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Short Stories

A collection of 9 issues

A World without Selfie Sticks

Six years have passed since then, and I still try to imagine what happened to Not-Debbie, how she arrived at the flashy studio and was welcomed with cheers from the audience and compliments from a pair of sleek presenters, who told her she had won a million dollars.

The Dead

By James Joyce Lily, the caretaker's daughter, was literally run oﬀ her feet. Hardly had she brought one gentleman into the little pantry behind the office on the ground floor and helped him oﬀ with his overcoat than the wheezy hall- door bell clanged again and she had

Replication Error

Sometimes the boy felt frustrated at his job. Early in the morning, long before the sun would rise, he put on his boots and followed his father out to the replication site where the helicase had already done his work and the primers lay in wait. In the blanket-like darkness

The Embassy of Cambodia

By Zadie Smith 💡Published in the print edition of the New Yorker, February 11 & 18, 2013, issue. 0 - 1 Who would expect the Embassy of Cambodia? Nobody. Nobody could have expected it, or be expecting it. It’s a surprise, to us all. The Embassy of Cambodia! Next

Exhalation

By Ted Chiang It has long been said that air (which others call argon) is the source of life. This is not in fact the case, and I engrave these words to describe how I came to understand the true source of life and, as a corollary, the means by

Bullet in the Brain

By Tobias Wolff 💡First published in the print edition of The New Yorker's September 25, 1995, issue. Anders couldn't get to the bank until just before it closed, so of course the line was endless and he got stuck behind two women whose loud, stupid conversation

Understand

By Ted Chiang 💡This story first appeared in Asimov's Science Fiction, August 1991 and is reprinted in the collection Stories of Your Life and Others, published by Tor in 2002. A layer of ice; it feels rough against my face, but not cold. I've got nothing

On Seeing the 100% Perfect Girl One Beautiful April Morning

By Haruki Murakami One beautiful April morning, on a narrow side street in Tokyo's fashionable Harujuku neighborhood, I walked past the 100% perfect girl. Tell you the truth, she's not that goodlooking. She doesn't stand out in any way. Her clothes are nothing

A Haunted House

By Virginia Woolf Whatever hour you woke there was a door shutting. From room to room they went, hand in hand, lifting here, opening there, making sure--a ghostly couple. "Here we left it," she said. And he added, "Oh, but here tool" "It's