Fiction

One of Katherine Mansfield's finest short stories that highlights the contempt with which the upper-middle class viewed the poor. While preparations for the garden party are tasteful and well-considered, the more important sensitivity to the welfare of their poor neighbours is lacking. (4,165 words)

Sherlock Holmes is visited by a man who tells him about a society that financially supported people with red hair in pointless but lucrative employment but then disappeared owing him money. Holmes decides to get to the bottom of the mystery. (4,445 words).

A handsome young man falls in love with a mysterious lady who seems to hide some great secret. When she will not tell him what it is, he leaves her. Some time later he finds out that the secret was not so mysterious after all but it is too late. (1,785 words)

Oscar Wilde wrote many short stories and this one, about an innocent young man, an artist and a beggar who is not quite what he seems, is both funny and up-lifting. (1,685 words)

Dickens wrote this story in 1866 about a railway disaster. It’s his best short work, perhaps because he’d been in a train accident himself the year before. However, Dickens does more than describe his own experience: he explores several accidents through the eyes of a signalman responsible for the line. We’re unsure whether to trust the man’s strange story or think him insane. (3,895 words)

Two friends move into a house that they don’t have to pay for so they can save money. Before long though, the dark history of the house and their nightmares make them realise their mistake. (4,870 words)

A nineteenth century equivalent of a disaster movie! A man's cycling holiday is interrupted by a natural catastrophe and terrifying escapes from near-death experiences as he tries to get home to save his family certain death. (4,020 words)

Stephen Crane is famous for stories about the American Civil War. This is a vivid tale of accidental bravery that sees a young man go to get water from a well in the middle of a fierce battle in order to save face. In the event though a genuinely noble act of kindness marks him out as the hero he doesn't believe himself to be. (2,800 words)

This sad story is about an old woman who is forced to move out of the home she has shared with her husband all her life because of the ambition of her young nephew. (1,960 words)

Sherlock Holmes is asked to solve a mystery that saves a dead man’s reputation and shows that his son is innocent of the terrible murder of a drunken old sea captain. But what secret do the lives of a ruined banker and a retired sailor share? (5,490 words)

In this story of honour and revenge, Merimée tells us about a farmer in Italy who lives by certain rules about what is right and wrong. When he leaves his son alone at home one day, the boy behaves in a way that breaks all the rules that his father believes in. (2,350 words)

A foreign doctor makes himself very popular with the local people because of his skill and kindness but suddenly disappears, leaving behind the lady he is going to marry. (3,620 words)

Europe is on the verge of war because of a document written by an impulsive head of state, which has been stolen from the home of the British Foreign Minister. The highest politicians in the land visit Sherlock Holmes to see if the great detective can pull the continent back from a pointless conflict. (5,650 words)

Katherine Mansfield often wrote about the ugliness of middle-class beliefs and lifestyles, but here she tells us about the hard life of an old working grandmother, a good and strong woman, who has lost her grandson but must still carry on… alone. (1,940 words)

This ghost story frightens us by what we suspect, rather than what the author actually tells us. There is a sense of horror that never leaves us, as Bierce leads to his mysterious climax. (2,000 words)