol, "The Overcoat."
A government clerk decides to replace his threadbare overcoat with a new one.

Bret Harte, "The Outcasts of Poker Flat" in The Best of Bret Harte.
A group of people exiled from their town for immoral behavior are stranded together in a cabin by a blizzard.

Nathaniel Hawthorne, "The Birth-Mark" in Tales and Sketches.
A scientist convinces his wife to let him try to remove a distinctive birth-mark from her face.

Ernest Hemingway, "The Snows of Kilimanjaro" in The Snows of Kilimanjaro and Other Stories.
A writer on a safari in Africa becomes injured and reflects back on his life.

O. Henry, "The Gift of the Magi," in The Best Short Stories of O. Henry.
A husband and wife make sacrifices in order to buy each other Christmas gifts.

Shirley Jackson, "The Lottery." in The Lottery.
The people of a small town gather for an annual lottery with a macabre result.

Henry James, "The Turn of the Screw."
A governess hired to care for two children by their absent guardian is disturbed by strange occurrences that may be linked to the fate of her predecessor.

Sarah Orne Jewett, "A White Heron" in The Country of the Pointed Firs & Other Stories.
A girl must choose whether to tell a hunter where to find the nest of the rare white heron.

James Joyce, "The Dead" in Dubliners.
A man learns that there is much he does not know about his wife's past.

Franz Kafka, "The Metamorphosis" in The Metamorphosis and Other Stories.
A man finds his complacent life shattered when he is transformed into a giant cockroach.

Ring Lardner, "Haircut" in The Ring Lardner Reader.
A barber relates a story of small-town justice to a newcomer getting a haircut.

D.H. Lawrence, "The Rocking-Horse Winner" in The Oxford Book of Short Stories. Fiction under 'Oxford'
A boy thinks he can solve his family's financial problems by predicting horse race winners while riding on his rocking horse.

Jack London, "To Build a Fire" in Short Stories of Jack London.
A newcomer to the Yukon tries to build a fire to save himself from the freezing cold.

Katherine Mansfield, "Miss Brill" in The Garden Party.
An elderly woman makes a weekly trip to a park where she sits and observes other people.

W. Somerset Maugham, "Rain" in Collected Stories.
A missionary on a South Pacific island tries to convert a prostitute.

Guy de Maupassant, "Boule de Suif" in The Works of Guy de Maupassant, volume 1.
Passengers on a stagecoach fleeing the Prussian army in France shun a prostitute who helps them escape.

Herman Melville, "Bartleby, the Scrivener" in The Complete Shorter Fiction.
A copyist hired by a Wall Street law firm begins to exhibit strange behavior.

Vladimir Nabokov, "The Vane Sisters" in The Stories of Vladimir Nabokov.
An acrostic in the last paragraph provides a clue to this haunting tale of a man's relationship with two dead sisters.

R.K. Narayan, "A Horse and Two Goats" in The Oxford Book of Short Stories. Fiction under 'Oxford'
A poor Indian villager and a wealthy New York businessman try to understand one another.

Flannery O'Connor, "A Good Man Is Hard to Find" in A Good Man Is Hard to Find and Other Stories.
A family on a car trip have a fateful encounter on the road.

Liam O'Flaherty, "The Sniper" in A World of Great Stories. 808.83 Hay
A sniper in the Irish Civil War kills a sniper on the other side and then learns his enemy's identity.

Katherine Anne Porter, "Flowering Judas" in Flowering Judas and Other Stories.
An idealistic young American woman travels to Mexico to participate in the Revolution but becomes disillusioned.

Aleksandr Pushkin, "The Queen of Spades" in The Queen of Spades and Other Stories.
An army officer is determined to learn a secret from an elderly Countess and her companion that will help him win at cards.

Saki, "The Open Window" in The Complete Works of Saki.
A man recovering from a nervous breakdown has a relapse after a strange encounter with a young girl.

J.D. Salinger, "For Esme with Love and Squalor" in Nine Stories.
An American soldier is befriended by a thirteen-year-old English girl just before he goes off to take part in the D Day invasion.

Isaac Bashevis Singer, "The Spinoza of Market Street" in The Spinoza of Market Street.
A scholar in a shtetl becomes alienated from his community by his devotion to the philosophy of Spinoza but has a change of heart.

Frank Stockton, "The Lady or the Tiger?" in Fable and Fiction.
A princess must decide whether to send her lover to his death or let him live and marry another woman.

Leo Tolstoy, "The Death of Ivan Ilych" in Collected Shorter Fiction.
A man with a carefree existence becomes terminally ill and reexamines his life.

Eudora Welty, "Why I Live at the P.O." in Selected Stories of Eudora Welty.
A postmistress in a small Mississippi town is resentful of her favored younger sister.

Edith Wharton, "Souls Belated" in Roman Fever and Other Stories.
A married woman enjoys the freedom of a European tour with her lover but things change when her divorce papers arrive.