Forty-nine short stories, each timed to the minute before you start.
Three anthologies, read online free: Joyce's Dubliners, Chekhov in Constance Garnett's 1917 translation, and O. Henry's The Four Million. Every story below has its own reading time at 238 words a minute, so you can pick one that fits a lunch break or the ride home.
Where to start
Dubliners is fifteen stories. Start with “Araby”. It takes eleven minutes. Then these, each a complete thing you can finish before the coffee goes cold.
Dubliners, James Joyce: read online, story by story
Fifteen stories, set from the 1914 Grant Richards first edition. Joyce ordered them from childhood to public life, and they read best in his order, though nothing breaks if you skip about. His dashes for speech stay dashes. Our proofing pass restored them after a common free file had swapped in quotation marks and, in doing so, merged two paragraphs. “The Dead” is the long one at a little over an hour. Save it for an evening.
Suits: book clubs that want one meeting per three stories, and English classes that need a text a student can finish in a period. Price basis: free to read online; group packs quoted on request.
Open Dubliners| No. | Story | Minutes |
|---|---|---|
| 01 | The Sisters | 12 |
| 02 | An Encounter | 13 |
| 03 | Araby | 11 |
| 04 | Eveline | 8 |
| 05 | After the Race | 11 |
| 06 | Two Gallants | 17 |
| 07 | The Boarding House | 13 |
| 08 | A Little Cloud | 20 |
| 09 | Counterparts | 18 |
| 10 | Clay | 10 |
| 11 | A Painful Case | 16 |
| 12 | Ivy Day in the Committee Room | 22 |
| 13 | A Mother | 18 |
| 14 | Grace | 27 |
| 15 | The Dead | 66 |
| No. | Story | Minutes |
|---|---|---|
| 01 | The Lady with the Dog | 33 |
| 02 | A Doctor's Visit | 20 |
| 03 | An Upheaval | 27 |
| 04 | Ionitch | 30 |
| 05 | The Head of the Family | 13 |
| 06 | The Black Monk | 55 |
| 07 | Volodya the Big and Volodya the Little | 17 |
| 08 | The Teacher of Literature | 32 |
| 09 | Anna on the Neck | 25 |
Chekhov short stories online, in Garnett's translation
Constance Garnett translated Chekhov into English between 1916 and 1922, and her 1917 volume is in the US public domain. We set it from the Chatto & Windus printing. Garnett tends to smooth Chekhov's flat, plain sentences into something more Victorian, and our note on the translator shows three places where that matters, so you know whose voice you are hearing.
The title story is the one to read first: a holiday affair at Yalta that refuses to stay a holiday affair. “The Black Monk” is the long one, closer to a novella. Suits: readers who like endings that stop rather than resolve. Price basis: free to read online; group packs quoted on request.
Open the Chekhov storiesThe Four Million: twenty-five New York stories
O. Henry took his title from a jibe that only four hundred people in New York mattered. His answer was four million. These are shopgirls, clerks, cops and tramps, most done in under fifteen minutes and nearly all ending on a turn. Our proofing pass put back 27 of his own dialect spellings that a later editor had tidied. Suits: groups that want one short text per evening and a good argument about the ending. Price basis: free to read online; group packs quoted on request.
| No. | Story | Minutes | No. | Story | Minutes |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 01 | Tobin's Palm | 14 | 14 | Springtime à la Carte | 9 |
| 02 | The Gift of the Magi | 9 | 15 | The Green Door | 14 |
| 03 | A Cosmopolite in a Café | 9 | 16 | From the Cabby's Seat | 9 |
| 04 | Between Rounds | 13 | 17 | An Unfinished Story | 13 |
| 05 | The Skylight Room | 13 | 18 | The Caliph, Cupid and the Clock | 13 |
| 06 | A Service of Love | 9 | 19 | Sisters of the Golden Circle | 9 |
| 07 | The Coming-Out of Maggie | 13 | 20 | The Romance of a Busy Broker | 6 |
| 08 | Man About Town | 8 | 21 | After Twenty Years | 6 |
| 09 | The Cop and the Anthem | 12 | 22 | Lost on Dress Parade | 9 |
| 10 | An Adjustment of Nature | 7 | 23 | By Courier | 7 |
| 11 | Memoirs of a Yellow Dog | 8 | 24 | The Furnished Room | 15 |
| 12 | The Love-Philtre of Ikey Schoenstein | 8 | 25 | The Brief Début of Tildy | 10 |
| 13 | Mammon and the Archer | 13 |
How we time a story, and when the number is wrong
We count the words in our proofed text and divide by 238, then round to the nearest minute. That figure is a fair average for an adult reading silently on a screen. It is not a promise.
It runs short for Joyce, whose sentences reward a second pass, and long for O. Henry, who reads fast because he wants you to reach the twist. Read aloud to a group and double every number. A class of thirteen-year-olds reading “Araby” together needs a full 25 minutes, not eleven.
If you want a set of stories cut to a term, the genre collections page explains custom packs, and the catalogue filters every title by length.
Stories printed for your group
Teachers ask for stories more than novels, because a story fits a lesson. We print any mix from these three anthologies as one bound pack, standard or large print. Tell us how many readers and when you meet.