'The Fair at Sorochyntsi' by Nikolai Gogol is a short story set in a Ukrainian village in 1800. A man travels with his daughter and wife to a fair to sell some of their belongings. ...

She is beautiful, charismatic and destroys every man who dares to pursue her. Before the character of femme fatale was coined in American cinema, Émile Zola captured the seductive ...

Dangers and romance intertwine in one in the adventure novel "Martin Paz" from 1852. The Indian chief Martin Paz falls in love with a girl named Sarah. Sarah’s father, Samuel, has ...

What about an unexpected two years’ vacation on a desert island? It may sound appealing from nowadays perspective. But when a marooned ship drifts to sea with nobody but a group of ...

Jules Verne’s "The Vanished Diamond" from 1884 takes us to the South African diamond fields. Victor Cyprien is a mining engineer who falls in love with Alice, the daughter of the r ...

"Michael Strogoff I" is an adventure novel by Jules Verne from 1876. It consists of two parts and it tells the story of the courier of Tsar Alexander II of Russia, Michael Strogoff ...

"Michael Strogoff II" is the second part of Jules Verne’s adventure novel from 1876. It tells the story of the courier of Tsar Alexander II of Russia, Michael Strogoff. There is a ...

This classic novel about adventure, courage and determination takes the reader on an exciting sea voyage around the world. Engaging and entertaining, "In Search of the Castaways" f ...

Dr. Ox wants to introduce a new gas lighting system in a small Flemish town. Free of charge. However something does not add up. Solely because Dr. Ox’s goal is not as philanthropic ...

M. de Rênal is the mayor of a provincial town named Verrières, who hires Julien Sorel as a private teacher for his child. Sorel desires to become a real man and follow the steps of ...

Teeming with dark humour, supernatural elements, and hard-to-believe situations, Nikolai Gogol’s "Collected Stories" is a highest form of short story fiction. With stories like "Th ...

A short novel about the final hours of a man sentenced to death, "The Last Day of a Condemned Man" can be read as a social critique and revolt against the institution of the death ...

Rudy lived close to the little town of Grindelwald in Switzerland. He lived with his uncle as his parents were both dead. Indeed, Rudy himself had almost died at the same time as h ...

Aunt Mille has always told me that I have the soul of a great poet. I am not sure about this, but I love her so much that I do not dare contradict her. The reason I love her so muc ...

Once upon a time, a young man dreamed of becoming a writer and making a living from his pen. But there was a problem. The writers of the previous centuries had already exhausted al ...

A family of toads lived in a very deep well: it was so deep that, from the top, you could not even see the surface of the water. One of the young toads dreamed of knowing what ther ...

The star that is brightest this morning knows many things: she has watched over the earth for centuries and knows many things that we men have long forgotten. Today, she tells us t ...

One day a Portuguese duck arrived at the duck house. Some said she came from Spain, but from then on all her descendants were called ‘Portuguese’. Today, there is only one Portugue ...

On the day that the emperor’s horse received his golden horseshoes as a reward for his heroic deeds, the beetle who shared his stable was very jealous. The smith refused to make sh ...

Anne Lisbeth was a beautiful young woman, but she gave birth to a repugnantly ugly child. That is why she gave it into the care of the wife of a man who worked in the fields. This ...

He had been ill a long time and God came for him – the parents and sisters of the little four-year-old boy who had died were inconsolable. No chagrin was greater than that of the b ...

Once upon a time there were five brothers who had arrived at the age where they asked themselves what they would become. Each of the brothers wanted to become "something" and each ...

Have you ever wondered what would have happened if Scheherazade had not ceased with her tales and told the king another story that is actually a retelling of a previous story, but ...

"The Cask of Amontillado" is a classic revenge story where an insulted man, Montresor, exacts his vengeance upon the drunk Fortunato. Just like "The Tell-Tale Heart" and "The Black ...

A classic detective short story shrouded in mystery, "Marie Rogêt" features Poe’s famour investigator C. Auguste Dupin trying to solve a murder case. Based upon an actual murder, t ...