Short StoryVerses

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Channel • 8 Shows

Comedy Fiction

Comedy Fiction

Updated Aug 11
Fiction

Fiction

Updated Weekly
Stories for Kids

Stories for Kids

Updated 11/13/2025
Fiction

Fiction

Updated 4d ago
Fiction

Fiction

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Fiction

Fiction

Updated Biweekly
Fiction

Fiction

Updated Feb 13

Aug 11

The Whirligig of Life — A Classic Short Tale by O. Henry

Ransie and Ariela Bilbro come down out of the Cumberland Mountains to have their marriage undone. Justice of the Peace Benaja Widdup can find no law on the subject, so he invents one, and prices it at five dollars, which happens to be every cent Ransie made on his furs. Then Ariela wants alimony. What follows is a night ride, a masked man, a bill rolled tight and pushed down a rifle barrel, and a decree that nobody much wants by morning. O. Henry watches a single five-dollar bill travel in a perfect circle, and two stubborn people get carried around with it. A love story for anyone who ever meant it when they said they were leaving. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Aug 11

The Huntsman — A Classic Short Story by Anton Chekhov

High summer, and it is too hot to sing. A huntsman walks a road with a gun on his shoulder, a bird in his bag, and a dog running ahead of him. A woman steps out of the rye with a sickle in her hand and says his name. She is delighted to see him. He is not. They sit down between two fir trees, and in the ten minutes that follow, Anton Chekhov does something very quiet and very cruel. He was twenty-five, writing fast and for money under a pen name, and he claimed later that he wrote this one in a bathhouse in a single sitting We are so honored to have been featured by Apple Podcasts as a great source for summer stories. If you don't want to miss our future stories, please Follow or Subscribe. Also, we have over 100 stories in our back catalog. Enough stories to keep you entertained for weeks. Looking for even more stories? Check out all out narrative podcasts at shortstoryverses.com If you enjoyed this story, buy me an e-book! https://www.buymeacoffee.com/donmcdonald Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Aug 4

Chain of Custody — An Original Comedy of Errors by Don McDonald

In Maple Glen, nothing ever happens. This week, nothing happens in three separate backyards, after dark, and everyone involved would prefer you didn't ask. A deadpan comedy about honesty, neighbors, and one very patient dog. Find more stories at ShortStoryverses.com — a multiverse of audio fiction spanning seven shows: classics on LitReading, original voices on New Tales Told, children's stories on Readastorus, holiday tales on Season's Readings, horror on FRIGHTLY!, romance on Love Lit, and comedy on HumorUs. Every story sized to fit a commute, a walk, or the quiet stretch before sleep. We have stories buried everywhere. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Jul 28

The Good Little Boy and The Bad Little Boy by Mark Twain

Mark Twain had a bone to pick with the Sunday-school storybook — that pious little genre where good children are showered with rewards and bad children are struck by lightning, broken by apple trees, and buried under weeping relatives by the final page. So he wrote two stories to set the record straight. In this paired episode we run both, back-to-back, framed like an old-time radio hour. First, The Story of the Good Little Boy: meet Jacob Blivens, who obeys his parents, learns his book, never plays hooky, and longs above all else to be printed in a Sunday-school book of his own — funeral illustration and all. There is only one small problem. The world has not read the same books Jacob has, and it declines, spectacularly, to cooperate. Then, in counterpoint, The Story of the Bad Little Boy: meet Jim — not "James," though the books would prefer it — who steals the jam, robs the orchard, frames the good boy, boats on Sunday without drowning, and grows up to prosper by every kind of rascality. His luck, like Jacob's misfortune, never quite runs out. Twain's targets are sentimentality, easy moralizing, and the comfortable lie that the universe keeps a fair ledger. Told with a wink and a warm lamp, this is satire that still lands a century and a half on. Be good if it suits you. Be careful regardless. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Jul 21

The Nice People — A Classic Humorous Story by H.C. Brunner

Atop Orange Mountain, in Mr. Jacobus's summer boarding house, a bored married couple finds relief from their tiresome fellow guests in the arrival of the Bredes — a graceful, good-looking young pair who seem, in every visible way, to be "nice people." But their charming small talk keeps springing leaks. Henry Cuyler Bunner (1855–1896) was a poet, novelist, and the longtime editor of the humor magazine *Puck*, celebrated for polished short stories that find real feeling inside social comedy. "The Nice People" is one of his warmest — a story about gossip, appearances, and the whole hidden other side of people that we never see from the heights of our own self-esteem. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Aug 4

Chain of Custody — An Original Tale by Don McDonald

This story is the first story specifically written for HumorUs Stories, a funny story podcast from ShortStoryverses.com. In Maple Glen, nothing ever happens. This week, nothing happens in three separate backyards, after dark, and everyone involved would prefer you didn't ask. A deadpan comedy about honesty, neighbors, and one very patient dog. Find more stories at ShortStoryverses.com — a multiverse of audio fiction spanning seven shows: classics on LitReading, original voices on New Tales Told, children's stories on Readastorus, holiday tales on Season's Readings, horror on FRIGHTLY!, romance on Love Lit, and comedy on HumorUs. Every story sized to fit a commute, a walk, or the quiet stretch before sleep. We have stories buried everywhere. We are so honored to have been featured by Apple Podcasts as a great source for summer stories. If you don't want to miss our future stories, please Follow or Subscribe. Also, we have over 100 stories in our back catalog. Enough stories to keep you entertained for weeks. Looking for even more stories? Check out all out narrative podcasts at shortstoryverses.com If you enjoyed this story, buy me an e-book! https://www.buymeacoffee.com/donmcdonald Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Trailer

Forever Fun

Some stories ask you to believe. These just want to humor us. Here's a narrated collection of short fiction with a straight face and a crooked grin. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Jun 30

The Castaway — A Classic Short Story by W.W. Jacobs

Another perfect Summer Story from Litreading. A sailor given up for drowned walks back through his own shop door, three years gone, with a fresh scar and a long story about shipwreck, islands, and rescue. His wife weeps with joy. His mother-in-law only sniffs. And across town an old fortune-teller waits with a little china bowl and a great deal to say about where the man has really been. "The Castaway" is W.W. Jacobs at his lightest, a small seaside comedy of belief, suspicion, and a homecoming that goes nowhere near the way anyone planned. The truth here is a slippery thing, and the teller may not be the one you expect. W.W. Jacobs (1863 to 1943) was an English writer best known today for the horror classic "The Monkey's Paw," though in his own time he was celebrated mostly for comic stories, many of them set among sailors, dock workers, and the small coastal towns they came home to. "The Castaway" shows that lighter, sharper side, the wit that made him a popular favorite long before a single cursed wish made him famous. Litreading is part of Short Storyverses, a network of fiction podcasts gathering the strange, the funny, and the quietly unsettling, all of it read aloud. Find every show and every story at shortstoryverses.com. We are so honored to have been featured by Apple Podcasts as a great source for summer stories. If you don't want to miss our future stories, please Follow or Subscribe. Also, we have over 100 stories in our back catalog. Enough stories to keep you entertained for weeks. Looking for even more stories? Check out all out narrative podcasts at shortstoryverses.com If you enjoyed this story, buy me an e-book! https://www.buymeacoffee.com/donmcdonald Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Jul 2

The Great American Pie Company — Classic Humor by Ellis Parker Butler

Eph Deacon sells pies for a living, or rather his wife bakes them and he carries the basket, which suits his philosophy just fine. Then Phineas Doolittle starts undercutting him from across the river, and what begins as a squabble on a bridge turns into something much bigger, and much sillier. Before long the two men have talked themselves into buying up farms, bakeries, and even a railroad, all in the name of cornering the pie market once and for all. Ellis Parker Butler, the man who gave the world "Pigs Is Pigs," turns small-town rivalry into an empire of hot air, one slice at a time. Ellis Parker Butler was an Iowa-born humorist who wrote more than two thousand stories, essays, and poems over a career spanning four decades, though he never quite escaped the shadow of his most famous creation, "Pigs Is Pigs." Published in 1904, "The Great American Pie Company" shows off the same gift for watching ordinary ambition curdle into absurdity, set against the folksy backdrop of a small Midwestern town not unlike the one Butler grew up in. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Jul 16

Memoirs of a Yellow Dog — A Classic Humorous Tale by O. Henry

O. Henry usually saves his surprises for the last line. This time he starts with one: the narrator is a dog. In *The Memoirs of a Yellow Dog*, a mangy, good-natured mutt gives us his candid review of apartment life, married humans, and the fine art of knowing when it's time to go. Wry, tender, and very funny — it's a small classic told from just below the dinner table. Few writers could make a stray dog sound this much like a philosopher. O. Henry's yellow dog sees his humans clearly, loves them anyway, and still knows a good exit when he smells one. It's humor with a soft heart underneath. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Welcome to the Short Storyverse—timeless stories, classic and new. All narrated by voice actor Don McDonald. Explore our connected universes of fiction, fables, humor, suspense, and flights of fancy for all ages. Inside, you’ll find eight distinct realms: • LitReading — timeless classics brought to life with rich narration • Readastorus — playful, imaginative stories for kids, hosted by a story-loving dinosaur, of course • New Tales Told — brand-new original tales echoing the spirit of classic literature • Season’s Readings — warm, evocative holiday stories celebrating the history and heart of the season all year long • FRIGHTLY! — classic and original tales of dread, mystery, and the uncanny, all delivered with atmospheric, late-night charm • Love Lit — stories about longing, devotion, obsession, illusion, sacrifice, and the moments we later recognize as love • HumorUs Stories — witty, whimsical, and wonderfully human tales from the lighter side of life • The Care Protocol — science-fiction drama exploring technology, humanity, and what happens when care becomes control Whether you crave the familiar, the fantastical, the funny, the fearsome, or the freshly imagined, the Short Storyverse is your passport to powerful storytelling—one episode at a time.

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