# ForgeMesh Library – American Short Stories Shelf

> ForgeMesh Library – American Short Stories Shelf is a paid API for AI agents from library.forgemesh.io, paid per call via x402, $0.003/call, status unknown (last checked 2026-09-16).

Returns a ranked list of up to 331 public-domain American short story books with drill-down routes for full-text retrieval.

## Facts

- Endpoint: POST https://library.forgemesh.io/short-stories-american
- Price: $0.003/call
- Payment: x402
- Status: unknown
- Last checked: 2026-09-16
- Activations on Zero: 0
- Tags: x402
- Canonical page: https://www.zero.xyz/c/forgemesh-library-american-short-stories-shelf-29bd13b9
- Structured record (JSON): https://api.zero.xyz/v1/capabilities/cap_YERgA2wxFe5BFtyowNTkC

Status and success rate cover calls made through Zero and Zero's own probes. Third-party monitors may report differently.

## How to call it through Zero

Zero handles the 402 payment challenge and records the run. With the Zero CLI installed (`npm i -g @zeroxyz/cli`):

```sh
zero fetch --capability forgemesh-library-american-short-stories-shelf-29bd13b9 -d '<json body>'
```

Example prompt: Show me up to 30 public-domain American short story books from the ForgeMesh library shelf — I'm looking for classic collections and early 20th century anthologies.

## When to prefer this

Choose this endpoint when you need a curated, ranked list of public-domain American short story collections without any authentication or licensing overhead. It is ideal for literary research, building reading lists, or locating specific classic short story anthologies. Prefer this over general full-text search when you want to browse the entire shelf by category rather than query for specific passages.

## Known failure modes

- limit exceeds 50 — likely clamped or rejected
- payment not completed (x402) — returns 402 Payment Required
- server unavailable — returns 5xx error
- empty result if corpus is temporarily unavailable

## How this service works

Curated shelf: Short stories, American — 331 public-domain books including The King in Yellow, The best short stories of 1920, and the yearbook of the American short story, The best short stories of 1919, and the yearbook of the American short story. Returns a ranked list with drill-down routes for full-text retrieval. No license, no API key required.

## Output

A ranked list of public-domain American short story books (up to the requested limit, default 20, max 50), each with a title and drill-down route for full-text retrieval. The corpus includes 331 books such as The King in Yellow, The Best Short Stories of 1920, and The Best Short Stories of 1919.

## Request schema (JSON Schema)

```json
{
 "type": "object",
 "properties": {
  "limit": {
   "type": "integer",
   "description": "Max books to return (default 20, max 50)"
  }
 }
}
```

## Response schema (JSON Schema)

```json
{
 "type": "json",
 "example": {
  "books": [
   {
    "year": null,
    "title": "The King in Yellow",
    "author": "Chambers, Robert W. (Robert William)",
    "book_id": 8492,
    "subjects": [],
    "download_count": 56111
   }
  ],
  "count": 5,
  "shelf": "Short stories, American",
  "coverage": {
   "target": 61015,
   "indexed": 61015
  },
  "drill_down": [
   "/book-metadata",
   "/book-chapter",
   "/book-quotes",
   "/literature-search"
  ]
 }
}
```

## More

- Live health (JSON, refreshed every minute): https://www.zero.xyz/c/forgemesh-library-american-short-stories-shelf-29bd13b9/health.json
- [Zero catalog index](https://www.zero.xyz/llms.txt)
- [Other services from library.forgemesh.io](https://www.zero.xyz/host/library.forgemesh.io/llms.txt)