“I, Robot” by Cory Doctorow. This is a more modern selection. Doctorow publishes often under a Creative Commons license so the works can be used freely in a noncommercial sense.
Do you want recommendations for novels as well? Or plays?
Also took AP English as a HS senior, and “A Rose for Emily” was in the reader. It’s a popular enough story to have been in several anthologies, but I’m wondering if we used the same book.
Did yours also have Woody Allen’s “The Kugelmass Episode”? That was a great story to break up the usual “safe” English-class monotony.
The Catbird Seat is also a great story, one of Thurber’s best…
Wings out of Shadow–sci fi, with a neat historical twist.
And I’ll second “The Most Dangerous Game”.
No novel recommendations – I have several novels we study. Just looking for short stories to fill in. These are all great ideas – thank you all so much – keep them coming! I’m reading as fast as I can!
Some short stories are so well-known that, as you go through life, you’re quite probably going to encounter references and allusions to them, so it behooves an educated person to have read them. (Plus, with some of them, it’s better to read the story before you encounter spoilers.) I’d say stories of this kind include
“The Lottery” by Shirley Jackson
“Harrison Bergeron” by Kurt Vonnegut
“A Rose For Emily” by William Faulkner (cite on this one 
)
“The Gifts of the Magi” by O Henry
“The Secret Life of Walter Mitty” by James Thurber
“The Monkey’s Paw” by W. W. Jacobs
and maybe some of Poe’s.
They ought to read something by Hemingway, maybe “The Short Happy Life of Francis Macomber.”
Saki wrote some great, fun short stories, and high school age is a good time to read him.
I remember reading and liking “First Confession” by Frank O’Connor in high school, even though I’m not Catholic.
They’re not “literary,” and don’t have to be taught so much as enjoyed, but it might be worth having them read one of the Sherlock Holmes stories—just for fun, or as an example of the time when short stories were published and read as popular entertainment.
I’m not sure how appropriate it might be for a High School class, but Brokeback Mountain by Annie Proulx.
Interestingly, neither of my two favorite short story writers have been mentioned. So I will recommend:
Ring Lardner, Haircut
JD Salinger, For Esmee, With Love And Squalor
Actually, pretty much anything by these guys is pure gold, and well-suited for high-school literature classes. Give them “Nine Stories” by Salinger and you’ll be set for the whole semester.
PS I second Harrison Bergeron too!
PPS Ring Lardner wrote right around the cutoff time for modern copyrights. So some of his stuff might be public domain. I know Salinger and Vonnegut aren’t.
“For Esme With Love and Squalor”, one of the best from JD Salinger’s Nine Stories and one of the most accessible (by which I mean it doesn’t have a “what the hell just happened there?” ending).
“She Unnames Them” by Ursula K. LeGuin
I think the latter story is “After Twenty Years”
But I agree that it’s a great story.
I would suggest “The Interlopers”, or “The Toys of Peace” by Saki, or H.H. Munro.
Actually, almost any of his stories are good.
“The Man Who Traveled in Elephants” by Robert Heinlein. Never fails to make me tear up, when the veterans are passing the review stand.
“An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge” by Ambrose Bierce was an absolute favorite of mine.
Paul’s Case - Willa Cather Page Not Found: 404 | Sam Houston State University
Araby - James Joyce http://www.readprint.com/work-875/Araby-James-Joyce
The Man Who Would Be King - Rudyard Kipling http://www.readprint.com/work-4290/The-Man-Who-Would-Be-King-Rudyard-Kipling
These can all be found online.
Our Father Who Art in Heaven - Valentin Katayev
A little harder to track down (still under copyright perhaps?), but definitely rewarding.
Saki! Man, I used to love his stuff - I even went by “Clovis Sangrail” on a few message boards for several years. And he’s in Project Gutenberg! Browse By Author: S | Project Gutenberg
Lousy WWI, killing one of the great literary minds of England.
ETA: Speaking of WW1, your kids should certainly read Wilfred Owen’s “Dulce et Decorum Est” - for my money, the finest war poem ever written. Dulce et Decorum Est with notes - Wilfred Owen. Plus, 10,000 Maniacs made it into a neat pop song!
Check out Abraham Merritt for some lost world science fiction. the X Men cartoon ripped off a lot of his material and didn’t credit him.
Read Henry Lawson for some excellent humorous Australia living. The Loaded Dog is my favorite story in Joe Wilson and His Mates. I think of Henry Lawson as similar to America’s Mark Twain only better.
There are many expedition accounts for Australia since it’s settlement as a penal colony and I found all of the many I read very interesting. There is some hardships in the accounts you don’t know how any people made it through.
D’oh! You’re right. I guess I was thinking of when I read it–which was probably about forty years ago now. At any rate, thanks again.
Hijack question -
Does copyright cover you buying, say, a Stephen King book of short stories, copying the story and using it in class? If so, that’s lame. I see nothing harmful in using literature of any kind for educational purposes.
That’s beyond fair use.
I also teach high school English in a small district (we have about 30 graduating seniors per year). For the past two years, I did not use a textbook as we didn’t technically have one for the freshmen and the junior book was just awful by my standards. So I cobbled together a list of short stories using the internet, old textbooks both from the school and my collection, and various anthologies. My core freshman short story unit consists of:
The Most Dangerous Game, by Richard Connell
The Cask of Amontillado, by Poe
The Adventure of the Speckled Band, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
The Birds, by Daphne Du Maurier
The Interlopers, by Saki
A Sound of Thunder, by Ray Bradbury
Poison, by Roald Dahl
The Scarlet Ibis, by James Hurst
Harrison Bergeron, by Kurt Vonnegut
The Bass, the River and Sheila Mant, by WD Wetherall
I also really like:
The Book of Sand, by Jorge Luis Borges
The Cold Equations, by Tom Godwin
The Necklace, by Guy de Maupassant
The Secret Life of Walter Mitty, by James Thurber
A Rose for Emily, by William Faulkner
Everyday Use, by Alice Walker
Winter Dreams, by Fitzgerald
An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge, by Ambrose Bierce
For freshmen, I like to focus on stories with entertaining, suspenseful storylines with clear examples of literary techniques and concepts: Types of conflict, plot diagram, points of view, irony, theme, and symbolism. I always start of the year with “The Most Dangerous Game” because it is very, very easy to see the progression of plot in that story, the conflicts are clearly defined, and the theme is fairly transparent. Plus it’s just a really fun read with some good shocks and scares.
I’m getting new textbooks this fall that I handpicked- I’m so glad to have a good book that does so much of the organizing for me (not to mention it saves me time and paper that the kids each get a book instead of me writing and copying endless worksheets and handouts), but I will still supplement/substitute stories.
Heavy Set by Ray Bradbury, the scariest story ever written in which nothing happens. Hard to find anthologised - originally from Playboy October 1964. Aside - has anyone ever recognised Playboy’s contribution to short form fiction? I genuinely used to read it for the articles and short stories.
My Old Man by Ernest Hemingway. I get all teary whenever I think of the last few lines. The narrator’s father, a jockey, has died in an accident and Joey overhears a conversation about his father and Hemingway gives us this as the last lines:
*And George Gardner looked at me to see if I’d heard and I had all right and he said, “Don’t you listen to what those bums said, Joe. Your old man was one swell guy.”
But I don’t know. Seems like when they get started they don’t leave a guy nothing.*