“Spider the Artist” by Nnedi Okorafor (Lightspeed Magazine) New York City is ready to be born, and must be led into the world by a reluctant midwife. Jemisin (Tor)Ĭities, once they are old enough, must be born. This ties present day police brutality towards African Americans to post-emancipation America and a family of freed slaves that are living with the Devil that followed them from Africa. I told you it was chilling! “The Devil in America” by Kai Ashante Wilson (Tor) It takes twelve hours of torture before the prisoner dies. The machine inscribes the prisoner’s crime onto their body until they die (kind of sounds familiar if you’ve read the fifth Harry Potter book). A man known as the Traveller is visiting a foreign penal colony where he is shown a special machine used to execute prisoners. If you’ve never read any of her work I would start here. “A Good Man is Hard to Find” by Flannery O’ConnorĪnother story with an ending that you won’t forget anytime soon. This used to be my favorite short story, and I might only think that because I read it when I was a freshman in high school and I remember being shocked by the ending. If I’m interested in an author, but don’t necessarily want to read a whole book, I look to see if they have any short fiction available that I can read first. The stories on this list that are not from any of these publications, I found through simple Google searches. Tor of course has some great free stuff, and you can find most of the classics through Gutenberg.

I also like Narrative Magazine, which will ask you for an email, but their stories are free too. Like a music playlist I create to match a mood, I create short story playlists to break a book slump, or to sample a bunch of different authors’ writing.Īs to where to find great stories, The New Yorker stories are generally best, but require a subscription if you read too many in a month.

(Editor’s note: this post was updated in August, 2021, with current links to all stories.) When I have no idea what to read, I find a bunch of free short stories online, save them onto the Pocket app, and read them as if I’ve compiled my own short story collection.

Short stories to write online