Looking for American short stories you can start tonight? Here you'll find O. Henry twist endings, Gothic tales from New England, frontier humor and the classic anthologies that first collected them.
American writers turned the short story into an art form in the 1800s. Edgar Allan Poe defined the modern tale, Nathaniel Hawthorne gave it moral weight, and Mark Twain and O. Henry made it funny and surprising.
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Twist Endings
O. Henry Short Stories
Few writers can pack a whole life into ten pages and still save a surprise for the last line. O. Henry did it hundreds of times, from New York shopgirls to Texas cowboys.
Twenty five New York stories, including the Christmas one about the watch and the hair. O. Henry lands a whole romance in six pages and still surprises you at the end.
Linked stories set in Anchuria, an invented Central American republic of revolutions, runaway presidents and bananas. O. Henry's first book, and the one that coined the phrase banana republic.
Nineteen stories of Texas ranches, cowboys and border towns, drawn from the years O. Henry spent on the frontier. Includes The Caballero's Way, the tale that introduced the Cisco Kid.
Twenty five more stories of New York shopgirls, clerks and dreamers, written as a follow-up to The Four Million. Includes A Lickpenny Lover and The Complete Life of John Hopkins.
Stories of working New Yorkers, opening with two shopgirls who choose very different roads to happiness. This is also the book that holds The Last Leaf.
A late collection that moves from Texas to Central America to Manhattan. It includes The Ransom of Red Chief, the kidnapping story where the boy is far more trouble than the kidnappers.
These anthologies were put together between 1884 and 1919, when the American short story was finding its voice. Each one is a quick tour of American short fiction, with authors like Washington Irving, Bret Harte and Mary E. Wilkins Freeman.
A 1904 anthology that follows the American short story from Rip Van Winkle through Poe, Hawthorne and Bret Harte. The editor's opening essay explains how the form took shape.
Twenty two classic American tales in one volume, from The Gold-Bug and The Legend of Sleepy Hollow to stories by Bret Harte, O. Henry and Mary E. Wilkins Freeman. A quick tour of the form at its most readable.
Five stories from the 1884 series that gathered the best American magazine fiction of its day, opening with Bayard Taylor's Who Was She? Short, light and full of Gilded Age manners.
The first volume of the yearly Best Short Stories series, with the editor's picks from that year's magazines and a yearbook of the American short story. Includes Fannie Hurst, Wilbur Daniel Steele and Ben Hecht.
A snapshot of American fiction turning modern, with early stories by Sherwood Anderson, Djuna Barnes and Anzia Yezierska. Chosen from the magazines of 1919 by the editor of the series.
The American Gothic swapped European castles for farmhouses, small towns and locked bedrooms. Start with The Yellow Wallpaper and The Legend of Sleepy Hollow, then follow the dread into weird fiction with The King in Yellow.
Six supernatural stories set in quiet New England villages, including Luella Miller, about a woman who drains the life of everyone who cares for her. Simple, homely settings make the horror hit harder.
On a transatlantic steamer, every passenger who sleeps in cabin 105 goes overboard. Crawford's famous sea ghost story, followed here by his tale By the Waters of Paradise.
A nameless narrator swears he is not mad, then calmly tells you how he came to kill the old man with the vulture eye. Our own Project Aldus edition of Poe's 1843 monologue, laid out to be read in a single sitting.
Roderick Usher, his sister Madeline, and a house that is not entirely separate from either of them. The single best entry point to Poe's gothic, and the tale most often set for study.
A drunk narrator explains, very reasonably, how he came to wall up his own conscience. Alongside The Tell-Tale Heart, this is Poe at his most quotable on guilt.
Twain's first popular collection, gathered in 1875 from his early newspaper years. Includes The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County, the sketch that made him famous coast to coast.
Twain's 1893 collection led by the famous tale of a penniless American handed a million-pound note in London. Eleven late-career sketches on luck, manners, and the comedy of mistaken status.
A small-town couple inherit a windfall on paper and let it ruin them. The title novella anchors a 1906 collection that gathers Twain's most acerbic late short fiction.
A young Puritan leaves his wife Faith for one night to walk into the forest, where he finds his whole village at a witches' meeting. Hawthorne's most read story, short enough for a single sitting.
The collection that made Hawthorne's name, with The Minister's Black Veil, Dr. Heidegger's Experiment, Wakefield and the Legends of the Province House. Both series in one volume.
Written at the Concord house where Emerson once lived, this collection holds Young Goodman Brown, The Birthmark, Rappaccini's Daughter and Earth's Holocaust. The book that made Melville call Hawthorne a genius.
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