"Once upon a time there was a miller who had a beautiful daughter. When she came of age he wished that she was provided for and well married. He thought, "If a respectable suitor comes and asks for her hand in marriage, I will give her to him."

Not long afterward a suitor came who appeared to be very rich, and because the miller could find no fault with him, he promised his daughter to him.

The girl, however, did not like him as much as a bride should like her bridegroom. She did not trust him, and whenever she saw him or thought about him, she felt within her heart a sense of horror."

Before fairy tales became gentle and familiar, they were stories meant to endure.

Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm preserved tales shaped by hunger, fear, and hope—stories rooted in real lives and passed quietly from one generation to the next. These were not originally children’s stories, but cultural memory in symbolic form.

The Brothers Grimm helped define the modern fairy tale and influenced world literature in lasting ways. Every retelling, no matter how softened, still carries the echo of its origins.

"The Robber Bridegroom" is just one of those many retellings.

When we think of J.R.R. Tolkien, we usually think big: quests, wars, and vast imaginary landscapes. But one of the most revealing windows into his creative life comes from something much smaller—his Christmas letters to his children.

For more than twenty years, Tolkien wrote as Father Christmas, describing life at the North Pole in words and pictures. These letters were playful, sometimes chaotic, and deeply imaginative, filled with Elves, Goblins, and the ever-troublesome North Polar Bear. They weren’t meant for publication. They were meant to be believed.

What’s striking is how familiar the creative instincts feel. Invented alphabets, layered backstories, recurring characters—it’s all there, just scaled to the size of childhood wonder. Letters from Father Christmas reminds us that Tolkien’s greatest worlds didn’t begin as epics. They began as acts of love, shared between a father and his children.

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She carried a quantity of matches in an old apron, and she held a bundle of them in her hand. Nobody had bought anything of her the whole livelong day; no one had given her a single farthing.

She crept along trembling with cold and hunger--a very picture of sorrow, the poor little thing!

What makes The Little Match Girl so striking is its simplicity. A young girl wanders the snowy streets on New Year’s Eve, trying to sell matches. She’s cold, starving, and afraid to return home. Every time she lights a match to warm herself, she’s transported—briefly—into visions of warmth, love, and comfort. In her final vision she sees her grandmother, and she follows her into a world free from pain.

Throughout his life, Andersen felt like an outsider—because of his class background, his lanky appearance, and his unreturned romantic attachments. This sense of longing shows up again and again in his stories, especially the sadder ones. You can feel it in The Little Mermaid, The Ugly Duckling, and of course The Little Match Girl. These are stories about characters who dream of belonging somewhere else, somewhere kinder.

James Baldwins' story "Why He Carried The Turkey" is taken from Fifty Famous People - A Book of Short Stories, 1912.

"Well, that is lucky," said the old man, smiling. "I happen to be going that way, and I will carry your turkey, if you will allow me."

"That is John Marshall, Chief Justice of the United States. He is one of the greatest men in our country," was the answer.

The young gentleman was surprised and ashamed. "Why did he offer to carry my turkey?" he asked.

James Baldwin was an influential American writer. He was an essayist, novelist, and playwright whose eloquence and passion on the subject of race in America made him one of the most important voices of the 20th century.  

She descended into the basement, hunting for the wine her uncle had hidden there. A vintage from 1847. November, no less. Her birthday month. A coincidence? A grand reserve, priceless beyond imagination.

The stairs looked ready to betray her. Narrow. Uneven. Crumbling. Why, why had she worn heels today? Each step felt like a gamble. The railing, thin and wobbly, seemed more dangerous than helpful.

In a quest story the ultimate goal can be a physical object, a place, a person, or an internal change, and the journey often leads to personal growth and self-discovery for the hero (in this case it's a she).  The physical object here is a valuable vintage wine bottle. Will our heroine pass the test to obtain this prize possession?

"It was not too long ago that he felt free as a bird. He always had the choice of doing whatever he wanted to do or wherever he wanted to go. No one could stop him, until that one day. He couldn’t stop thinking of the day he met Angela. The first time he laid eyes on her, he thought he was seeing an angel in the flesh. Was it a coincidence that her name was Angela?"

As a fan of mysteries I enjoy writing mysterious narratives. This is just one of a few that I've written.

“A big old ugly witch and I told her to go away and she went away,” the little boy went on, in a quiet narrative to himself, “she came and said, ‘I’m going to eat you up,’ and I said, ‘no, you’re not,’ and I chased her away, the bad old mean witch.”

Although very short (just over 1,400 words), there are enough dark elements in this Shirley Jackson story to unsettle most readers.

Themes in this story include parental inattention, boredom, imagination, witchcraft, innocence and its possible manipulation, violence.

"It's Miss Fairchild," he said, with a smile. "I'll ask you to excuse the other hand; "it's otherwise engaged just at present."

He slightly raised his right hand, bound at the wrist by the shining "bracelet" to the left one of his companion. The glad look in the girl's eyes slowly changed to a bewildered horror. The glow faded from her cheeks. Her lips parted in a vague, relaxing distress.

"Hearts and Hands" is a short story which centers on a chance encounter on a train between a young woman, Miss Fairchild, and an old acquaintance, Mr. Easton.

O. Henry's stories are known for their irony and compassion, and "Hearts and Hands" is no exception.

"It became obvious that this was special occasion and that she had planned a surprise."

"Birthday party" is a brief, observational story about a married couple in a restaurant where the wife attempts a public birthday surprise for her husband.

Katharine Brush's short stories have been compared, in their lack of sentiment and their sharpness, with those of F. Scott Fitzgerald, her  more famous contemporary.

"I asked her pardon for the cruel lesson and, to her great surprise, gave her eighty rubles. She murmured her little "merci" several times and went out. I looked after her and thought: "How easy it is to crush the weak in this world!" ("A Nincompoop)"

Anton Chekhov (1860–1904) was a Russian playwright and master of the modern short story, known for his laconic precision in probing the hidden motives of his characters.