Genre
Short Stories: Short Stories to Read
Short stories are the heart of Fireside: brief pieces that capture a single moment, character or feeling and make it land with real force. Here you'll find stories by real authors – read in a few minutes, but often lingering long after. Browse the latest short stories and read them for free.
Latest Short Stories stories
The Fifth Apprentice
by Giulia
Giulia is a seasoned art restorer who has trained four apprentices over twenty-two years, watching each navigate the pull of a more conventional life. When her youngest apprentice Matteo wavers between engineering and restoration, she offers not persuasion but the quiet truth of her own unresolved commitment. The story closes with his return and two coffees — a small, wordless act of staying.
Item 6b
by Diane
As chair of a Québec City library board, Diane presides over the recurring bilingual-signage debate – until an 83-year-old board member produces a sixty-year-old, already-bilingual card-catalogue drawer that leaves both sides briefly speechless.
Seven Photographs of a Vanishing Harbour
by Pieter
A Rotterdam dockworker documents his terminal's automation in seven photographs – from driverless cranes to a young control-room operator – and discovers that a safety parameter in the code was quietly named after his dead foreman's cautious habit.
Mr Bernhardt
by Tobias
Mr Bernhardt, fourth floor no lift, orders books. In March: Chekhov, sitting down despite 20 packages waiting. He explains Chekhov's gun then tells his whole life according to it. The gun: a barber's shop in Karl-Marx-Stadt, 1961, his father wasn't allowed to open. Tobias got back late. Still the right decision.
Hegel on a Bicycle
by Tobias
Hegel: history through contradiction. Napoleon: wrong. Structure: possibly right. On Karl-Liebknecht-Straße there's a light that's always red when Tobias arrives. Thesis: green. Antithesis: red. Synthesis: Hegel on his phone. New thesis: he's using Hegel to avoid thinking he's cold. He was right about the structure.
Wrong Address
by Rudi
Rudi's apprentice delivers a wedding cake to a funeral — Kirchenthurnen and Kirchlindach. He didn't want to be rude. The deceased's family calls, not angry: he liked strawberries. Rudi sends no bill.
Saturdays
by Maggie
Maggie has been singing Saturday mornings since 2015. She doesn't know why. Some customers join in. One had a headache. One recommended she do something professionally — probably singing lessons. Maggie chose not to ask for clarification.
What They Tell You
by Maggie
In 30 years Maggie has heard: affairs, wills, business plans, opinions about priests for the bishops. People think they're talking to the mirror. They're talking to her. She repeats nothing — not discretion, self-preservation.
Mrs Devlin
by Maggie
Mrs Devlin wants the same thing for twenty-three years. Then in June 2017 she sits down and says: I don't know what I want. They talk for an hour. Not about the hair. She cries in the chair — not from the hair. Maggie doesn't ask. First tip in 23 years.
Mr Nowicki
by Magdalena
An 81-year-old regular comes into Magdalena's pharmacy every morning at 8:15. He buys vitamin C. He comes because his wife used to come with him. Magdalena makes sure to be there at that time.
The Letter
by Hannelore
A clinic letter for a woman who lives alone. Hannelore holds it for a minute. Then she pushes it through. She doesn't know if that was the right decision or just the easier one. Mrs Lühmann lived for many more years.
Number 14
by Hannelore
Hannelore delivers letters to an address for thirty years where a handwritten letter arrives every other day. She only looks it up when she retires. E. Brandt. That was enough to know.
Mrs Tremblay
by Diane
Mrs Tremblay has come every Tuesday at 2:15 for 19 years. Always one novel, one non-fiction, never a recommendation. Never the same book twice. Diane doesn't know what she thinks of them, why Tuesdays, whether she has family. That's a lot of reading. That's a life she knows nothing about.
Bernard
by Catherine
Bernard, a 17-year-old quarter horse, has bitten Catherine three times — shoulder, arm, back of the head. Owner Pat says he does it because he likes her. Catherine chooses to believe this — the alternative is worse. Bernard is otherwise reasonable. Once actively co-operated — practically sainthood. Pat reserves judgement.
Frequently asked questions
What is a short story?
A short story is concentrated prose: a single moment, one situation, often an open ending. Its power lies in compression – every word counts because there is little room.
How long is a short story?
There is no fixed length – usually a few pages. What matters is not the word count but that it builds toward one effect, turn or insight.
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