15 best short stories ever written

The story tells the tale of a dissatisfied middle-class woman whose dreams of wealth and glamour end in disaster. It has been often called Madam Bovary in miniature.
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Published in in his collection The Trimmed Lamp and Other Stories, “The Last Leaf” follows Johnsy, a poor young woman who is seriously ill with pneumonia. She believes that when the ivy vine on the wall outside her window loses all its leaves, she will also die.
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A young man from Calcutta is posted in an obscure village, Ulapur. Exhausted of a solitary living and desperate for human company, he opens his heart to the only avid listener available, an orphan girl of about 12, Ratan.

Alice Munro's short story "Meneseteung”, published in her collection, Friend of My Youth, is about a poet Almeda Joynt Roth. While the narrator, whose sex is unclear, quotes from her poems and local newspaper reports and gives further possible indications, he comments on the social conditions of the time and the circumstances of the poet as he reconstructs their biography.
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This a story about a woman who suffers from mental illness after being trapped within her home. The author wrote this story to change the minds about women's role in the society.
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This is story of an employer and his employee, largely focussing on the theme of control, ignorance, sacrifice, responsibility, and war. Taken from her The Doves’ Nest and Other Stories collection, the story is narrated by an unnamed narrator and Mansfield uses the setting of the story, the office of the boss, to explore the theme of control.
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The story is a tale of a Wall Street lawyer who hires a new clerk, who, after some initial days of hard work, refuses to make copy and any other task required of him, with the simple words "I would prefer not to".
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Published in the collection Dubliners, this story explores the theme of mortality, connection, failure, politics, religion and paralysis. Narrated by an unnamed narrator, the story delves into the life of Gabriel and his wife Gretta, and their seemingly failing marriage due to the lack of overt passion or effortless understanding.
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This story is about a young married couple and how they deal with the challenge of buying secret Christmas gifts for each other with very little money.
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This is a supernatural short story by author W. W. Jacobs first published in 1902. Three wishes are granted to the owner of the monkey's hand, but the wishes come with an enormous price for interfering with fate.
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First published in 1885 as part of the collection What Men Live By, and Other Tales, the story takes the form of a parable, and it concerns a king who wants to find the answers to what he considers the three most important questions in life.

The story about a low-ranking official who gains and loses a fancy coat.
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"The Happy Prince" is a fantasy story. This method was employed to bring to light the problems of the Victorian age: poverty, hypocrisy and exploitation that plagued the cities of that era.
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This is a story about Henry Maxwell, a Wall Street broker, buzzing with work, forgetful of personal tidbits, who gets attracted to his stenographer Leslie and wants to marry her.
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This is a story of an NRI family of Mr and Mrs Das and their children who come to visit India and while touring Odisha, is guided by the tour-guide and part time interpreter of maladies, Mr Kapasi. While Mr Kapasi develops a romantic interest on Mrs Das, he strikes up a conversation with her and learns some of her deepest secrets.
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