100 Story ideas Categorized by Theme

Here are 100 story ideas categorized by theme every writer should write. Why should every writer write these particular story ideas? These are the basics. I’ve been teaching writing for a long time, and I’ve worked with writer’s groups and workshops for over 20 years. These ideas always get writers writing, and sometimes it’s worth a lot just to get writing again. It’s nice to be inspired.

These ideas I’ve kept purposefully vague. I hate it when you read good story ideas (like other lists like this on the web) that are so specific if you actually use them and write a great story, the person who wrote the story idea can go around the web claiming he “is responsible” for the story being written. It’s nice not to do any work and then claim you are responsible for something. Also, you will never have people saying they read the idea for your great story on the web.  If you look at these story ideas you will see that many famous works have grown out of them, and if you are stuck in your writing, these story ideas are for you.

I hope these story ideas help you. I hope you write a great story or novel. I hope you publish it. As always I wish you the very best of luck in your writing.

Human Nature

These are story ideas that appeal to our primal nature. These things I believe are deep in our brain, and when they are challenged, generally, I’ve found that they inspire creativity better than you any other story idea. The man character in these ideas should be you! Even if you turn yourself into a character.

1. Write a sex scene with someone that you would never find attractive.
2. Write a sex scene with concerning someone who is different from your orientation. If you straight write a homosexual sex scene. If you are homosexual write a straight scene.
3. Write a story where you have gone crazy, you have lost touch with reality.
4. Write a blasphemy. Something that is counter from your deepest belief (racism, god, cultural believes).
5. Write about becoming like someone you hate. You have to become just like them. The person that you hate most, you end up just like. Why? What causes this?
6. You only have all the foods you hate left in the world to eat.
7. You are turned into an alien. Describe the process. \
8. You find out your husband or wife is cheating on you.
9. You find out your child is doing drugs, stealing, is not the person you thought he/she was.
10. The person you are closest to dies.
11. Tell a lie about who you are, your life that is the exact opposite of your real life. If you are rich, be poor, if you nice, be mean….
12. You wake up and find that you have had a sex change.

Horror: Macabre

The Macabre is the theme here more or less, genre of horror, but I titled this: 100 Story ideas Categorized by theme, so what are you gonna do? These are just a few of our horror ideas. They are very basic, but they will get you writing. I’ve tried to stay close to those things that appeal to your primitive fears. I once saw an interview with Wes Craven talking about why he gave Freddy a claw. Craven said he believed that one of our most primal fears was to have our insides opened to the world, like by a bear claw or a lion claw. I’m bring these I hope each of these are of that same ideology. I hope they go to the heart of fear. RIP Mr. Craven.

13. There is someone hiding in your backseat on a long highway.
14. A vampire is in seducing your wife/husband.
15. You have a disease that is highly contagious.
16. Someone you love comes back from the dead. They are trying to kill you.
17. The world has ended you are the last one to survive.
18. There is a ghost who comes at 3:17 every morning and stands at the foot of your bed.
19. You are on death row for killing someone you love.

 

Nature

Human vs Nature is a one of the oldest themes. So many great novels, stories and poems have grown out of this classic, even ancient, pairing

20. You are out on a small boat when a massive storm hits you. You have your young children with you.
21. You are lost in the snow. You can’t find your car. You and your children are wet from hiking trying to find your way. Night is coming.
22. You are trapped in a cave. One of your arms, you are sure, has gangrene on it. It stinks like cheese and the pain is going away.
23. Describe what it would be like to go without water in the desert.

Coming of age

Most of the great short story writers, like Hemingway, Faulkner, Carver, Cheever, Updike have all written the coming of age theme. It’s a convention of the short story genre, and once you start looking for it, you’ll see it everywhere.

24. It is the first time you realize that your father is cheating or your mother (or vice versa). You any age under 18.
25. Tell the story of the first time you had sex.
26. Tell the story of the first time you got drunk/drugs/stole.
27. Tell the story of the first time you hated your toys, or were embarrassed playing with toys.
28. First time you were embarrassed of your parents.
29. Story of the first time you defied a parent.
30. First time you realized that you were going to die.
31. First time you lived away from home
32. First time you were in love with someone you shouldn’t have been.

Life story

A great short story writer that I was studying under once told me, never write your life story, it kills your drive to write. I don’t know is she was right or not, but so many writers do this. Many times it the first and last great novel or story a young writer writes. On the other hand, some writers do this over and over again and make a good living off it. I won’t say the person’s name, but I know a few people in a university who hate one of today’s very famous short story writers. She wrote a book and stories about the people she worked with, and the characters depicted on the front of the book look a lot like her co-workers…..works for some people, though you may have to switch jobs after your book or story is published.

33. Tell the story of your home town from the founding all the way until you moved away or grew up.
34. Tell the story of your family, start with all the bad things (maybe the few or the many who did not fit into society).
35. Tell your worst high school story, the day you were saddest/most outcast/disconnected.
36. Tell your story through the eyes of someone who didn’t have any friends.
37. Tell the story of someone who you knew who committed suicide, and explain how they saw you.
38. Tell the story of the meanest thing you ever did to anyone.

Life fantasy

Some people love these. Some people hate them. The idea of having all your fantasies come true, for some writers, thrills them and pushes them to write. I see at least of couple of these people every time I teach a class.

39. Write the story of winning the lottery.
40. Write your story about being the most attractive/promiscuous (get any gal girl you want).
41. Write a story about being a rock star.
42. Write a story about being an astronaut who saves your ship.
43. Write a story about saving the world. You are a superhero. You just get lucky or you are just that good.
44. Write a story about destroying the world.

Your enemy

Again, a theme I see drive many writers is their love for writing unsavory characters. I have come to believe that some writers only start writing so they can torture their characters (and sometimes their readers). The great film critic Roger Ebert once said that a hero movie is only as good as its bad guy. I completely agree.

45. Write a story about when you were betrayed by someone you deeply trusted.
46. Write a story about someone who ruined your life. He or she spread rumors, ruined your business or just ruined your best moment.
47. Write story about someone taking the love of your life away, right as they are falling in love with you.
48. Write a story about someone you love dating someone who dies.
49. Write a story about your worst enemy being horrible and much more successful than you will ever be.
50. Write a story where you tell lies to ruin someone’s life.

Your body

Sex and disease go hand in…. It’s a bad joke. A lot of people spend a good amount of time worrying about their health. I don’t know if this is about death or a fear of living. I saw a famous speaker (famous locally) talk about how at once time he wanted to be sick because being sick and dying was easier than living. Either way, the theme of your body or your health hits very close to home for some people.

51. Write a story about being very overweight or very skinny (opposite of what you actually are).
52. Write a story about yourself having a disfigured face. You are very ugly.
53. Write a story about being blind and having a baby to take care of.
54. Write a story about being deaf and having a small child to take care of.
55. Write a story about not having any legs, or not being able to walk.
56. Write a story about being bed ridden and knowing you are going to live for a very long time.
57. Write a story about winning the love of your life over, and then being disfigured so much she/he leave you.

Supernatural

The afterlife is one of those things that always comes back to haunt you. Some people can’t resist writing about this “theme.”

58. Write a story about being a ghost and finding out everyone in your life was lying to you. Your wife/husband was cheating, your boss hated you, your friends disliked you….
59. You have just died. You are looking at your body. You find out there is a hell.
60. You wake up late at night, and a person’s face is very close to yours. You know the person. You were close to them. They died years ago.
61. Someone you loved dearly comes back for a chat to tell you and hear all the things that were never said.
62. Your child is possessed by a demon.
63. A demon is haunting your house.
64. You are in an accident and now you can see and talk to ghosts.
65. You are dead and have no idea you are a ghost.

Technology/Modern life

66. You just emailed everyone in your company a love letter you and your boss were writing to each other. You spouse is included on the list.
67. You just texted messaged a picture of yourself “playing with sex toys to your mother.
68. You just hit a small child with your car going over 40 miles an hour.
69. Your house is on fire. Your children are inside.
70. You open the door to your house, because of a loud noise, and a plane crashes on your street.
71. You are in an airplane and you are going down.
72. Your car just flew off the highway and is going end over end. Your children are in the back seat.
73. You answer your phone, and the voice on the other end says that they have been watching you for a long time.
74. You find out someone has 100,000$ in credit cards taken out in your name.
75. You are in a prison camp. They tell you to go left and your family to go right.

What you don’t know (Mystery)

76. You are living a lie. Tell the story of how you began living a double life.
77. Everyone around you have been lying to you for a very long time. Today you find out.
78. Tell the story of when once found out something about someone that broke your heart.
79. You have been sleeping the whole time. You wake up and find out it was all, your whole life, was a dream.
80. Every night when you go to sleep. You get out of bed and live a different life. You have raped and killed 10 people. Tonight you wake up while driving the van.

Best and Worst

These are story that really happened. Write them as true as you can. They are simple, but for many people, for some reason, the memories of these things are so strong, they easily write them.

81. Write the story of the best day of your life.
82. Write the story of the worst day of your life.
83. Write the story of the day you had your biggest accomplishment/win.
84. Write the story when you were the hero.
85. Write the story of the day you were close to killing yourself.
86. Write the story about the person who you saved your life.
87. Write the story of a day when you were happy that someone died. Someone you loved.

Dreams and nightmares

Some times a dream, especally a recurring dream, can be a powerful way to get people to write. It’s the emotion that comes with the dream I think. You are the only one who can really write the story. It feels so real for you, try to make it real for your readers.

88. Write about a recurring dream you have coming true.
89. Write about realizing that you are suddenly in the place where your recurring nightmare takes place.
90. You have stopped being able to distinguish dreams from reality.

Intruder

The intruder story is a convention of short story writing that really came into it’s own in the 80s and 90s. The idea is basically someone comes into your life, usually unwanted, and every thing changes.

91. Someone annoying has just started living with you. The person is the exact opposite of everything you are.
92. A waiter at the restaurant sits down at your table he or she is flirting with your spouse. They are now coming over to your house to hang out.
93. Someone you are attached to keeps showing up in your life. He or she lives by you. He or she works in the same building. You see them over and over again. You are at a coffee shop alone, they come in and sit down at your table.
94. You are locked in a jail cell with someone who will not stop talking.

Grow it in a character (Character driven or No Theme)

Seinfeld popularized this idea in the 90s, but short stories and great writers have been doing it for generations. Seinfeld isn’t a show about nothing. It’s a show about characters and what those characters do. It’s called a character-driven story. It’s the idea that you have a character who you know, as the writer, and you put them in situations that bring out the worst, the best, the funniest part of them.

95. Write a juxtaposition of 2 phoebes. Your character is afraid of heights, he is stuck on the edge of a building. Agoraphobia in a meteor shower….if you think of more list the in the comments.
96. Write a story about nothing.
97. Your character is the most honest person in the world. He or she works for the mob.
98. Your character is immune to felling love due to a brain injury. The person has a spouse and children.
99. The most famous person in the world wakes up to find they are completely alone on Earth.
100. Your character is an artist. Whatever sense they use most has just been taken from them. If they are a musician they go deaf, a painter goes blind….

If you teach writing, and you know of story ideas that inspire your students or your writing groups, please post them in the comments below. More story ideas are always welcome.

 

Here are a few tips and examples of how to write a cover letter. In the old days, really not that long ago, it was customary to send a cover letter with your short story or poetry submission. For 100s of years it was customary to send a cover letter, but writers are following tradition less and less. Not sending a cover letter can seem a little arrogant on the part of the writer. It’s not that your work doesn’t speak for itself, it’s just that editors are still people. Editors like hellos and goodbyes as much as anyone. Simply, it’s a good idea to include a cover letter with our work.

On the other side, editors do not want long-winded letters that tell them your life history. Writing a cover letter is very easy and very quick if you follow a simple formula. For the last 30 years, before writers abandoned the cover letter, the form was pretty simple. It was as follows:

I. Greetings,
II. Words about the magazine
III. Words about the work
IV. Words about you
V. Salutation.

 

Dear Editor,

It was customary at one time to find the name of the editor and address the letter to that person, but in today’s world that’s a long shot. So at least start the letter “Dear Editor,” if you do not know the editor’s name. If you know the editor’s name, by all means use it, and use the last name only.

Dear Dr. Green

If you know a specific title use that too. Here is an example of a quick cover letter.

[color-box]Dear Editor,

I  have been a fan of the Awesome Review for the last 3 issues. I am a devout reader, and I feel that my work is much like the works you publish. I have read your submissions guidelines.

I am sending 3 poems that grew out of an experience I had last summer in Russia. They all deal with metaphors of sunshine and change.

I hope that you enjoy my work.

Sincerely,

Tom Mix[/color-box]

It’s just that simple. It’s so nice as an editor to read something where the person took 2 mins to say hello and goodbye. It’s nice to feel like I’m a person and not a poetry processing machine. Here is another example:

[color-box]Dear Editors,

I recently found your publication online. I believe my work would fit well with other stories that I have seen published in the Awesome Review. I have read your guidelines, and I have kept my word length under your requested limits (500 words).

My story is based on an event that took place in Russia in the summer of 1977. It is really about the change that a person goes through when they are forced to live in a far away land.

My work has appeared in other publications such as The Big Time Review, OMG Daily, WordsWordsWords and more.  Thank you for your time and consideration.

Sincerely

Allen Mix[/color-box]

Really writing a cover letter is very easy. Being that you are sending the same work over and over, you can create a form letter and just change the first paragraph. It will take you minimal time.

As an editor, I like it when I get a little note from the writer. As a matter of fact those with cover letters get first consideration around here. If your work is sent by email, the cover letter is the start of the email, it is not attached. Please don’t send me another attachment on top of the 4 attachments you are sending. My life is about attachments anyway. I mean I dream of that little paperclip symbol sometimes, and the dream isn’t pleasant. So start the email with the cover letter. Remember, editors are people. Think of it this way, if you were stopping by the office to drop off your work would you simply through a floppy disc at the editor and then leave or would you stop and have a few words with him?

If you have built up resentment directed at editors, please don’t take it out on me. Buy a stress ball. Do something else, but be nice to your editors.

Just some friendly advice.

 How to Write a Writer’s Bio

 

Most writers I know, hate writing a bio. So this is how to write a bio, and it is to help those writers who are just starting out and anyone having trouble. I’ll say this many times: this is friendly advice. It’s always difficult to write a bio. Most of use really do not like to write about ourselves, so no matter how long you do this for it will always be a bit awkward. You might want to write a bio for the editor, or you might have published a piece and want to publish your bio to go with it. Either way, I get 2 main questions about this, but remember there is nothing written in stone.

 1. First, what do I do if I haven’t published anything?

The first rule of writing a bio is be honest. If you are submitting work to an editor, just know, I do check up as best I can on what people say. If you say that you have been published some where, I usually go looking. If you lie in your bio, it will disqualify the publication many times. Other times you simply do not get a bio.

Another rule: keep it simple. No one wants to know that you grew up on a fishing boat or in a small town or whatever. Bios usually only include:  Name, education, and or profession, where you live, and publications. Do not put in there that your father once shook hands with Raymond Carver. If you haven’t published anything make your bio simple. Remember the template: Name, education, profession, place, publications. If you don’t have any publications it goes:

Thomas Wright holds a BFA in writing from the University of Something. He is a librarian in Someplace Ohio. (Or he lives and works in Ohio). It is acceptable to say he works as a librarian and lives with his wife and 3 cats in Ohio. No reason to get fancy!

Also, make please write them in the 3^rd person!

Examples WITHOUT previous publications:

Mike Ward is a truck driver. He lives and works in Dallas, TX.

Allan Ward holds a BFA in writing from UCLA. He teaches English at Watchano High School in Dallas, TX. He lives with his wife and 4 dogs.

Sarah Ward is a Marketing Director living in Dallas, TX. She teaches and spends time with her pet monkey.

Melissa Allan lives and teaches in Ohio.

 

2. What if I have published a lot?

The template for publishing a lot is the same. Name, education and OR profession, awards, publications and place . Do NOT go overboard in listing your experience or publications. Don’t say “widely” or “extensively” published. Saying many more at the end is more than enough. It is hard to say what the best publications to list are. You want the best know and most prestigious. You can look at our top 50 list (http://www.everywritersresource.com/topliterarymagazines.html). Otherwise stick to the ones that are best know. Try to keep a max of 6 publications.

 

Examples with previous publications:

Mike Ward is a truck driver who holds a degree from Southern University. He has published work with Green Hat, Wow Magazine, Topland, Holy Cow, Whoa, and many others. He lives in Dallas, TX with is wife and 3 children.

Sarah Ward is an Account Executive in marketing. You can read her work at Green Hat, Wow Magazine, Topland, Time Time, among others.

Melissa Ward is a belly dancer who holds a degree in Physics from UCLA. In 2012 she was awarded the What the Heck writing award. She has work forthcoming in Green Hat, Wow Magazine, Topland, Holy Cow, and her work has appeared in many other publications. She currently lives and works in Cleveland, OH.

Most of the time you simply want to be as professional as possible. The best way to write a bio for a certain publications is to read the bios they have already published. If you are sending something to an editor, keep it simply, honest and professional.

I have read many outlandish bios. Some stupid, some playful, and some silly. Usually I want something that will make my publication look good and professional. Most outlandish bios I simply omit. SOME editors like that sort of thing, but if you go and read the editors bio, especially if he or she has got a publication in a nation magazine or anthology, you’ll see, even they keep it honest, simply and professional.

Top Sites to Learn to Speak English

We searched the web over for Top Sites to Learn to Speak English. These sites are the best sites that we have found. We have submissions from writers all over the world, and I have had a few of those writers ask for help speaking English. Many are very good writers, but they just want some help speaking. So we gathered up 10 sites to help you learn to speak English.

Learning English can very difficult. Most of these sites are for people learning to speak English as a second language, and a couple on the list are for school children. We’ve just picked the best sites we could find. This used to be the 10 Best Sites to Learn to Speak English, but this time we found 14. We just dropped the number.

In truth, it is difficult to see young children or adults struggling because of the language barrier. I see it just about every day. This page loosely goes along with Every Writer, but I feel it is needed.

1. Talk English

Best site we’ve found. It has tons of audio for you to lis1. ten to, vocabulary, phrases and conversations. They have multiple options for learning and speaking English.

2. Lets Talk In English

Lets Talk in English give you the chance to talk in English. They have many many resources for writers.

3. BBC Learning English

BBC has a ton of resources on how to speak and learn English. A must for someone struggling.

4. English Club

A good site. They have a ton of resources for people who are just starting to speak English.

5. Voki

This is a pretty fun site. It allows you to create an avatar of yourself and share it with others. You can practice speaking this way. It is more targeted toward Elementary school age children, but the site is so neat, we had to list it.

6. Language Guide

A large resources for someone just starting to learn English.

7. Listen and Write 

Basically Listen and Write allows you to hear the language and then asks you to fill in the words by typing them. It is a helpful site. It will test you.

8.Bab.la  

Bab.la has many options for translating the site into many different languages. It’s got multiple articles and games to play. It is a very useful site.

9. English Central Videos

This site has many videos that can be slowed and sped up, and the videos give you options to read the words and fill in the blanks while watching. It’s very helpful.

10. Duolingo 

May be the best site on this list. You can learn many different languages on this site. It starts with your home language, but lets you hear and read and learn a second language. It’s outstanding.

11. Babel Village 

This is a social networking site of sorts. It isn’t for children. It is like several other sites on this list, and a new thing in English learning sites. It allows you to meet real people from other countries and speak to them.

12. Speaky 

Speaky is very much like Babel Village. This site also lets you meet people from other countries and speak to them.

13. How do you do 

Is the last English learning social network on our list.

14. Learning English from Voa News 

Voa news Learning English has a multitude of videos that aid in learning English.

This is our list of 1000 Great Short Stories of All Time. To the best of my knowledge no list, book, film or otherwise exists like this one. This will be the first list of it’s kind, ever, again as far as I know. In doing a first list you really hope to do it best, but with a 1000 stories on the list, it will make doing it well very difficult, so, as with our list of poems, we need your help. Please make suggestions in the comments section. We want to get 1000, right now we are in the 80s, so this isn’t going to be easy. I’ve seen a lot of top 50 list for short stories, but top 1000 is again, unheard of.

Why do a list like this? It’s pretty simple really, guidelines. It helps people find great short stories they want to read. It also, we hope, will help with a consensus. Right now if I say name the top 10 short stories of all time, you’ll get 10 different answers from 10 different writers. When you say, what about story X, those 10 writers would likely say well it’s one of the greatest, but not in my top 10. So I’m not trying to make a list of 1000 greatest short stories that put Poe at 1 now and forever. I’m creating a list that people can point to and say, I agree, it might not be number 10 on the list, but it is among the 1000 best of all time. To that end we don’t have to worry about the exact order. We just have to come up with 1000 great stories.

They should, I think, be measured simply right now, what stories have you read that have either stood the test of time or WILL stand the test of time. Developing criteria I think should come later too. Right now we are look for 1000 stories, when we hit 2000 suggestions I’ll worry about definitive list of criteria.

In expanding this list of great short stories, I thought I would talk about some of the reasons for doing this list. We know have 1000 Great Stories that are the stepping stones to 1000 Greatest Short Stories of all time. This list may be impossible to create, but we are looking for stories that speak to people, that teach something that have a message that has larger insight into who we all are. As a readers we know the stories that speak to us. We know stories that have changed us. We know stories that have we want to share with everyone we know. These are the stories we are looking for. After all, these great stories are determined by us. In expanding this list of great short stories, I thought I would talk about some of the reasons for doing this list. We know have 1000 Great Stories that are the stepping stones to 1000 Greatest Short Stories of all time. This list may be impossible to create, but we are looking for stories that speak to people, that teach something that have a message that has larger insight into who we all are. As a readers we know the stories that speak to us. We know stories that have changed us. We know stories that have we want to share with everyone we know. These are the stories we are looking for. After all, these great stories are determined by us.

So help us out. I want to see if this can be done. Any suggestions are welcome. Here is the list of the first 80 or so, I’ll come up with 100 more soon, and I will add any suggestions to the list that I agree with. Also, please have some fun with this. Any misspellings or mistakes, feel free to point them out.

We also publish some great short stories right here on our site. If you are looking for stories written by classic writers or writers living today, please visit EWR: Short Stories.

1000 Greatest Stories of All Time

1-100

1. A Good Man Is Hard to Find by Flannery O’Connor
2. A Hunger Artist by Franz Kafka
3. An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge by Ambrose Beirce
4. Harrison Bergeron by Kurt Vonnegut, Jr
5. The Lottery by Shirley Jackson
6. The Most Dangerous Game by Richard Connell
7. The Rockinghorse Winner by D.H. Lawrence
8. The Secret Life of Walter Mitty by James Thurber
9. The Snows of Kilimanjaro by Ernest Hemingway
10. The Swimmer by John Cheever
11. The Use of Force by William Carlos Williams
12. The Very Old Man with Enormous Wings by Gabriel Garcia Marquez
13. A & P by John Updike
14. A Clean, Well-Lighted Place, by Ernest Hemingway
15. A Day’s Wait by Ernest Hemingway
16. A FIGHT WITH A CANNON by Victor Hugo
17. A LONELY RIDE by Bret Harte
18. A Pair of Silk Stockings by Kate Chopin
19. A Pair of Silk Stockings by Kate Chopin
20. A Passion in the Desert, by Honoré de Balza
21. A Rose for Emily by William Faulkner
22. A Sound of Thunder, by Ray Bradbury
23. An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge by Ambrose Bierce
24. ARABY by James Joyce
25. Borges and I by Jorge Luis Borges
26. Boys and Girls by Alice Monro
27. Bullet in the Brain by Tobias Wolf
28. Cathedral by Raymond Carver
29. Dead Man’s Path by Chinua Achebe
30. Died and Gone to Vegas by Tim Gautreaux
31. Dracula’s Guest by Bram Stoker
32. Dubliners by James Joyce
33. HOW MUCH LAND DOES A MAN NEED? by Leo Tolstoy
34. How to Date a Brown Girl (Black Girl, White Girl, or Halfie) by Junot Díaz
35. I Stand Here Ironing by Tillie Olsen.
36. I Want to Live! by Thom Jones
37. I, Robot by Issac Asimov
38. Love of a Good Woman by Alice Munro
39. MY RED CAP by Louisa M. Alcott
40. Nine Stories by JD Salinger
41. Paul’s Case by Willa Cather
42. PRESENT AT A HANGING by Ambrose Bierce
43. Rape Fantasies by Margaret Atwood
44. That Evening Sun, by William Faulkner
45. THE BET by Anton Chekhov
46. The Bottle Imp by Robert Louis Stevenson
47. THE CELEBRATED JUMPING FROG OF CALAVERAS COUNTY by Mark Twain
48. THE CURIOUS CASE OF BENJAMIN BUTTON by F. Scott Fitzgerald
49. THE DEVIL AND TOM WALKER by Washington Irving
50. The Door, by E. B Whit
51. THE FALSE GEMS by Guy De Maupassant
52. THE FORTIETH FRENCH ASCENT OF MONT BLANC by Jules Verne
53. The Garden Party by Kathleen Mansfield
54. The Gift of the Magi by O. Henry
55. The Hitch-Hikers by Eudora Welty
56. THE LEGEND OF SLEEPY HOLLOW by Washington Irving
57. THE MAGIC SHOP by H. G. Wells
58. The Man Who Would be King by Rudyard Kipling
59. THE MASQUE OF THE RED DEATH
60. THE Monkey’s Paw by W.W. Jacobs
61. THE NIGHT FACE-UP by JULIO CORTAZAR
62. The Open Boat, by Stephen Crane
63. The Other Side of the Hedge by E.M. Forster
64. The Other Woman by Sherwood Anderson
65. The Outcasts of Poker Flat, by Bret Harte
66. THE REAL THING by Henry James
67. The Red-Headed League by Arthur Conan Doyle
68. The Resemblance Between a Vilin Case and a Coffin by Tennessee Williams
69. The Russian Prioner by Ha Jin
70. The Secret Sharer by Joseph Conrad
71. The Short Happy Life of Francis Macomber by Ernest Hemingway
72. THE SISTERS by James Joyce
73. THE TELL-TALE HEART by Edgar Allen Poe
74. The Things They Carried by Tim O’Brien
75. THE YELLOW WALLPAPER by Charlotte Perkins Gilman
76. Thom Jones, The Pugilist at Rest
77. To Build a Fire by Jack London
78. Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been? By Joyce Carol Oates:
79. Why Don’t You Dance by Raymond Carver (Film)
80. Will You Please Be Quiet, Please? by Raymond Carver
81. Young Goodman Brown by Nathaniel Hawthorne
82. Girl with Curious Hair by David Foster Wallace
83. The Death of Ivan Ilych by Leo Tolstoy
84. The Necklace by Guy de Maupassant
85. Menseteung by Alice Munro
86. The Lady with the Dog by Anton Chekov
87. The Fall of the House of Usher’s by Edgar Allan Poe
88. Masque of the Red Death by Edgar Allan Poe
89. The Call of Cthullhu by H.P. Lovecraft
90. Soldier’s home  by Ernest Hemingway
91. A Day’s Wait by Ernest Hemingway
92. Paul’s Case by Willa Carther
93. The Last Leaf by O. Henry
94. Haircut by Ring Lardner
95. Désirée’s’s Baby by Kate Chopin
96. Barn Burning by William Faulkner
97. Why I Live at the PO by Eudora Welty
98. Chickamauga by Thomas Wolfe
99. There Will Come Soft Rain by Ray Bradbury
100. The Lady and the Tiger by Ray Bradbury