Most Popuar Short Stories

"The Gift of the Magi," by O.Henry (real name:William Sydney Porter)

"The Lottery," by Shirley Jackson (she also wrote the book The Haunting of Hill House)

Don't know if these two would be in the top 15, but at least close to it.

The Tell-Tale Heart - Edgar Allen Poe


The Devil and Daniel Webster - Stephen Vincent Benet

"To Build a Fire" - Jack London

Several of Poe's stories might belong on the list; I remember "The Fall of the House of Usher" and "The Black Cat" from my high school textbooks. (Our teacher refused to assign us the latter story because it was, in her words, "so evil.")

"The Most Dangerous Game" - Richard Connell
"An Occurrance at Owl Creek Bridge" - Ambrose Bierce
"The Rocking Horse Winner" - D.H. Lawrence
"After You, My Dear Alphonse" - Shirley Jackson
"Haircut" - Ring Lardner
"Shredni Vashtar" - Saki
"He" - Katherine Anne Porter

Maddwriter said:

The Tell-Tale Heart - Edgar Allen Poe

Click to expand...

If you liked that, then you should read our esteemed threadmaker's http://absolutewrite.com/forums/showthread.php?t=15607


It's a scream!

"The Things They Carried" Tim O'Brien
"Janus" Ann Beattie
"Hills Like White Elephants" Hemingway
"Sonny's Blues" James Baldwin

Commonly found on many high school reading lists:

"The Pedestrian" by Bradbury
"The Scarlet Ibis" by James Hurst
"Flowers for Algernon" by Daniel Keyes
"The Most Dangerous Game" by Richard Connell

"Young Goodman Brown" by Nathaniel Hawthorne
"A Rose for Emily" by William Faulkner
"A Good Man Is Hard to Find" by Flannery O'Connor

You may enjoy some of these links as well (some cover all short stories, not just American, but may be helpful):
http://titan.iwu.edu/~jplath/sschron.html
http://www.americanliterature.com/SS/SSINDX.HTML
http://www.bnl.com/shorts/bib.html

this is Project Gutenburg, which puts free e-texts online:
http://www.gutenberg.org/catalog/world/results?title=short+stories

The Short Happy Life of Francis Macomber, Hemingway

The Interloupers, Saki (H.H. Munro)

The Pearl, Steinbeck

A Barn Burning, Faulkner

And there has to be at least one story by Mark Twain on the list; I'm not sure which I would choose.

ac

"The Cask of Amontillado"

"A Sound of Thunder"

"Walter Mitty" James Thurber

"Occurrence at Kingstown Mall" (I wrote it. It's been rejected six times so far, but godammit, I like it.)

"The Minister's Black Veil" - Nathaniel Hawthorne

short story favourites kids should read!

'The Old Man' Daphne du Maurier
'Lamb to the Slaughter' Roald Dahl
'Charles' Shirley Jackson
'The Speckled Band' Arthur Conan Doyle

Hills Like White Elephants by Hemingway
Thus I Refute Beelzy by Collier
The Diamond as Big as The Ritz and The Ice Palace by FS Fitzgerald
A Christmas Story and Miriam by T Capote