What's your favorite online fiction site, and did you find what I'm looking for? [more inside]
posted by motsque on Oct 6, 2009 - 2 answers

SF short story filter: I read this sci-fi short story a long time ago. It's fairly memorable...I'm hoping someone on AskMeFi knows of it. [more inside]
posted by diode on Jul 2, 2009 - 3 answers

I took a few bookbinding classes in university and really enjoyed them, but I stopped doing it after I had saturated the market (i.e. my friends and family) with blank books to use as journals, notebooks, photo albums, etc. I recently thought that it might be fun to make hand-printed and bound editions of novellas and short stories that are in the public domain. [more inside]
posted by cilantro on Nov 26, 2008 - 8 answers

I'm looking for the title and author and anthology location (and url, if possible) of an amusing short story about a man who gives a cocktail party, and for whom the invited guests all have rhyming names. He spends the story answering the door, then introducing everyone to everyone else - which becomes an incredible tongue-twister. For example he finds Uma Thurman at the door,and is then forced to introduce her to assembled guests as "Uma, Irma; Irma, Emma; Emma, Alma.....etc, etc, etc." Does this ring a bell with anyone?
posted by eaglehound on Nov 12, 2008 - 5 answers

Short Story Suggestions: I need a short story for a specific lesson. Criteria inside. [more inside]
posted by gursky on Oct 25, 2008 - 10 answers

What is the name of the story in which a man buries stolen money under a sapling, ends up buying the house next door, and years later tries to retrieve the money only to find that the neighbor has already taken it and left newspaper clippings? [more inside]
posted by Mapes on Sep 20, 2008 - 2 answers

What is this book/short story from my childhood? A gambler learns to see through playing cards by holding them up to candle light. In the end he ends up throwing all of his winnings off of a balcony. [more inside]
posted by GaGaLoc on Sep 5, 2008 - 12 answers

Trying to identify a short story I read a while back. It's been nagging at me and I'd really like to read it again. I posted this question last week but received, alas, only one response, so I thought I'd try again. Description is inside. Thanks! [more inside]
posted by jujube on Jul 29, 2008 - 9 answers

What was that New Yorker short story? Plot details as I remember... [more inside]
posted by miles1972 on Jul 23, 2008 - 3 answers

Can you identify a short story I read in grade school? [more inside]
posted by timsteil on Apr 22, 2008 - 4 answers

Short-story filter: contemporary American story with a scene of a baby boy whose father cruelly dangles a pocketwatch just out of reach so as to get the boy used to disappointment. [more inside]
posted by headnsouth on Mar 5, 2008 - 3 answers

Please help me find the name and author of a short story I read in The New Yorker within the last five years or so. The premise of the story is a teacher at a prep school in Manhattan is brought home by one of his students because she has decided he's the person she is going to marry. Toward the end of the story, the girl's father punches the teacher in the stomach unexpectedly. I believe the story won some awards.
posted by pasici on Feb 7, 2008 - 25 answers

I'm trying to find a vaguely remembered short story. The story was about a woman whose baby was in the NICU and then passes away. What I distinctly remember is that peppered throughout the story were phrases such as "A pride of lions. A gaggle of geese. A flock of doves." Lists of names for collectives of animals started and ended the piece, I think. In between was a very sad story about a baby, including the line "unplug my baby like he's a toaster?" or something very similar. Sound familiar to anyone?
posted by bonheur on Jan 10, 2008 - 5 answers

Please help me locate a collection of Russian/Eastern Bloc short stories. I read this book when I was kid because it belonged to my parents and I want to read it again. If not the book, I'd like to find the two most memorable stories. One concerns a snowman and the other is a reflection on life while falling out of a window to one's death. Details inside... [more inside]
posted by thewrongparty on Dec 11, 2007 - 3 answers

I need an extremely short suspense story. [more inside]
posted by Hargrimm on Oct 25, 2007 - 17 answers

Help me remember the name of a science fiction short story (possibly by asimov) [more inside]
posted by sorindome on Jul 27, 2007 - 5 answers

Help me remember the name of this short story (or novel that includes this story): A housecleaner's employer tells her she can keep all the change she finds when she cleans his office. She ends up with a jar of change containing more than one hundred dollars, and the employer reneges his offer. Thanks! [more inside]
posted by jiiota on Jul 14, 2007 - 6 answers

Horror short story about a couple on a road trip, end up in a small town during springtime, fight with each other, have sex, then notice the townspeople are all climbing on top of one another, crushing and killing each other to make some sort of ?. Story ends when the couple joins in (WTF?) I read it when I was like 8. I thought it was a Stephen King short story, but wiki'd all of them (I think) and couldn't find it. ...and (bonus question about La Cabina... sorry for cheatin')... [more inside]
posted by MrMulan on May 25, 2007 - 7 answers

A friend asked my to try and find a story her grandfather used to tell her mother, possibly by Rudyard Kipling. The info is pretty slim; All she knows is it's about a beaver who keeps going back to chomp at the same tree, and the other animals all say to him "the tree will fall into the lake". They set traps for the beaver, including a pit of spikes and smearing the tree with some bitter substance. In the end, the beaver goes away. Sorry, that's all I got. Hope it rings a bell! Thanks in advance!
posted by Silky Slim on Mar 24, 2007 - 1 answer

Abstract Thinking Filter: So I created this creature that travels by temperature instead of time, so to speak. [more inside]
posted by vanoakenfold on Jul 18, 2006 - 29 answers

OK. Here's another question about a book I read as a kid, 25 or 30 years ago. It was a collection of short stories where truly horrible things happened... [more inside]
posted by solid-one-love on Jun 18, 2006 - 5 answers

Help me find these two short stories - one horror and one (possibly) sci-fi. [more inside]
posted by ninazer0 on Apr 26, 2006 - 9 answers