Menu

Menu
Prompts
Contests
Stories
Blog
Featured stories
Activity feed

Discover weekly, the best short stories

Looking for a steady supply of historical fiction short stories? Every week thousands of writers submit stories to our writing contest.

3280+ Historical fiction Short Stories to read

Submitted by writers on Reedsy Prompts to our weekly writing contest. Whether you’re looking to step back into ancient civilizations, the 19th-century, or anywhere in between, our collection of historical fiction stories is here to keep you riveted.

Historical fiction Short Stories – Page 89 of 219

How Are You Doing Out There, Sleepy Hollow?

Submitted to Contest #165

Look at all these friendly faces out in the crowd!You know, some politicians hate campaigning, but not me. No sir, not me. I love a good campaign. I love seeing democracy in action. I love shaking the hands. I love kissing the babies. I love eating all those deep-fried butter sticks you all keep cooking up. I cannot believe how many things you can deep-fry these days. Will the wonders of America ever cease?Now, as much as I’d like to stand up here and pretend everything is right as rain at the Annual Sleepy Hollow Fair and Horse Pageant, we ...

35 likes 29 comments 29
Read story

1942

Submitted to Contest #164

Where I come from, men and women become afraid as soon as they saw me. You may think my face is grotesque or has a frightening appearance, but nothing could be farther from the truth. My name is Franz Heinz, and I am a Nazi soldier stationed at Dachau, Germany. It was the spring of 1942, when I received my orders stationing me here, and I couldn’t have been happier. Like most of my comrades, I sighed a breath of relief when the scourge of duty assignment was absent from my orders: Auschwitz. Though I personally didn’t know anyone stationed...

10 likes 1 comment 1
Read story

The Photo Album

Submitted to Contest #164

TW: Death Mention, Brief Mentions of Implied Gambling/Debt Accrual---Lady Ophelia was regarded as a prim woman, dressed in modest attire, and her hair pulled neatly into a bun at the base of her neck. Gold spectacles rested on a hawk-like nose while her lips remained in a disapproving sneer like she smelled a rotting corpse throughout each day. The town’s children played daring games, challenging one another to see who could get closest to the Lady’s gated mansion. Iron-wrought fence lined the exterior, extending some twenty feet in the air,...

10 likes 3 comments 3
Read story

Memoirs of a Lion

Submitted to Contest #164

It was finally time for me to move out and start living independently. I was not moving physically of course, but politically I was going to be on my own. For the first time, I was free to chart my own future and embark on a journey that most humans call adulthood. I was born to a wealthy, aristocratic family, the sort who had an absolute belief that we had a duty to tame the world as we see fit. And like other similar families, I was placed in a distant land at a young age to spread their gospel. I was always painfully aware of my lack o...

6 likes 0 comments 0
Read story

Where am I from?

Submitted to Contest #164

—————————————————————————————————————————— I come from a very poor family. We moved from house to house across two states because my father kept bouncing the rent checks. Bouncing checks was a habit in an era where it was punishable by jail and I did have to bail him out once due to a bad check. In my high school years, we had no car, no phone and no money for a baseball glove. Naturally, I had no dates and was isolated in my school. We frequently had no money for lunch and no lunch from home. We were wealthy once when my mother’s mot...

7 likes 1 comment 1
Read story

AFTER THE STORM

Submitted to Contest #164

1982For the survivors of killing fields, the 1970s hit: Tie A Ribbon Around The Old Oak Tree struck a romantic, welcoming cord. Not so for Africa’s returning guerrillas. The warmth of the lyrics never sipped into their weary frames.In 1980, a virtually unknown racist conflict, the Rhodesian Bush War, ended with the country renamed Zimbabwe under President Robert Mugabe. We were free! Jubilant. Rid of the minority government of Prime Minister Ian Smith’s apartheid policies. The future lay before us like an asphalted highway devoid of curves a...

6 likes 0 comments 0
Read story

Centuries Away

Submitted to Contest #164

[Depictions of Historical War] Centuries Away Undistinguishable eyes glared at the blond-headed pair, the people behind the  empty faces forgotten and lost in the vast scapes of memory.  Bland red and green eyes pierced into the cold one's soul, searching for something.  Something that didn't exist, that couldn't be found. For a demon's ideals of the world. Cold blue and gray eyes shook the heart of the winged one, digging into it and clawing at it. Looking to hurt what was already broken, and to deal what had already be...

12 likes 0 comments 0
Read story

Welcome Home, Rory Bender

Submitted to Contest #164

With the sold out crowd screaming for an encore, Rory Bender unplugged his virgin white Stratocaster guitar and walked off stage staring at the path ahead.  Climbing in the backseat of the limo waiting for him, he handed the driver a couple of Ben Franklin's and croaked, "Drive me to Seneca Falls."  "That's A three hour round trip." The driver stared at the money Rory Bender had given him. "Got a problem with that?" Rory asked, glaring at the driver over his sunglasses. "There is more of that where that came from, pal." "It ain'...

7 likes 2 comments 2
Read story

The Flag

C P

Submitted to Contest #163

It was the night of 8th August 1942. Bombay was tense. Streets were deserted and an eerie gloom descended over the city. At 9 PM, on any other day, Rajitha would be playing on the street with Bhano, her classmate and neighbor, while waiting for her father who worked in a garment factory. She was waiting that day too, not on the street though, but inside her house, a single room tenement, and with a fear of uncertainty. Rajitha’s mother, Kashibai, was making rotis for her. Usually, the rotis she made were perfectly round and fluffy....

7 likes 0 comments 0
Read story

Baptisma Pyros

Submitted to Contest #163

The car window is open just a crack. Through it, I can smell the fumes and hear the rumble of the city. I would like to stick my nose out of that crack, but Shannon will say No. I was doing that until she told me to Sit on the seat and Stay. What would be best is if she opened the window all the way: then I could stick my whole head out and still Sit. Something is wrong today. Shannon is driving very quickly, so that everything outside the window whizzes past before I can see it clearly. She is afraid, and her fear makes me anxious. A p...

21 likes 26 comments 26
Read story

Get Packing

Submitted to Contest #163

Get Packing“It’s twenty-eight dollars a month, Pap!” Beulah reminded Silas. “We need that money!” She firmed her lips, and he could see the muscles twitch in her jaw. Times like this, there was no reasoning with her. He tried anyway.“Whur you goin’ to get a horse?”She jerked her thumb eastward.“Wyatts.”Silas frowned. “Wyatts? Eugene uses that horse ever’ day! He cain’t spare —” He stopped, racked by a wheezing cough.“Not that horse. Bess.”“Bess?”“That all you can do, Pap? Repeat me? Yes — Bess. I’ll offer him fifty cents a week.”“For a ...

11 likes 2 comments 2
Read story

Return to Ravensbrück

Submitted to Contest #164

Return to Ravensbrück I looked down at the letter inviting me by name, Frida Schmidt to the rededication of the Ravensbrück Concentration Camp memorial. The letter’s edge wobbled, exaggerating my trembling hand. I groped behind me, seeking the chair back, and fell on to the seat. As a sixteen-year-old, I had run from those gates into the spring of 1945 when the SS guards herded several thousand German nationals out of the camp. I’d never returned; nor did I wish to: I knew its miasma of suffering, cruelty and evil. It had drained the life ...

8 likes 0 comments 0
Read story

Because it's boring

Submitted to Contest #163

The old man is long-winded. That’s why I don’t ask him anything. Sure, I guess it was my fault. But in my defense the assignment was boring. Write about World War II. What did I know about something that happened seventy years ago and why did I care? So yeah, I kept putting it off. Until Mom found out and freaked out. I told her I didn’t know what to write. “Oh my God, James,” she said. “Why don’t you ask your grandfather for help? He was alive at that time. Or ask anyone, you crazy child?” Like she’s one to talk. Th...

9 likes 5 comments 5
Read story

HE WAS ALL DRESSED IN WHITE

Submitted to Contest #163

HE WAS ALL DRESSED IN WHITE That May afternoon Peter, who was not yet five years old, was stamping ( struggling), rather impatiently in the arms of aunt Clelia, who was so keen to take him, his beloved little nephew, to see the Holy Father up close. She, aunt Clelia, and Peter, in her arms, were near enough to the metal barrier that separated the crowd of people tightly pressed in the square from the way  where the car carrying the Pope would pass, but they were not close the barrier like the people who were i...

7 likes 0 comments 0
Read story

"I am Death."

Submitted to Contest #163

The taxicab slows to a stop, the brakes screeching. The driver barely stops in time before hitting the Plymouth in front of them. This isn’t the first time during Oppie's trip the driver had shown himself a bit inattentive. Oppie wonders briefly if the driver got his license from a crackerjack box. This is no time for reckless driving, he thinks to himself. He has to be back at the lab soon, but he'd rather walk the rest of the way than go through that again.He looks out the window, trying to stuff down his feelings of annoyance. Where ...

19 likes 4 comments 4
Read story
RBE | Illustrated Short Stories | 2024-06

Bring your short stories to life

Fuse character, story, and conflict with tools in Reedsy Studio. All for free.