15 Autumnal Short Stories for Fall

It's sweater weather

It’s finally September — for the past few weeks, there’s been an unmistakable morning chill, and while I’m still a bit in denial (I’m tightly holding on to whatever remains of summer), I admit that I can’t wait to pull on a sweater and boots, watch Gilmore Girls, and curl up with a gothic novel.

But sometimes, in between those fat Victorian tomes, you need something short and sweet. And if you’re like me, rather than reading an entire collection of short stories by one author, you like to jump around based on genre and mood.

These 15 short stories are filled with gothic themes, campus settings, and spooky characters to perfectly round out your fall reading. Below, for each story, you’ll find a quick summary, the first few lines, and where to read it.

“Miss Brill” by Katherine Mansfield

My first Mansfield story was “The Garden Party” and when I finished reading it and understood its depth, I was blown away. “Miss Brill” is a quieter, more autumnal story first published in 1920 about a schoolteacher who, every Sunday, wears a shabby fur coat and goes to the Jardins Publiques in Paris. This modernist story dives into Miss Brill’s mind, explores themes of loneliness and youth, and ends with an epiphany.

Although it was so brilliantly fine — the blue sky powdered with gold and great spots of light like white wine splashed over the Jardin Publiques — Miss Brill was glad that she had decided on her fur.

Find it in The Garden Party and Other Stories or read it for free here.

“The Mystery of Hunter’s Lodge” by Agatha Christie

While I love Christie’s full length novels, sometimes you just need a quick mystery to satisfy the itch. In “The Mystery of Hunter’s Lodge” a wealthy man is found dead in his nephew’s hunting lodge. Though Poirot has been requested for the case, he is ill and bed-ridden, so his right-hand man Hastings goes in his place, while Poirot helps solve the mystery from far away.

“After all,” murmured Poirot, “it is possible that I shall not die this time.”

Find it in Poirot Investigates.

“The Next in Line” by Ray Bradbury

“The Next in Line” opens with a middle-aged couple, Marie and Joseph, on vacation in a small Mexican town. When Joseph wants to see the famous mummies on display, Marie becomes filled with dread — but the truth behind it all is even more terrifying than she thought. Ray Bradbury himself said this was his scariest story, so read at your own risk.

It was a little caricature of a town square. In it were the following fresh ingredients: a candy-box of a bandstand where men stood on Thursday and Sunday nights exploding music; fine, green-patinated bronze-copper benches all scrolled and flourished; fine blue and pink tiled walks — blue as women’s newly lacquered eyes, pink as women’s hidden wonders; and fine French-clipped trees in the shapes of exact hatboxes.

Find it in The October Country.