Truly great short stories

[Melmoth]

Some short stories I like... as you can see most of them fantastic...

Poe's The Tell-Tale Heart
James' The Jolly Corner
Le Fanu's Green Tea and Mr. Justice Harbottle
Sartre's The Wall
Stevenson's Olalla
Bierce's An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge

[idiosynchrissy]

I love short stories!

"The Cask of Amontillado" by Poe- The line at the end about the jingling of the bells literally made me sick to my stomach. Who could ask for more in a short story?

"The Yellow Wallpaper" by Gilman- What a great surreal work of insanity.

"All Summer in a Day" by Bradbury and "Rain, Rain, Go Away" by Asimov- these are two that struck me as a child and which are both coincidentally about rain.

[DeadAsDreams]

The Case of Charles Dexter Ward by H.P. Lovecraft.

[TrooperW]

Timothy Findley's "Stones"

I went from enjoying reading to actually appreciating and thinking about literature.

[Qaphqa]

"The Cask of Amontillado" - Poe
"A Country Doctor" - Kafka
"Tlön, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius" - Borges

[Trekker114]

Juest a few personal favourites...

N. Gogol - "The Nose"
Flannery O'Connor - "A Good Man is Hard to Find", "Good Country People", "The Lame Shall Enter First"
Joseph Conrad - "The Secret Sharer"
Henry James - "The Jolly Corner"
Katherine Mansfield - "Bliss"
James Joyce - "Araby", "Eveline"

[Emil Miller]

Somerset Maugham's favourite short story wrtiter was Chekhov and having read both, I prefer Mauhgam. Of his many brilliantly constructed short stories a few from the top of my head are:
Rain
The Letter
Footprints in the Jungle
The Book Bag
The Taipan
Red
The Alien Corn
The Four Dutchmen
P.& O.
Lord Mountdrago
The Lotus Eater
Flotsam & Jetsam

[Virgil]

"The Snows of Kilimanjaro" by Earnest Hemingway

Now that's a great story.

Also

"Bernice Bobs Her Hair" by F. Scott Fitgerald

[bounty]

What is the best short story of ALL TIME?

i cant say "best" but two that certainly stick out in my memory are the gift of the magi, and, the lady or the tiger.

[traytray]

I love and adore short stories These are some of my favorites. It would be very hard for me to pick just one.

"A Rose for Emily" by William Faulkner

"Araby" by James Joyce

"The Scarlet Ibis" by James Hurst.

"The Happy Prince" by Oscar Wilde

The Dead by James Joyce

"Metamorphosis" by Franz Kafka

"A Vine on a House" by Ambrose Bierce

"The Stranger" by Ambrose Bierce

"Those Who Wait" by Ethel M. Dell

"The Child's Story" by Charles Dickens

"The Christmas Tree and the Wedding" by Fyodor Dostoevsky

"His Last Bow" (An Epilogue of Sherlock Holmes) by Arthur Conan Doyle

"The Canterville Ghost" by Oscar Wilde

"The Nightingale and the Rose" by Oscar Wilde

"The Fisherman and his Soul" byOscar Wilde

"The Magic Shop" by H.G. Wells

"The Star" by H.G. Wells

"My Red Cap" by Louisa May Alcott

"The Tell-Tale Heart" by Edgar Allan Poe

Those are some of my personal favorites

[Janine]

Thanks everybody for listing so many great short stories. I intend to copy all these suggested and make a list. That way I can refer back to it and try new ones I have not yet read. Thanks for all the great recommendatons. I have read many you have listed, but anxious to read more of these in the near future and get a taste of other authors, as well.

[promtbr]

Here's a few of my favorites.

The Wide Net - Eudora Welty (My favorite short story. I think Welty is one of the greatest writers of all time and it makes me sad that she doesn't get more attention)

See The Moon - Donald Barthelme (My favorite short story writer. His stories are always very strange and fun. I picked this one because I love the underlying sweetness behind it.)

Just joined so this is second post. Love the topic. Just getting back into reading literature after a long hiatus.

I know I am in the right forum...these are a couple of my all timers. Also, at least 4 mentions of "Eyes of a Blue Dog" a story that I thought I was one of maybe 3 admirers lol

Now I have to try that Woolf story-she is my ALL TIME favorite fiction writer..



Short stories that really stayed with me and I have gone back to (outside the classic masters of the form already mentioned here who most of their stories were amazing... Larwence, Hemingway, Chekov, Mansfield, O'connor :

"So Much Water so Close to Home" and "Cathedral" --Raymond Carver

and just recently read a story that Blew Me Away:

"Half Skinned Steer"--Annie Proulx

Jorge Luis Borges,Donald Barthelme and Bruno Schulz are all worth mining imho and written some gems...

I just bought "Things they caried" by Tim O'Brien and am excited to read it having heard part of it on an audio book and read "Going After Caciato"

[byquist]

Raymond Carver's "A Small Good Thing" will rip your heart out.

[Silas Thorne]

Robert Louis Stephenson, 'Markheim'
Edgar Allan Poe 'The Tell-tale heart'
Saki 'Shredni Vashtar' - I can read this one again and again-delightful!

[hampusforev]

Man there's so many, I really love short stories.
Poe's the Cask of Amontillado, as mentioned several times probably.
Kafka's Metamorphosis
Tom Wolfe's "Only the Dead Knows Brooklyn"
Shirley Jacksons "The Lottery"
James Joyce’s "Dubliners" are only complete in full in my opinion, but Araby is great.
Flannery O’Connor’s "A Good man is hard to find"
I like Garcia Márquez "An old man with very large wings" (dunno if that's the proper title in English? Just translated from the top of my head)