“A Piece of Steak” – Jack London
“A Medicine for Melancholy” – Ray Bradbury
“Whatever Happened to Corporal Cuckoo?” – Gerald Kersh
“The Case Against Carroll” – Ellery Queen
“No Truce With Kings” – Poul Anderson
Not sure about my full list, though I see many here that I have read and loved and a few more to read. I would like to submit my favorite to the thread.
“The Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas” LeGuin
My work in progress for my English degree is about this story, though very much in the early stages. Aside from my interest in this one from a literary standpoint, I honestly feel that the story had an impact on my life.
The Day I Sat With Jesus on the Sun Deck and a Wind Came Up and Blew My Kimono Open and He Saw My Breasts by Gloria Sawai
A couple I’m suprised haven’t come up yet;
“Royal Beatings” - Alice Munro
“The Destructors” - Graham Greene
And an honorable mention to Clive Barker’s “In the Hills, the Cities” just because the central image of the story has stuck with me for years.
“Do the Dead Sing?”–Stephen King, one of his best.
“The Skin Trade”–George R.R. Martin.
Does anyone know if any of these are available on-line and, if so, where? In other words, link, please?
Except, well, it’s not really “short” per se.
Ok, y’all think that story is so great, please, explain its meaning to me. Nobody has ever given me a straight answer.
“The Grief Connection” by Conrad Hill. What a Simpson’s “Treehouse of Horror” episode that would make, except the censors would never allow it.
My list would contain many already mentioned, plus:
“Roman Fever” by Edith Wharton
“A Worn Path” by Eudora Welty
“To Room Nineteen” by Doris Lessing
Re: Bartleby The Scrivener
There are a couple of reasons why I think this is the greatest English language short story ever written. First, the story was about a hundred years ahead of its time, anticipating Kafka and Beckett with its measured tone of absurdity and despair. Gogol’s “The Nose” is similiarly ahead of its time. To this day Melville’s story still resonates. Bartelby’s passive-aggressive refusal --“I prefer not to”–to first his job and then finally life itself
(at this stage of capitalism, to refuse your job IS to refuse your life) is far more moving an indictment of 19th century capitalism than anything Dickens ever wrote. Second, the story is beautuflly written. Melville’s restraint is impeccable–no high-flown lyricism or preachy moral judgements. The reader is left to decide what the “meaning” of the story is.
As far as Jackson’s THE LOTTERY goes… That story is striking but not particularly well-written or subtle. It also very much a product of its time with its O’Henry-style gimmickry–the “surprise ending” and so on. At the very least it’s a good additon to the longstanding American tradition of the literature of Protestant moral instruction–Hawthorne, Emerson, etc.–which is why it’s so popular in American grade schools. Whether or not you want to be morally instructed when you read is up to you. I know I don’t. I liked it when I was a kid, though. Don’t really think much of it now.
[ul][]The Dead, by James Joyce[]With The Night Mail, by Rudyard KiplingBartleby the Scrivener, by Herman Melville[/ul]
Oh Whistle and I’ll Come To You, My Lad-----}
Casting The Runes -------------------------------} M.R. James
The Sentinel ----------------Arthur Clarke
The Red Headed League-----------A. Conan Doyle
The Monkey’s Paw ------------- WW Jacobs
Darn, Adam P. had to go and give an intelligent answer to lee’s question. I wanted to pop in with “I could explain the story, but I prefer not to.” Anyway, that’s one of those on my list.
The others are :
“The Tell-Tale Heart” - Poe
“The Man Who Loved Islands” - D.H. Lawrence
“The Dead” - James Joyce
“All Summer in a Day” - Ray Bradbury
The Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas, by Ursala Le Guin
I wouldn’t say these are the BEST as much as I’d say these are my favorites:
“The Things They Carried” by Tim O’Brien
“The Killers” by Ernest Hemingway
“Welcome to the Funhouse” by John Barthes
“The Index” by J.G. Ballard (this one’s a helluva story to wrap yr mind around)
and, last but not least, “Long Black Song” by Richard Wright.
–greenphan
Harrison Bergeron by Kurt Vonnegut
The Lottery by Shirley Jackson
Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge by Ambrose Bierce
Thang by Martin Gardner
I also love Flannery Oconner and Arthur C Clarke among others 
Uh, Greenphan? That’s “Lost in the Funhouse” by John Barth. Unless you mean “Welcome to the Monkey House,” which is by Kurt Vonnegut. Or do you mean “Mythologies” by Roland Barthes?
Thanks for the links. That Kipling story looks pretty impenetrable, btw. I’ll have to try it again.
My favourites have all been listed, I think, so here are a couple more links.
For The Yellow Wallpaper: http://www.pagebypagebooks.com/Charlotte_Perkins_Gilman/The_Yellow_Wallpaper/The_Yellow_Wallpaper_p1.html
For Lovecraft: http://www.gizmology.net/lovecraft/