We believe students and readers everywhere deserve a great and free modern library, inside of which they can get deliriously, entertainingly, profoundly lost. And found.

Fiction

Story of the Week
Mother of Hope
by Laurie Baker
Most people come to Africa because they are drawn to its misery.
Spring Contest Winners
Motherland
by Baird Harper
His shirt, he realized, was completely soaked, and he could actually see his heart rippling beneath the cotton.
Story of the Week
Mr. Schmeckler
by Terese Svoboda
It’s a girls’ college we’re going to, but all the guys know Polly’s name.
Story of the Week
Mr. Thing
by Geri Modell
We all agreed we would evolve into something, a family of sorts.
Story of the Week
Mrs. Fonss
by Jens Peter Jacobsen
Elinor had loved a man. The journey’s purpose was that she might forget.
Fiction
Mrs. Secrest
by Shann Ray
His mother’s face had been that pretty, though more resigned.
Story of the Week
Ms. Marmelstein
by Diane Simkin Demeter
Ms. Marmelstein led with her eyelashes, curling out like scimitars.
Fiction
Mud Time
by Joyce Carol Oates
Late March 2002. “Mud time”—so called in Mad River Junction, Ohio.
Six-Word Stories
Murder-Suicide
by Sherman Alexie
Sherman Alexie
Story of the Week
My Early Twenties
by Lesley Howard
He was tall too—that was part of the impression of big, of lots, of plenty.
Fall Contest Winners
My First Boy
by Julie Diamond
He would sneak into my room, we would have sex, he would sneak out.
Story of the Week
My Grandmother’s Garden
by Willa Cather
I must never go to the garden without a heavy stick or a corn-knife.
nhawthorne.jpg
Classics
My Kinsman, Major Molineux
by Nathaniel Hawthorne
Nathaniel Hawthorne
Six-Word Stories
My Mother
by Clyde Phillips
Narrative High School Writing Contest
My Rickshaw
by Anna Buryachenko
iStories
My Strength Is That of a Hundred Men Because My Heart Is Pure
by Jessica Francis Kane
She rocks quickly from side to side, proud, lifting herself higher.
Story of the Week
My Watch: An Instructive Little Tale
by Mark Twain
He looked a look of vicious happiness and eagerly pried the watch open.
Story of the Week
Naked in the River
by Julie Hébert
Susan Ann so wants to be that girl—daring, free, divinely sensual.
Fiction
Naming
by Yelena Furman
I sensed that a name defined who I was and would be in the future.
Story of the Week
Nana
by Ben Fergusson
We didn’t think of ourselves as anything so grand as sex workers.
Fiction
Narrows
by Rick Bass
The dope worked, though he felt ashamed using it, smoked in secret.
Story of the Week
Nasya Krevoshay
by Daniel Chernin
It suddenly seemed to her that the world was filled with little miracles. There were moments when love overcame her despair.
Fiction
Natural History
by Natasha Ayaz
The owners of the rental left three gifts on the kitchen table for us to enjoy.
GeladeMarkRussell.jpg
Story of the Week
Navigating by Stars
by Mark Russell Gelade
The phone rang at an awkward hour, too late at night to be good news.
Story of the Week
Neighborly Favors
by Ilana Sichel
I promised to return, but secretly I dreamed of staying in America.
Spring Contest Winners
Nemecia
by Kirstin Valdez Quade
My mother was dead. Almost a month she was dead, killed by me.
Story of the Week
Neonates
by Michael DiCocco
She knew Jim would be a terrible husband. They’d murder each other.
Story of the Week
Never Say No
by Amy Linn
If he was going to pick me up, the least he could do was look at me.
Story of the Week
New Grub Street
by George Gissing
He betook himself to the metropolis to become a literary man, of course.
Winter Contest Winners
New Year’s Weekend on the Hand Surgery Ward, Old Pilgrims’ Hospital, Naples, Italy
by Adam Atlas
Ten years ago, when I was in college, my father divorced my mother and said he wanted me to become responsible for her. That is why I fled to Italy.