O. Henry had a gift for wrapping heartbreak in humor. His stories feel light, almost playful—until that last line hits and you realize he’s been quietly aiming for your chest the whole time.

In The Skylight Room, we meet a bright, hopeful young woman renting the smallest, loneliest room in New York. But she still finds a way to fill it—with imagination, with laughter, and with a star she names Billy Jackson.

What happens next is pure O. Henry: tender, tragic, and—somehow—still kind of beautiful.

We are expanding our universe of short story podcasts on our new podcast channel, Short StoryVerses. Listen to some of Don's new, original short stories on the "New Tales Told" podcast. Look it up on your favorite podcast player.

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Halloween is the season of the macabre and one the greatest authors of dark frightening fiction was Edgar Allen Poe.

You can cover the body. Hide the blood. Swear you’re sane. But you can’t silence the sound. Beneath the floorboards… something still beats.

Considered to be the finest American Gothic writer of all time, Edgar Allen Poe loved to pen short stories. Of course, his best known tales are his darkest. This makes sense as Poe himself stated that he often suffered from bouts of depression and madness.

A Survey. A Dream. A Better Ad?

Somewhere out there is an ad you won’t hate.

And this brief, slightly soul-sucking survey might help me find it.

It’s optional. But I’d be forever grateful. Or at least for like, a week.

http://bit.ly/litreadingclassicshortstories-survey

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This is one of those scary stories that sneaks up on you. It looks like just another day in small-town America, sometime around the early 1950s. But then, something is wrong. Something is hanging there. And what’s most unsettling isn’t the horror itself — it’s how calmly everyone else reacts.

Philip K. Dick wrote The Hanging Stranger in 1953, and it remains one of his most chilling short stories. It’s about paranoia, conformity, and the terrifying idea that maybe you’re the only one who sees the truth.

Philip K. Dick (1928–1982) was one of the most influential science fiction writers of the 20th century, famous for works like Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? (which inspired Blade Runner), The Man in the High Castle, and Ubik. His stories often explore paranoia, alternate realities, and the fragile line between perception and truth.

The Hanging Stranger was first published in 1953 in the pulp magazine Science Fiction Adventures. Under U.S. copyright law, any story published before 1964 had to have its copyright renewed in the 28th year after publication. If the renewal wasn’t filed, the work automatically fell into the public domain. The copyright for The Hanging Stranger was never renewed, so it is now freely available for adaptation and performance.

A Survey. A Dream. A Better Ad?

Somewhere out there is an ad you won’t hate.

And this brief, slightly soul-sucking survey might help me find it.

It’s optional. But I’d be forever grateful. Or at least for like, a week.

http://bit.ly/litreadingclassicshortstories-survey

Thanks.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.