Fiction
Short fiction and classic stories preserved for new readers.
Selected classics
Cosmo presents a curated catalog of classic works. Use the links to locate public-domain editions; copyright can vary by country and by translation or edition.
Latest Fiction
A Christmas Carol
Marley was dead: to begin with. There is no doubt whatever about that. n The register of his burial was signed by the clergyman, the clerk, the undertaker, and the chief mourner. Scrooge signed it. n And Scrooge's name was good upon 'Change, for anything he chose to put his hand to. Old Marley was […]
Read story →The Devil and Tom Walker
About the year 1727, just at the time of a great earthquake in New England, there lived near this place a meagre, miserly fellow, of the name of Tom Walker. n He had a wife as miserly as himself; they were so miserly that they even conspired to cheat each other. n Whatever the woman […]
Read story →The Gold-Bug
Many years ago, I contracted an intimacy with a Mr. William Legrand. He was of an ancient Huguenot family, and had once been wealthy. n A series of misfortunes had reduced him to poverty, but he retained the pride of his ancestry, and was extremely sensitive to the subject of his former prosperity. n He […]
Read story →The Pit and the Pendulum
I was sick—sick unto death with that long agony; and when at length they unbound me, and I was permitted to sit, I felt that my senses were leaving me. n The sentence—the dread sentence of death—was the last distinct accentuation which reached my ears. n After that, the sound of the inquisitorial voices merged […]
Read story →Young Goodman Brown
Young Goodman Brown came forth at sunset, into the street at Salem village; but put his head back, after crossing the threshold, to exchange a parting kiss with his young wife. n And Faith, as the wife was aptly named, thrust her own pretty head into the street, letting the wind play with the pink […]
Read story →The Murders in the Rue Morgue
The mental features discoursed of as the analytical, are, in themselves, but little susceptible of analysis. n We appreciate them only in their effects. We know of them, among other things, that they are always to their possessor, when inordinately possessed, a source of the liveliest enjoyment. n As the strong man exults in his […]
Read story →The Purloined Letter
At Paris, just after dark one gusty evening in the autumn of 18—, I was enjoying the twofold luxury of meditation and a meerschaum, in company with my friend C. Auguste Dupin, in his little back library, or book-closet, au troisième, No. 33, Rue Dunôt, Faubourg St. Germain. n For one hour at least we […]
Read story →The Masque of the Red Death
The 'Red Death' had long devastated the country. No pestilence had ever been so fatal, or so hideous. n Blood was its Avatar and its seal—the redness and the horror of blood. n There were sharp pains, and sudden dizziness, and then profuse bleeding at the pores, with dissolution. n
Read story →The Signal-Man
'Halloa! Below there!' When he heard a voice thus calling to him, he was standing at the door of his box, with a flag in his hand, rolled round his hand. n One of the men who work the trains, and who was coming up the line, had called to him. n
Read story →The Selfish Giant
Every afternoon, as they were coming from school, the children used to go and play in the Giant's garden. n It was a large lovely garden, with soft green grass. Here and there over the grass stood beautiful flowers like stars, and there were twelve peach-trees that in the spring-time broke into delicate blossoms of […]
Read story →The Happy Prince
High above the city, on a tall column, stood the statue of the Happy Prince. n He was gilded all over with thin leaves of fine gold, for eyes he had two bright sapphires, and a large red ruby glowed on his sword-hilt. n He was very much admired indeed. 'He is as beautiful as […]
Read story →The Story of an Hour
Knowing that Mrs. Mallard was afflicted with a heart trouble, great care was taken to break to her as gently as possible the news of her husband's death. n It was her sister Josephine who told her, in broken sentences; veiled hints that revealed in half concealing. n Her husband's friend Richards was there, too, […]
Read story →An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge
A man stood upon a railroad bridge in northern Alabama, looking down into the swift water twenty feet below. n The man's hands were behind his back, the wrists bound with a cord. A rope closely encircled his neck. n It was attached to a stout cross-timber above his head and the slack fell to […]
Read story →The Yellow Wallpaper
It is very seldom that mere ordinary people like John and myself secure ancestral halls for the summer. n A colonial mansion, a hereditary estate, I would say a haunted house, and reach the height of romantic felicity—but that would be asking too much of fate! n Still I will proudly declare that there is […]
Read story →The Necklace
She was one of those pretty and charming girls born, as if by an error of Fate, into a family of employees. n She had no dowry, no expectations, no means of becoming known, understood, loved, or wedded by a rich and distinguished man; and she let herself be married off to a little clerk […]
Read story →The Lady or the Tiger?
In the very olden time there lived a semi-barbaric king, whose ideas, though somewhat polished and sharpened by the progressiveness of distant Latin neighbours, were still large, florid, and untrammelled, as became the half of him which was barbaric. n He was a man of exuberant fancy, and, withal, of an authority so irresistible that, […]
Read story →The Monkey’s Paw
Without, the night was cold and wet, but in the small parlour of Laburnum Villa the blinds were drawn and the fire burned brightly. n Father and son were at chess, the former, who possessed ideas about the game involving radical changes, putting his king into such sharp and unnecessary perils that it even provoked […]
Read story →The Open Window
'My aunt will be down presently, Mr. Nuttel,' said a very self-possessed young lady of fifteen; 'in the meantime you must try and put up with me.' n Framton Nuttel endeavoured to say the correct something which should duly flatter the niece of the moment without unduly discounting the aunt that was to come. n […]
Read story →The Last Leaf
In a little district west of Washington Square the streets have run crazy and broken themselves into small strips called 'places.' n These 'places' make strange angles and curves. One street crosses itself a block away. n
Read story →The Gift of the Magi
One dollar and eighty-seven cents. That was all. And sixty cents of it was in pennies. n Pennies saved one and two at a time by bulldozing the grocer and the vegetable man and the butcher until one's cheeks burned with the silent imputation of parsimony that such close dealing implied. n Three times Della […]
Read story →The Cask of Amontillado
The thousand injuries of Fortunato I had borne as I best could, but when he ventured upon insult, I vowed revenge. n You, who so well know the nature of my soul, will not suppose, however, that I gave utterance to a threat. n At length I would be avenged; this was a point definitely […]
Read story →The Black Cat
For the most wild, yet most homely narrative which I am about to pen, I neither expect nor solicit belief. n Mad indeed would I be to expect it, in a case where my very senses reject their own evidence. n Yet, mad am I not—and very surely do I not dream. n
Read story →The Fall of the House of Usher
During the whole of a dull, dark, and soundless day in the autumn of the year, when the clouds hung oppressively low in the heavens, I had been passing alone, on horseback, through a singularly dreary tract of country; n and at length found myself, as the shades of the evening drew on, within view […]
Read story →The Tell-Tale Heart
TRUE!—nervous—very, very dreadfully nervous I had been and am; but why will you say that I am mad? n The disease had sharpened my senses—not destroyed—not dulled them. Above all was the sense of hearing acute. n I heard all things in the heaven and in the earth. I heard many things in hell. How, […]
Read story →The Raven
Once upon a midnight dreary, while I pondered, weak and weary, Over many a quaint and curious volume of forgotten lore— While I nodded, nearly napping, suddenly there came a tapping, As of some one gently rapping, rapping at my chamber door.
Read story →Copyright note: Project Gutenberg states that most of its individual works are public domain in the United States, while its license warns that users outside the U.S. should check local law. Pakistan's Copyright Ordinance generally uses a life-plus-50-year term for published literary works. A translation can have its own copyright, so this page identifies the classic work and a historical translation edition rather than asserting that every modern edition is free to reproduce.