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30190+ Fiction Short Stories to read

Submitted by writers on Reedsy Prompts to our weekly writing contest . If you’re looking for the best fiction short stories to read online, we’ve got you covered. Wide-ranging and ever-curious, these free short stories will meet your reading needs.

🏆 Winning stories

“ hearts are trump ” by sarah coury.

🏆 Winner of Contest #246

Uncle Abe and Uncle Will haven’t played cards together in years. If you want to get real technical about it, Uncle Abe and Uncle Will haven’t even shared the same room in years, but that ain’t news to anyone east of Livernois. By now, the entire city of Detroit knows about Abraham and William Haddad—at least those who regularly stop into the family party store for their weekly supply of meats, spirits, and fresh-baked pita. It’s old news. Two bitter brothers broken up over a girl who left town anyway. It’s been ages and the aunties need fres...

“ Everything is Connected ” by Olivier Breuleux

🏆 Winner of Contest #245

Many people don't believe that everything is connected. It's strange. They believe in magnets, in electromagnetic waves, in quantum action at a distance. They believe that the force of gravity makes the Earth revolve around the Sun, and yet they do not believe that the same forces can influence the smaller details of our fate. They believe that it is all up to them. That they have free will. They say that Jupiter can gently pull the Sun, yet it cannot move our infinitely smaller souls.A paradox.The stars are difficult to read, for sure. The ...

“ KILLER IN THE WILLOWS ” by Kajsa Ohman

🏆 Winner of Contest #235

KILLER IN THE WILLOWSJust do it, so the T-shirts say. Just pick up the gun, pull the trigger—but maybe aim first, aim at the upper sternum and then pull the trigger, congratulating yourself that at last, in your long, passive life, you have shot somebody dead. So she did, and thus she became a murderer. She slipped through the night after that and disappeared into the willows to wash off any blood that spattered onto her clothing. The willows were thickl...

⭐️ Recommended stories

“ five-star fish tacos ” by elisa thompson.

Submitted to Contest #249

The first time Beto saw Helen, she was dancing by herself at one of those touristy beach clubs in Puerto Peñasco. Eyes closed, she swayed to Ricky Martin’s Canción Bonita, wholly oblivious to the fact that people had set down their drinks to watch. Helen was young and uninhibited back then, in a green bikini top and a flowery skirt that kept inching lower with every rotation of her voluptuous hips. The men watched because they wanted her, and their wives and girlfriends watched because they all wished they had the guts to dance like that. He...

“ Lost ” by JW Asbridge

“You mean you don’t remember we have plans to go to Cannon Beach with the kids next weekend?” Ben peered at Denise over his coffee, his green eyes like snarled weeds.        “No. That can’t be right because I’m scheduled to help Chris move Stacy’s stuff next weekend.” Hail rattled the roof as Denise poured herself a bowl of granola. Lately, Ben had been accusing her of saying and doing all kinds of things she hadn’t. He was losing it. Fifty-years-old wasn’t too young for early-onset Alzheimer’s. Maybe ...

“ An Unorthodox Interview ” by Claire Payne

“Well, how do I look?” “Perfect, Honey.” My wife leaned forward and kissed my freshly shaven cheek. I had to agree with her, I did look perfect. My suit was crisp, my tie was straight, and my revolver was perfectly concealed. She checked her watch. “Oh no, you’d better get going. Can’t be late!” she said, as she pushed me out the door. I hurried down 5 flights of stairs, cursing our apartment building’s elevator for being under constant repair. My car was nondescript and gray, with license plates that traced back to a remarkably unassuming i...

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✍️ All stories

“ against all odds ” by ck hau.

Mo hurriedly put on his wrinkled button-up dress shirt which he buttoned wrongly, and threw on a linty suit. He rubbed some spit in his hair. No time for gel. No time for ironing the shirt and sweeping off the lints off the suit either. He grabbed his backpack, and dashed out the door, with a piece of bread in his mouth and a half-filled coffee cup in his hand. He checked his phone as he scarfed down his bread and downed the coffee. Thirty minutes until his job interview at 10:00. The problem is that the ride from home to the office takes at...

“ The Moon Witch ” by Janece Williams

Sensitivity Note: Questionable/Dubious Consent, DeceptionThe shadows laughed at me from alleyways as I passed, whispering about how hopelessly late I was. I gave the nasty spirits the middle finger, heart thumping as I neared the long line of applicants hanging out the door. I had no choice but to stop halfway down the street, staring up at the glittering castle on the hill. The Moon Witch’s palace was a true testament to her power, serving as a beacon of celestial energy throughout the land. With the light from a thousand stars, she cr...

“ Smoke ” by Christopher Kooker

DO NOT DRIVE INTO SMOKE. The yellowed road sign was already a dwindling speck in his side mirror, hardly worth devoting any extra energy on, but Bryan couldn’t shake the nasty thought that a sign like that was just the sort of unimpeachable non-action that authorities like to take in a crisis. Notably, he didn’t put much thought into the actual substance of the warning. Wispy gray clouds of smoke rolled somewhere ahead, their exact distance impossible to judge against the resolutely flat landscape. Besides, driving into the smoke didn’t see...

“ The Reservoir ” by Stevie Burges

The ReservoirMargaret began to feel fear rising in her throat as she drove in the dark. Where the hell was she? “Oh my god, what’s that?” she thought. Peering over the driving wheel, she realised it was a vast body of water that had appeared suddenly out of nowhere. Her car’s main beam caught sight of a small country lane to her right and, turning the car wheel, began to ascend rapidly. As she neared the summit, putting her foot on the brake, she scrabbled around on the passenger seat and located the discarded map. L...

“ An Old Friend Named Bullseye ” by Grayson Chilcote

Dalmani’s squad was pushed so far back, he bumped into the archers who were supposed to be holding the line on the opposite side of the hill. They probably had been pushed up the hill as well. As the steel on his back met the leather of another, he spun around to see if the enemy had advanced behind him. He was met with a pleasant surprise, however, as he made eye contact with one of his oldest friends, Merellie.  Merellie is a great archer, one of the army's best. The man is practically born to hold a bow in his hands, and is gifted wi...

“ Marcie-Fleur Rushes In ” by Kaitlyn Wadsworth

Sparkles of light from the overhead disco ball flickered around the dance floor of the Mug and Jug bar, mingling and refracting off Marcie-Fleur’s blue and silver sequined mini dress. She shimmied while a hundred butterflies beat their way out of her tummy and flitted around with the dancing lights. The rock band drummed and strummed their popular rhythms while the gravelly voice of the lead singer screamed out emotion-filled vocals. Marcie loved the music of this band, Xscape. Her arms, hips, legs, and feet clad in totally impractical kille...

“ The Agony of Defeat ” by Jim LaFleur

Jeremy's feet were on fire. Not in the metaphorical sense that one often associates with a particularly spicy salsa dance or an overenthusiastic round of hopscotch on a hot day, but in a literal, searing, 'why-are-my-toes-combusting?' kind of way. He was dancing—or more accurately, flailing—on the bar at The Rusty Nail, a dive so divey that even the cockroaches had developed a taste for cheap beer and regret. The crowd, a motley crew of weathered regulars and tipsy college students, cheered him on, mistaking his agony for some avant-garde da...

“ Love Isn’t Just Blind, It’s Ludicrous ” by Michael Jefferson

Jammed like a pickled sardine on the express train to 14th Street with thousands of other commuters, Ryan Random knows there is more to life than assembling computer components and drinking mochaccinos with his co-worker. As platforms and people flash by in a dizzying blur, Ryan closes his eyes, his mind conjuring up a cozy villa in Greece with a passing stream surrounded by fig trees and grape leaves. Standing in front of the villa, her features a misty blur is a woman. Opening his eyes, Ryan finds himself next to a grey-haired old man no t...

“ Lost and Found ” by John Steckley

Discovering that I am Lost           I am so lost. I shouldn’t be surprised by that though. Not knowing what I am doing or why I am doing it is an increasing part of my life these days. This kind of ‘what am I doing and why am I doing it’ began a few years back when I turned 70 years of age. I would open the refrigerator door, and have no idea what it was I was looking for. I would stare and stare and eventually would give up and shut the refrigerator door. ...

“ The Road Ahead ” by Helen A Smith

TW: mentions a child’s death.This isn’t happening to me! When I’m not pacing the waiting room, I’m riveted to the flashing text highlighted in yellow against the black background. If I carry on like this, I’ll get a crick in my neck. The station notice board, technically known as the split-flap display, alerts me the 7:54 train, final destination Kings Cross, has been cancelled due to shortage of train crew. Can you please explain why there’s not enough train crew? Did somebody decide to pull a sickie at the last minute? Just my luck that th...

“ Game, Set, and Match ” by PJ Town

(contains swearing and irreverent references to God)I hurried off the stage and made for the dressing-room, which was more like a cupboard really. When I got there, I extricated the bank notes tucked into my waist band and stockings, stuffing them straight in my purse. Fighting back the nausea I always felt after a number, I stripped, ran a cloth under the tap, and wiped myself down.The whisky bottle called me from the make-up table. I poured myself a good measure, downing it in one. And that’s when it caught my eye: an envelope at the foot ...

“ Start Your Engine ” by Holley Perkins

I drum my fingers on my thigh, wondering if it’s possible for this elevator to move any slower. Looking down at my watch my eyes grow wide and I inhale sharply. It’s ten forty-five. I’ve anticipated this for weeks, traveling several hundred miles, including crossing two states to be here. I’ve worked so hard only to oversleep this morning. This is my final interview for medical school. I’m desperate to make a good impression on the panel of professors and current students that I’ll meet today, and a late arrival will not be looked upon favor...

“ A Long, Dark Road ” by Amber Kishlock

A light breeze flowed through my open window, rustling my hair and breathing life into the dying ember of the joint between my fingertips. I know, I know. I shouldn’t be getting high when I still need to drive home. But it was so beautiful tonight. Peaceful. Perfect. It was pitch black, save for the shining silver moon and her glimmering stars above me. Yawning fields rolled out before me like a green carpet, gently sloping here and there. Dotting the serene landscape were small, wooded areas and wetlands. Places for animals of all kinds to ...

“ Melissa's Dancee ” by Hoogi Somerville

When he asked Melissa if she wanted to dance at the bar, she thought it was an odd question because they were nowhere near a bar. In fact, they were pitching hay to Levi’s horses in the barn. Levi was a nice enough guy, but they had known each other for fifteen years, ever since they met in the first grade. Melissa had a brief crush on Levi somewhere around the 6th or 7th grade, but quickly realized that they were better off as friends.“Mel,” he said, “I mean dancing on the bar at the Crown Saloon.” “Uhm, no,” was Melissa...

The Best Fiction Short Stories

Short fiction stories are a fantastic way to access the literary world in compact, bite-sized reading sessions. The short story as we know it today began in the 19th century, when the increasing interest in print literary magazines led to many authors like Arthur Conan Doyle and Charles Dickens writing and publishing stories. Later, with the onset of modernism in the beginning of the 20th century, the fiction short story began to adopt more abstract forms, embracing ambiguity and inconclusivity. The later 20th century brought the increasing popularity of the short story as an artistic and literary undertaking. 

Short fiction stories span every imaginable genre. From literary fiction (the likes of which you’ll see published in The New Yorker ), to crime, fantasy, and romance stories, the form is remarkable for its versatility and adaptability.

Looking for fiction short stories to read?

On this page, you can read fiction short stories for free! These are stories that have been submitted to Reedsy’s weekly writing contest, with shortlisted or winning stories chosen by our judges appearing at the top of the page for your convenience. And if you're looking for more of the contest's best entries, make sure to claim your free copy of Prompted , our new literary magazine.

If you discover a writer whose work you really enjoy and admire, head over to their profile and click ‘Follow’ to keep up to date with their newest writing. They’ll appreciate it!

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The Best Reviewed Short Story Collections of 2021

Featuring haruki murakami, brandon taylor, elizabeth mccracken, kevin barry, lily king, and more.

Well, friends, another grim and grueling plague year is drawing to a close, and that can mean only one thing: it’s time to put on our Book Marks stats hats and tabulate the best reviewed books of the past twelve months.

Yes, using reviews drawn from more than 150 publications, over the next two weeks we’ll be revealing the most critically-acclaimed books of 2021, in the categories of (deep breath): Memoir and Biography ; Sci-Fi, Fantasy, and Horror ; Short Story Collections; Essay Collections; Poetry; Mystery and Crime; Graphic Literature; Literature in Translation; General Fiction; and General Nonfiction.

Today’s installment: Short Story Collections .

Brought to you by Book Marks , Lit Hub’s “Rotten Tomatoes for books.”

1. Afterparties by Anthony Veasna So (Ecco)

22 Rave • 5 Positive • 1 Mixed

“The presence of the author is so vivid in Afterparties , Anthony Veasna So’s collection of stories, he seems to be at your elbow as you read … The personality that animates Afterparties is unmistakably youthful, and the stories themselves are mainly built around conditions of youth—vexed and tender relationships with parents, awkward romances, nebulous worries about the future. But from his vantage on the evanescent bridge to maturity, So is puzzling out some big questions, ones that might be exigent from different vantages at any age. The stories are great fun to read—brimming over with life and energy and comic insight and deep feeling.”

–Deborah Eisenberg ( New York Review of Books )

2. Filthy Animals by Brandon Taylor (Riverhead)

19 Rave • 7 Positive • 2 Mixed Read an interview with Brandon Taylor here

“Taylor plays the Lionel-Charles-Sophie storyline for all its awkwardness and resentment, but it can feel like a note held too long to suspend commitment, which is the resolution we’re trained to expect … The violence is neither glamorous nor gratuitous; it is senseless without being pointless. In contrast, Taylor presents such earnest moments of vulnerability in Anne of Cleves that my breath hitched … Some writers have the gift of perfect pitch when writing dialogue; Taylor’s gift is perfect tempo. In a band of writers, he’d be the drummer who sticks to a steady moderato. He neither rushes a story to its high notes nor drags the pace so that we can admire his voice. And as a plotter, he doesn’t rely on gasp-inducing reveals … Taylor’s superpower is compressing a lifetime of backstory into a paragraph – sometimes just a sentence … I’ve come to expect, in fiction, the story of the Sad Gay Youth who is rejected by his often religious family and thereafter becomes self-destructive or reckless. And while Taylor refracts versions of this story throughout the collection, he does so without overly romanticising it … He is a writer of enormous subtlety and of composure beyond his years.”

–Ian Williams ( The Guardian )

3. First Person Singular by Haruki Murakami (Knopf)

13 Rave • 17 Positive • 7 Mixed • 5 Pan

“… a blazing and brilliant return to form … a taut and tight, suspenseful and spellbinding, witty and wonderful group of eight stories … there isn’t a weak one in the bunch. The stories echo with Murakami’s preoccupations. Nostalgia and longing for the charged, evocative moments of young adulthood. Memory’s power and fragility; how identity forms from random decisions, ‘minor incidents,’ and chance encounters; the at once intransigent and fragile nature of the ‘self.’ Guilt, shame, and regret for mistakes made and people damaged by foolish or heartless choices. The power and potency of young love and the residual weight of fleeting erotic entanglements. Music’s power to make indelible impressions, elicit buried memories, connect otherwise very different people, and capture what words cannot. The themes become a kind of meter against which all the stories make their particular, chiming rhythms … The reading experience is unsettled by a pervasive blurring of the lines between fantasy and reality, dream and waking … Most of the narrators foreground the act of telling and ruminate on the intention behind and effects of disclosing secrets, putting inchoate impulses, fears, or yearnings into clear, logical prose … This mesmerizing collection would make a superb introduction to Murakami for anyone who hasn’t yet fallen under his spell; his legion of devoted fans will gobble it up and beg for more.”

–Pricilla Gilman ( The Boston Globe )

4. That Old Country Music by Kevin Barry (Doubleday)

13 Rave • 10 Positive •1 Mixed

“There’s not a bad story in the bunch, and it’s as accomplished a book as Barry has ever written … Barry does an excellent job probing the psyche of his diffident protagonist, and ends the story with an unexpected moment of sweetness that’s anything but cloying—realism doesn’t need to be miserablism, he seems to hint; sometimes things actually do work out … Barry has a rare gift for crafting characters the reader cares about despite their flaws; in just 13 pages, he manages to make Hannah and Setanta come to life through sharp dialogue and keen observations … Barry proves to be a master of writing about both love and cruelty … Barry brilliantly evokes both the good and bad sides of love, and does so with stunningly gorgeous writing … There’s not an aspect of writing that Barry doesn’t excel at. His dialogue rings true, and he’s amazingly gifted at scene-setting—he evokes both the landscape of western Ireland and the landscape of the human heart beautifully. His greatest accomplishment, perhaps, is his understanding of the ways our collective psyche works; he seems to have an innate sense of why people behave the way we do, and exactly what we’re capable of, both good and bad.”

–Michael Schaub ( NPR )

5. Milk Blood Heat by Dantiel W. Moniz (Grove)

17 Rave • 1 Positive Listen to an interview with Dantiel W. Moniz here

“Mortality is the undercurrent in Dantiel W. Moniz’s electrifying debut story collection, Milk Blood Heat , but where there’s death there is the whir of life, too. A lot of collections consist of some duds, yet every single page in this book is a shimmering seashell that contains the sound of multiple oceans. Reading one of Moniz’s stories is like holding your breath underwater while letting the salt sting your fresh wounds. It’s exhilarating and shocking and even healing. The power in these stories rests in their veracity, vitality and vulnerability.”

–Michelle Filgate ( The Washington Post )

6. The Dangers of Smoking in Bed by Mariana Enriquez (Hogarth)

15 Rave 2 Positive Read a story from The Dangers of Smoking in Bed here

“There’s something thrilling about other people’s suffering—at least within this collection’s 12 stories of death, sex and the occult. Horrors are relayed in a stylish deadpan … Enriquez’s plots deteriorate with satisfying celerity … Largely it’s insatiable women, raggedy slum dwellers and dead children—those who are ordinarily powerless—who wield unholy power in this collection, and they seem uninterested in being reasonable. And Enriquez is particularly adept at capturing the single-minded intensity of teenage girls … If some of these stories end vaguely, the best ones close on the verge of some transgressive climax … To Enriquez, there’s pleasure in the perverse.”

–Chelsea Leu ( The New York Times Book Review )

7. The Souvenir Museum by Elizabeth McCracken (Ecco)

13 Rave • 2 Positive • 1 Mixed Read Elizabeth McCracken on savoring the mystery of stories here

“Elizabeth McCracken’s The Souvenir Museum begins with one of the funniest short stories I’ve read in a long time … I had to stop reading ‘The Irish Wedding’ several times to explain to my husband why I was laughing so hard. I kept thinking: I wish I were reading a whole book about these people … they’re all beguiling … This tale, like much of McCracken’s work, captures the mixed bag that characterizes most people’s lives … McCracken’s writing is never dull. She ends this fantastic collection with a second English wedding and its aftermath, nearly 20 years after the first, delivering happiness tempered by sobering circumstances—and a satisfying symmetry.”

–Heller McAlpin ( NPR )

8. Wild Swims by Dorthe Nors (Graywolf)

13 Rave • 1 Positive Read an excerpt from Wild Swims here

“How slippery the work of the Danish writer Dorthe Nors is, how it sideswipes and gleams … The stories are vivid the way a flash of immobilizing pain is vivid … Perhaps because they’re so very short and because they mostly sketch slight interior shifts in her characters, Nors’s stories all feel a little bashful, a little tender. Surely this is intentional … Most of her stories are too short to linger deeply in time or consciousness; the characters spin back into their silence almost as soon as they emerge on the page. Nors is a master at portraying female rage, but here there is also no violent explosion outward, instead a sort of inner collapse; her characters assiduously resist confronting their fury until it rises up against them and attacks their bodies … The sense of simultaneous, furious upwelling into text and retraction into shame or reticence gives the stories a powerful undercurrent, as if they were constantly wrestling with themselves. Inherently self-contradicting, they wobble interestingly on their axes, pulled between outraged individualism and the restrictive Janteloven.”

–Lauren Groff ( The New York Review of Books )

9. Walking on Cowrie Shells by Nana Nkweti (Graywolf)

12 Rave • 1 Mixed Read an interview with Nana Nkweti here

“The pure energy of the words strikes first, the thrumming, soaring, frenetic pace of Nana Nkweti’s expression … None of these stories end with a miraculous healing. Even where revelations occur, they never erase scars. Nkweti uses genre tropes to subvert our expectations. She employs the zombie story, the fairy tale, and the confessional in order to invert conventions … The levity of Nkweti’s writing can make even passing descriptions a delight … Occasionally the writing veers into the overwrought … But the sheer speed of Nkweti’s expression allows for correction in midair, and her keen descriptive eye provides more pleasures than missteps … Her inventiveness dazzles.”

–Lee Thomas ( Los Angeles Review of Books )

10. My Monticello by Jocelyn Nicole Johnson (Henry Holt)

9 Rave • 4 Positive 1 Mixed Read Jocelyn Nicole Johnson on how writing “vengeful fiction” can make you a better person, here

“Jocelyn Nicole Johnson uses history to spectacular effect in her debut fiction collection … What makes My Monticello particularly resonant is that it does not stray far from life as we know it today. In the near future conjured by Johnson, there are the heat waves and wildfires that bring climate change into view. There is fallout from a fraught election. There is the vile replacement theory rhetoric of the right wing. But the lives of Johnson’s richly drawn characters—their personal stories—are always in focus. And, because of it, the storytelling is propulsive, as we follow these refugees along a harrowing journey, with danger ever at their heels. My Monticello is, quite simply, an extraordinary debut from a gifted writer with an unflinching view of history and what may come of it.”

–Anissa Gray ( The Washington Post )

Our System:

RAVE = 5 points • POSITIVE = 3 points • MIXED = 1 point • PAN = -5 points

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The Best Short Story Collections for Great Literature in Small Portions

Works by revered writers like Zadie Smith and Ian McEwan, as well as breakthrough names like Emma Cline and Carmen Maria Machado

Short stories are more than just a quick fix of fiction for the time-strapped. When crafted well, short stories are like grenades which quickly explode in front of us. They let us dip our toe into strange minds and foreign worlds, or conceal something which lurks behind the pages before sliding into view. Here we round up the best classic and modern short story collections that should be on everyone's radar, whether you're looking to get more into the form or discover some hidden gems.

Everything Ravaged, Everything Burned by Wells Tower

When it was first published in 2009, this debut short story collection by the American writer Wells Tower was something of a sensation. Here was a practitioner who seemed to have sprung fresh out of the traps already in possession of an innate mastery of his form: a gift for shaping intriguing, funny and occasionally devastating tales – about disaffected American schoolboys and disaffected marauding Vikings alike – which contained laser-sighted observations about human behaviour. Over a decade later, Towers’ book has lost none of its power or its poise.

Complete Stories by Flannery O’Connor

It is hard to underplay the legacy of Flannery O’Connor’s short stories, of which she wrote 32 in her relatively brief life (she died of lupus at 39, in 1964). Winning the National Book Award for Fiction for this collection (posthumously) in 1972 might be one of them, though in 2009 it was named the best book ever to have won the award (commiserations to John Cheever and Eudora Welty). A devout Catholic with an ear for the sardonic who came to epitomise the Southern Gothic, Flannery’s world view, once deemed progressive, has come under closer scrutiny of late – particularly around race – but for understanding the development of the short story in mid-century America this collection is essential.

Pastoralia by George Saunders

If there’s one thing that George Saunders nails in his short stories (and there’s not one, there are many) it’s his imaginative eye for the absurd. Thus the title story of Pastoralia , his second short story collection, published in 2000, is an account of the inner neuroses of a failing father with difficult co-workers, who just so happens not to work for an accountancy firm, but for a nightmarish evolution-of-mankind-themed visitor attraction at which he earns his living by grunting like a caveman and pretending to eat bugs. It’s typical of the pathos and humour that Saunders is so good at eliciting, so that even the bleakest, most ridiculous scenarios are still infused with delight.

Afterparties by Anthony Veasna So

The Central Valley of California is the backdrop of this psychedelic debut from Anthony Veasna So, a Cambodian-American writer who tragically died before the book was published. In it, So tells tales that ricochet between being tenderly moving and darkly amusing, drawing on his own race and sexuality to create characters with many different, and sometimes clashing, identities.

[An earlier version of this entry included incorrect information about the circumstances of the author's death.]

Show Them a Good Time by Nicole Flattery

The buzzy debut from Irish writer Nicole Flattery inspired a bidding war ahead of its publication in 2019, and reading the collection it feels as though she has inhaled the absurdity this strange collective moment and let it out in one steady plumes. One story finds a woman maniacally dating during an apocalypse, while another watches a plucky teenage girl trying to seduce her parent's builder by watching The Exorcist together.

Objects of Desire by Clare Sestanovich

In eleven distinct but spiritually interwoven stories, New Yorker editor Clare Sestanovich finds women at different crossroads in their lives. In the title story, a woman finds herself unable to move on from her ex and questioning the life she has built since leaving him, while another focuses on a woman who finds herself on the outskirts of a polyamorous relationship, berating herself for not being in the middle of the action.

Filthy Animals by Brandon Taylor

Brandon Taylor's electric novel Real Life, which offered a Black perspective on the pernicious yet subtle racism entrenched in American college life, earned him a Booker Prize nomination in 2020. His next work is a collection of linked short stories set in the Midwest, including an outbreak of violence amongst a group of teenagers, a girl who pushes her babysitter to the edge, and a man in a precarious open relationship with two dancers.

You Will Never Be Forgotten by Mary South

As the dismembered body which features on the cover might suggest, Mary South's pitch-black collection of stories is not exactly a jolly read. Here you'll find Black Mirror- esque tales about a moderator for grim online videos of suicide and beheadings, a rehabilitation camp for internet trolls where one guest goes astray, and the tale of an architect who finds her work inspired by her daughter's birth defect. An alluring collection of stories about the ways our pain manifests and the polarised world we live in.

Daddy by Emma Cline

The author of the best-selling The Girls, inspired by the Manson family and killing of Sharon Tate, finds equally dark territory in this collection of stories about who holds power between men and women, adults and children. In one story we visit a family at Christmas time who are trying to move past the abuse of the father figure, while in another a violent incident brings a father and son together. Cline's understanding of the darkness inside human beings bringing each story to life.

Your Duck is My Duck by Deborah Eisenberg

This acclaimed collection of six stories, the first release from Eisenberg in 12 years, is brilliantly droll and crackling with life. Whether dismantling our relationship with money or the lasting wounds which grief leaves us on, Your Duck is My Duck is both moving and amusing.

Sam The Cat by Matthew Klam

The Office Of Historical Corrections by Danielle Evans

This celebrated 2020 collection is an exploration of race which takes you on a journey alongside the conflicted characters which Evans presents. From the story of a white university student who finds that a photograph in which she's wearing a Confederate flag bikini has gone viral, to the tale of how a wedding takes an unexpected twist, Evans tiptoes through uncomfortable topics with enjoyable and impressive results.

To Be a Man by Nicole Krauss

Krauss, author of acclaimed novels such as Man Walks Into a Room and The History of Love, here takes the long view of life. These stories connect a moment in a girl's adolescence to the feeling of youth felt by a woman in later life, linking up the sons, husbands and friends in a woman's life to question the differences between the sexes.

You Think It, I'll Say It by Curtis Sittenfeld

In an age rife with hustles and scams, Sittenfeld's You Think It I'll Say It looks not at those trying to con us, but at the acts of self-deception we engage in. Whether that means the ways which we misread other people or our tendencies to unknowingly dupe ourselves, these ten stories feel timeless yet knowing of the current zeitgeist.

Her Body and Other Parties by Carmen Maria Machado

The debut book from Machado explores the various violences inflicted in women's bodies, her writing walking a tightrope between the erotic and horrific, the amusing and the macabre. In 'The Husband Stitch' she explores the body-wrenching pain of labour and the joke of men asking the surgeon for an extra stitch when putting their wife back together, while 'Eight Bites' digs into the fairytale promises of weight-loss transformation.

Grand Union by Zadie Smith

Having mastered the novel and essay formats, British literary stalwart Zadie Smith turned her pen to short stories in 2019. The 19 different tales in Grand Union are sprawling in their reach, touching on everything from single motherhood to the free speech debate in universities, objectifying men to the urban myth of Michael Jackson leaving New York with friends on the morning of 9/11, all told in Smith's commanding prose.

Bad Behaviour by Mary Gaitskill

Long, long before Phoebe Waller-Bridge caused a stir with Fleabag , Mary Gaitskill was dissecting the power dynamics of sex and relationships between men and women with her intense tone of voice. Bad Behaviour burns with longing and passion, from stories about ex partners haunting a city to a woman waiting for a date to show up while he watches her from across the street. These stories are uncomfortable, prescient and fascinating.

Florida by Lauren Groff

Snakes, crocodiles and lizards stalk the pages of this 2018 collection from one of America's most celebrated novelists, in which the muggy, murky state of Florida is always a principle character. Groff's mastery of language, plot and dialogue are on full display in a set of stories that linger long after you've closed the last page.

This Is How You Lose Her by Junot Díaz

In his unmistakably brash style, Díaz pulls you into the life of his recurring protagonist Yunior at the point of his break-up with his long-term girlfriend, then when a woman that comes into his life fleetingly then dumps him and an older woman he has an affair with who becomes his teacher. Despite the message of how flawed our relationships are, Díaz reminds us that “ love, real love, is not so easily shed.”

The Love Object by Edna O'Brien

One of great modern Irish writers, this 2014 collection spans five decades of brilliance from O'Brien whose prose style is among the most revered of any living author. Her characters range from lonely nuns to single mothers to modern millionaires and are consistently brilliantly.

Miranda Collinge is the Deputy Editor of Esquire, overseeing editorial commissioning for the brand. With a background in arts and entertainment journalism, she also writes widely herself, on topics ranging from Instagram fish to psychedelic supper clubs, and has written numerous cover profiles for the magazine including Cillian Murphy, Rami Malek and Tom Hardy.

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14 Canadian short story collections to read for Short Story Month

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May is Short Story Month. Celebrate by checking out one of these great Canadian short story collections.

Cocktail  by Lisa Alward

Cocktail   is a short story collection that explores some of life's watershed moments and the tiny horrors of domestic life. Beginning in the 1960s and moving forward through the decades,  Cocktail  tells intimate and immersive stories about the power of desire — and the cost of pursuing it.

Cocktail  was longlisted for the Carol Shields Prize and shortlisted for the Danuta Gleed Literary Award . 

The CBC Poetry Prize is open for Canadian writers from April 1 to June 1

Lisa Alward's short fiction has appeared in  The Journey Prize Stories 2017,   Best Canadian Stories 2017  and  Best Canadian Stories 2016 . She is the winner of the New Quarterly's 2016 Peter Hinchcliffe Short Fiction Award as well as the 2015 Fiddlehead Short Fiction Prize. She lives in Fredericton. She was on  the 2018 CBC Short Story Prize longlist  for  Orlando 1974  which is included in  Cocktail . 

Death by a Thousand Cuts  by Shashi Bhat

Death by a Thousand Cuts   traces the funny, honest and difficult parts of womanhood. From a writer whose ex published a book about their breakup to the confession wrought by a Reddit post, these stories probe rage, loneliness, bodily autonomy and these women's relationships with themselves just as much as those around them. 

• Shashi Bhat writes about the South Asian female experience in her collection of short stories

Shashi Bhat's previous novels include  The Family Took Shape , a finalist for the Thomas Raddall Atlantic Fiction Award and  The Most Precious Substance on Earth ,  which was also a finalist for the  Governor General's Literary Award for fiction  in 2022. Her short stories won the Writers' Trust/McClelland & Stewart Journey Prize and been shortlisted for a National Magazine Award and the RBC Bronwen Wallace Award for Emerging Writers. Bhat lives in New Westminster, B.C.

The Syrian Ladies Benevolent Society  by Christine Estima

The Syrian Ladies Benevolent Society  is a collection of connected stories that traces the immigrant experience of an Arab family through multiple generations. From brave Syrian refugees to trailblazing Lebanese freedom fighters, Azuree knows she comes from a long line of daring Arab women. These stories follow her as she explores ideas of love, faith, despair and the effects of war — and what those family histories mean for her as an Arab woman in the 21st century. 

• Christine Estima's vibrant story collection highlights the heart and history of the Arab diaspora in Montreal

Christine Estima is a writer, playwright and journalist living in Toronto. Her writing has appeared in numerous publications and she was longlisted for the 2015  CBC Nonfiction Prize .  The Syrian Ladies Benevolant Society  is her first book. 

Her Body Among Animals  by Paola Ferrante

Her Body Among Animals  is a genre-bending collection of short stories that merges sci-fi, horror, fairy tales and pop culture to examine the challenges and boundaries society places on women's bodies. 

Her Body Among Animals   is shortlisted for the Danuta Gleed Literary Award . 

• 5 Canadian authors shortlisted for $10K Danuta Gleed Literary Award for best debut short story collection

Paola Ferrante is a poet and fiction writer from Toronto. Her books include the poetry collection  What to Wear When Surviving A Lion Attack  and the poetry chapbook  The Dark Unwind.  She was longlisted for the 2020 Journey Prize and won Room's 2018 prize for fiction.

Soft Serve  by Allison Graves

Soft Serve   is an edgy short story collection all about unconventional attachments between people and the reasons they endure. Through random encounters on highways, dating apps and fast food chains, the characters in these stories connect as they wander through the spaces — real and virtual — of our modern lives. 

• How a cappuccino sparked Allison Graves' writing career

Allison Graves is a Newfoundland-based writer and musician. Her work has appeared in The Antigonish Review, Riddle Fence Magazine and Room Magazine. Her fiction has been longlisted for prizes in Prism, The Fiddlehead and The Newfoundland Quarterly.  Soft Serve  is her debut fiction collection. 

Tales for Late Night Bonfires  by G.A. Grisenthwaite

In  Tales for Late Night Bonfires , writer G.A. Grisenthwaite blends the Indigenous tradition of oral storytelling with his own unique literary style. From tales about an impossible moose hunt to tales about the "Real Santa," Grisenthwaite crafts witty stories — each more uncanny than the last.

• G.A. Grisenthwaite's novel  Home Waltz  is a coming-of-age story about friendship, identity and acceptance

Grisenthwaite is Nłeʔkepmx, a member of the Lytton First Nation who currently lives in Kingsville, Ont. He made the  2021 CBC Short Story Prize longlist  and his 2020 debut novel  Home Waltz  was shortlisted for the  Governor General's Literary Award for fiction .

Stray Dogs  by Rawi Hage

The characters in Stray Dogs are restless travellers, moving between nation states and states of mind, seeking connection and trying to escape the past. Set in Montreal, Beirut, Tokyo and more, these stories highlight the often random ways our fragile modern identities are constructed, destroyed and reborn. 

Stray Dogs  was on the 2022 shortlist for the Scotiabank Giller Prize . 

Rawi Hage's short story collection  Stray Dogs  captures snapshots of the lives of people on the move

Rawi Hage is a Montreal-based writer. His books include  De Niro's Game ,  which won the International Dublin Literary Award in 2008;  Cockroach ,  which received the Hugh MacLennan Prize for fiction, was defended by Samantha Bee on  Canada Reads  in 2014, and was shortlisted for the  Scotiabank Giller Prize  and the Governor General's Literary Award;  Carnival ,  which was a finalist for the Rogers Writers' Trust Fiction Prize; and  Beirut Hellfire Society ,  which was on the shortlist for  the Rogers Writers' Trust Fiction Prize  and  the Governor General's Literary Award for fiction . 

The Islands  by Dionne Irving

Set across the United States, Jamaica and Europe from the 1950s to present day,  The Islands  details the migration stories of Jamaican women and their descendants. Each short story explores colonialism and its impact as women experience the on-going tensions between identity and the place they long to call home.

The Islands  was  shortlisted for the 2023 Scotiabank Giller Prize .

Dionne Irving's  The Islands  follows the migration stories of Jamaican women

Dionne Irving is a writer and creative writing teacher from Toronto. She released her first novel,  Quint,  in 2021 and her work has been featured in journals and magazines like LitHub, Missouri Review and New Delta Review.  The Islands  is her debut short story collection. 

Animal Person  by Alexander MacLeod

The stories in Alexander MacLeod's latest collection,  Animal Person , explore the struggle for meaning and connection in an age where many of us feel cut off from so much, including ourselves. From two sisters having a petty argument to a family on the brink of a new life, these stories pick at the complexity of our shared human experience.

• Alexander MacLeod's short story collection Animal Person explores love, compromise and the idea of self

MacLeod is a short story writer and academic from Cape Breton and raised in Windsor, Ont. MacLeod's debut short story collection  Light Lifting  was shortlisted for the 2010  Scotiabank Giller Prize , the 2011 Frank O'Connor International Short Story Award and the Commonwealth Prize. It also won the Atlantic Book Award. In 2019, he won an O. Henry Award for his short story  Lagomorph.  He currently lives in Dartmouth, N.S.

Shut Up You're Pretty by Téa Mutonji

Shut Up You're Pretty  is a short fiction collection that tells stories of a young woman coming of age in the 21st century in Scarborough, Ont. The disarming, punchy and observant stories follow her as she watches someone decide to shave her head in an abortion clinic waiting room, bonds with her mother over fish and contemplates her Congolese traditions at a wedding. 

Shut Up You're Pretty  was on  the 2019 Rogers Writers' Trust Fiction Prize shortlist  and won the 2020 Edmund White Award for debut fiction. It was championed by Kudakwashe Rutendo on Canada Reads 2024 .

• Why Téa Mutonji wanted her first short story collection to challenge what diverse literature is supposed to be

Téa Mutonji was named  a writer to watch in 2019  by  CBC Books . Born in Congo-Kinshasa, Mutonji is also the editor of the anthology  Feel Ways: A Scarborough Anthology.  She currently lives in Toronto.

Half-Wild and Other Stories of Encounter  by Emily Paskevics

The short stories in  Half-Wild and Other Stories of Encounter  use the wilderness a a backdrop to focus on the connection between humans and the natural world and the intergenerational relationships within families. From a father searching for his wife and child wondering if they're better off without him, to an old woman standing on a frozen lake contemplating her death — this collection asks what it means to be a human in nature.

Emily Paskevics is a writer and editor currently based in Montreal. She is the author of the chapbook  The Night That Was Animal.  Her poetry, essays and short fiction have appeared in numerous publications and she was  longlisted for the 2019 CBC Short Story Prize . In 2022, Paskevics was named one of six emerging writers shortlisted for the RBC Bronwen Wallace Awards in the short fiction category . 

Peacocks of Instagram  by Deepa Rajagopalan

The collection of stories in  Peacocks of Instagram   paint a tapestry of the Indian diaspora. Tales of revenge, love, desire and family explore the intense ramifications of privilege, or lack thereof. Coffee shop and hotel housekeeping employees, engineers and children show us all of themselves, flaws and all.

Deepa Rajagopalan was the 2021 RBC/PEN Canada New Voices Award winner. Born to Indian parents in Saudi Arabia, she has lived across India, the United States and Canada. Her previous writing has appeared in publications such as the  Bristol Short Story Prize Anthology , the New Quarterly, Room and Arc. Rajagopalan now lives and works in Ontario.

Chrysalis Anuja Varghese

Chrysalis  is a short story collection that centres South Asian women, showing how they reclaim their power in a world that constantly undermines them. Exploring sexuality, family and cultural norms, this collection deals with desire and  transformation. 

Chrysalis  won the  2023 Governor General's Literary Award for fiction  and the 2023 Dayne Ogilvie Prize .

• Anuja Varghese looks at death, life & the shackles of identity in this original short story

Anuja Varghese is a Hamilton, Ont.-based writer and editor. Her stories have been recognized in the Prism International Short Fiction Contest and the Alice Munro Festival Short Story Competition and nominated for the Pushcart Prize.  Chrysalis  is her first book. 

Avalanche  by Jessica Westhead

The short stories in  Avalanche  all take a critical look at the ideas of whiteness, identity and relationships. The characters encounter — and perpetuate — everyday racism in many of its insidious forms and reckon with the implications of that.

• Why Jessica Westhead wanted to explore the everyday fears of motherhood in her fiction

Jessica Westhead is the author of the novel  Pulpy & Midge  and the short story collection  And Also Sharks . Her novel  Worry   was   on the  Canada Reads  2020 longlist .  

Related Stories

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• SPRING PREVIEW 52 works of Canadian fiction coming out in spring 2024
• SPRING PREVIEW 15 Canadian books for teens and young adults to check out in spring 2024
• Spring Preview 18 Canadian comics and graphic novels to check out in spring 2024

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A WWII story by The Twilight Zone's Rod Serling is published for the first time

Elizabeth Blair

Rod Serling enlisted in the U.S. Army after graduating high school. He trained to be a paratrooper and was assigned to the 11th Airborne Division's 511th Parachute Infantry Regiment Courtesy of Anne Serling hide caption

Rod Serling enlisted in the U.S. Army after graduating high school. He trained to be a paratrooper and was assigned to the 11th Airborne Division's 511th Parachute Infantry Regiment

There's a reason Rod Serling is considered one of scripted television's most daring and incisive storytellers and much of it comes from his experiences in WWII. The Emmy and Peabody Award-winning creator of The Twilight Zone spent three years as a paratrooper during WWII. He was awarded a Bronze Star for his bravery and a Purple Heart for shrapnel wounds he suffered to his wrist and knee.

Serling enlisted to fight the Nazis the day after he graduated from Binghamton Central High School in New York. Even though he was a slight 5'4, he completed his training as a paratrooper and was assigned to the 11th Airborne of the 511th Parachute Infantry Regiment. He was sent to the Philippines to fight the Japanese.

"He saw major combat in the Philippines on the islands of Leyte and Luzon," says Nicholas Parisi, author of a biography of Serling and president of the Rod Serling Memorial Foundation , "It scarred him for the rest of his life. He saw plenty of friends die. And it really became a defining chapter in his life."

Not long after he returned from the war in 1946, Serling attended Antioch College on the G.I. bill. There, in his early 20s, he penned "First Squad, First Platoon," a short story which is being published for the first time Thursday in The Strand . It was one of his earliest stories, starting a writing career that Serling once said helped him get the war "out of his gut."

"It was like an exercise for him to deal with the demons of war and fear," said his daughter, Jodi Serling. "And he sort of turned it into fiction, although there was a lot of truth to it."

The truth in Serling's short story

The story is set on Leyte Island in "heavy jungle foliage" and a "hostile rain that caked mud on weapons, uniforms, equipment." Each of the five chapters in the 11,000-word story is about a different soldier and how they died.

As he often did in his writing, Serling used the real names of people he knew. One of his closest friends in the squad was a fellow New Yorker named Melvin Levy. In the story, Serling describes Corporal Levy as "the humorist of the squad — the wag, the wit, the guy who lived for laughs."

After several days hiding in muddy foxholes without food and low on ammunition, the squad hears the sound of U.S. Army planes approaching.

When they get low enough, they start dropping rations. He writes:

"...heavy crates without chutes were falling in clusters from the sky—fifty pound boxes of K-rations, a hundred or more of them hurtling earthward. 'Make it Kosher, boys,' Levy screamed, tears rolling down his fat cheeks."

To avoid getting hit by the dropping cargo, the men scramble back down the foxholes. Except for Levy:

"'It's raining chow, boys . . . it's raining chow,' his shrill voice pierced the air. Then there was a sudden dull thud as a crate hit the ground near the first squad's positions, throwing mud into the air and all but covering up the holes with it."

Rod with his father Sam Serling c. 1943. Esther Cooper Serling/Courtesy of Anne Serling hide caption

As in real life, a crate crashes down on Levy, killing him instantly. Serling and the squad looked on in horror.

"I knew that my father had trauma because I vividly remember hearing him wake up in the middle of the night screaming," said another daughter, Anne Serling, "and in the morning when I would ask him what happened, he told me he was dreaming that the enemy was coming at him."

"First Squad, First Platoon" was discovered in a collection of Serling's writings at the University of Wisconsin by Amy Boyle Johnston, author of a book about his career called Unknown Serling . She gave the story to Anne, who included excerpts of it in her memoir As I Knew Him .

"I was so stunned by it, first of all, that my dad was so young," said Anne Serling, "And still so aware and wanting to share his thoughts."

Adding to the trauma, Rod Serling's father died suddenly at age 52 while Rod was still overseas. Anne said he wasn't allowed to return to the U.S. to attend his funeral. "He was always very angry" at the Red Cross for this, she said.

'War should be discussed'

When The Strand asked about publishing this short story, Anne Serling said she and her sister didn't hesitate. She said her father felt strongly that, "These things about the war should be discussed."

Serling dedicated the story "To My Children," even though he didn't have any at the time. He wrote that he didn't want them to be the kind of people who "don't like to remember unpleasant things":

"I want you to know what shrapnel, and "88's"and mortar shells and mustard gas mean. I want you to feel, no matter how vicariously, a semblance of the feeling of a torn limb, a burnt patch of flesh; the crippling, numbing sensation of fear; the hopeless emptiness of fatigue. All these things are complementary to the province of war and friction, and they should be taught in classrooms along with the more heroic aspects of uniforms and flags, honor and patriotism."

With wars ongoing in the Middle East, Ukraine and elsewhere, The Strand 's managing editor Andrew Gulli said he believes the details of Serling's story are important to read right now. Gulli said Serling's "terse" prose includes the "brutality" of war, "Yet [the] characters always retain their humanity. You always felt that you were reading about people that were real, people that you could identify with."

Serling's feelings about war came out in The Twilight Zone . "The Purple Testament" and "A Quality of Mercy," for example, are set in the Philippines and permeated with the same sense of dread found in "First Squad, First Platoon."

"My father said when he came home that he would never, ever again injure another living thing," said Anne Serling. But she said he was also very proud of his service — he wore his paratrooper bracelet "throughout his life."

Rod Serling died June 28, 1975 following heart surgery.

This story was edited for broadcast and digital by Meghan Collins Sullivan .

• WWII veteran
• Rod Serling
• Twilight Zone

50 Must-Read Short Books Under 250 Pages

Sarah S. Davis

Sarah S. Davis holds a BA in English from the University of Pennsylvania, a Master's of Library Science from Clarion University, and an MFA in Writing for Children and Young Adults from Vermont College of Fine Arts. Sarah has also written for Electric Literature, Kirkus Reviews, Audible, Psych Central, and more. Sarah is the founder of Broke By Books blog and runs a tarot reading business, Divination Vibration . Twitter: @missbookgoddess Instagram: @Sarahbookgoddess

View All posts by Sarah S. Davis

In a previous mega list here on Book Riot, I highlighted 50 must-read books over 500 pages . It only seems right to follow that up with this list of 50 must-read short books. A mix of narrative styles and genres, the 50 books in this essential list of the best short books are all under 250 pages. If you’re planning what to read for your next readathon, hoping to break through a reading slump or book hangover with a quick read, or need to meet your reading challenge goal with a few books you can read in one sitting, this list has you covered.

Descriptions graciously supplied from publisher descriptions and condensed when necessary.

Best Short Books

All Grown Up by Jami Attenberg (Fiction)

“Who is Andrea Bern? When her dippy therapist asks the question, Andrea knows the right things to say: she’s a designer, a friend, a daughter, a sister. But it’s what she leaves unsaid—she’s alone, a drinker, a former artist, a shrieker in bed, captain of the sinking ship that is her flesh—that feels the most true. Everyone around her seems to have a different idea of what it means to be an adult, though. But when Andrea’s niece finally arrives, born with a heartbreaking ailment, the Bern family is forced to reexamine what really matters. Will this drive them together or tear them apart? Told in gut-wrenchingly honest, mordantly comic vignettes,  All Grown Up  is a breathtaking display of Jami Attenberg’s powers as a storyteller and a whip-smart examination of one woman’s life, lived entirely on her own terms.” (Amazon)

American Housewife by Helen Ellis (Fiction)

“Meet the women of  American Housewife . They wear lipstick, pearls, and sunscreen, even when it’s cloudy. They casserole. They pinwheel. And then they kill a party crasher, carefully stepping around the body to pull cookies from the oven. Taking us from a haunted pre-war Manhattan apartment building to the unique initiation ritual of a book club, these twelve delightfully demented stories are a refreshing and wicked answer to the question: ‘What do housewives do all day?'” (Amazon)

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American Sonnets for My Past and Future Assassin by Terrance Hayes (Poetry)

“A powerful, timely, dazzling collection of sonnets from one of America’s most acclaimed poets, Terrance Hayes, the National Book Award-winning author of  Lighthead.  In seventy poems bearing the same title, Terrance Hayes explores the meanings of American, of assassin, and of love in the sonnet form. Written during the first two hundred days of the Trump presidency, these poems are haunted by the country’s past and future eras and errors, its dreams and nightmares. Inventive, compassionate, hilarious, melancholy, and bewildered–the wonders of this new collection are irreducible and stunning.” Amazon

An Elderly Lady Is Up to No Good  by Helene Tursten, translated by Marlane Delargy (Mystery)

“Maud is an irascible 88-year-old Swedish woman with no family, no friends, and… no qualms about a little murder. This funny, irreverent story collection by Helene Tursten, author of the Irene Huss investigations, features two-never-before translated stories that will keep you laughing all the way to the retirement home.” (Amazon)

And Then There Were None by Agatha Christie (Mystery)

“‘Ten . . .’ Ten strangers are lured to an isolated island mansion off the Devon coast by a mysterious “U. N. Owen.”

‘Nine . . .’ At dinner a recorded message accuses each of them in turn of having a guilty secret, and by the end of the night one of the guests is dead.

‘Eight . . .’ Stranded by a violent storm, and haunted by a nursery rhyme counting down one by one . . . as one by one . . . they begin to die.

‘Seven . . .’ Which among them is the killer and will any of them survive?” (Amazon)

Art Matters by Neil Gaiman (Nonfiction)

“Drawn from Gaiman’s trove of published speeches, poems, and creative manifestos,  Art Matters  is an embodiment of this remarkable multi-media artist’s vision—an exploration of how reading, imagining, and creating can transform the world and our lives.  Drawn together from speeches, poems and creative manifestos,  Art Matters  will explore how reading, imagining and creating can change the world. A creative call to arms, the book will champion freedom of ideas, making art in the face of adversity and choosing to be bold. It will be inspirational to young and old, and will encourage glorious, creative rebellion.  ” (Amazon)

Beast in View by Margaret Millar (Mystery)

“Thirty-year-old Helen Clarvoe is scared and all alone. The heiress of a small fortune, she is resented by her mother and, to a lesser degree, her brother. The only person who seemingly cares for her is the family’s attorney, Paul Blackshear. A shut-in, Helen maintains her residence in an upscale hotel downtown.

But passive-aggressive resentment isn’t the only thing hounding Helen Clarvoe. A string of bizarre and sometimes threatening prank phone calls has upended her spinster’s routine. Increasingly threatened, she turns to a reluctant Mr. Blackshear to get to the bottom of these strange calls. Blackshear is doubtful of their seriousness but he quickly realizes that he is in the midst of something far more sinister than he thought possible. As he unravels the mystery of the calls the identity behind them slowly emerges, predatory and treacherous.” (Amazon)

The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath (Fiction)

“ The Bell Jar  chronicles the crack-up of Esther Greenwood: brilliant, beautiful, enormously talented, and successful, but slowly going under — maybe for the last time. Sylvia Plath masterfully draws the reader into Esther’s breakdown with such intensity that Esther’s insanity becomes completely real and even rational, as probable and accessible an experience as going to the movies. Such deep penetration into the dark and harrowing corners of the psyche is an extraordinary accomplishment and has made  The Bell Jar  a haunting American classic.” (Amazon)

Brokeback Mountain by Annie Proulx (Fiction)

“Annie Proulx has written some of the most original and brilliant short stories in contemporary literature, and for many readers and reviewers, “Brokeback Mountain” is her masterpiece.

Ennis del Mar and Jack Twist, two ranch hands, come together when they’re working as sheepherder and camp tender one summer on a range above the tree line. At first, sharing an isolated tent, the attraction is casual, inevitable, but something deeper catches them that summer.

Both men work hard, marry, and have kids because that’s what cowboys do. But over the course of many years and frequent separations this relationship becomes the most important thing in their lives, and they do anything they can to preserve it.” (Amazon)

Calvin by Martine Leavitt (YA Fiction)

“Seventeen-year-old Calvin has always known his fate is linked to the comic book character from Calvin & Hobbes. He was born on the day the last strip was published. His grandpa put a stuffed tiger named Hobbes in his crib. And he even had a best friend named Susie.

Then Calvin’s mom washed Hobbes to death. Susie grew up beautiful and stopped talking to him. And Calvin pretty much forgot about the strip―until now.

Now he is seventeen years old and has been diagnosed with schizophrenia. Hobbes is back, as a delusion, and Calvin can’t control him. Calvin decides that cartoonist Bill Watterson is the key to everything―if he would just make one more comic strip, but without Hobbes, Calvin would be cured.

Calvin and Susie (is she real?) and Hobbes (he can’t be real, can he?) set out on a dangerous trek across frozen Lake Erie to track down Watterson.” (Amazon)

Chemistry by Weike Wang (Romance)

“At first glance, the quirky, overworked narrator of Weike Wang’s debut novel seems to be on the cusp of a perfect life: she is studying for a prestigious PhD in chemistry that will make her Chinese parents proud (or at least satisfied), and her successful, supportive boyfriend has just proposed to her. But instead of feeling hopeful, she is wracked with ambivalence: the long, demanding hours at the lab have created an exquisite pressure cooker, and she doesn’t know how to answer the marriage question. When it all becomes too much and her life plan veers off course, she finds herself on a new path of discoveries about everything she thought she knew. Smart, moving, and always funny, this unique coming-of-age story is certain to evoke a winning reaction.” (Amazon)

Displacement: A Travelogue by Lucy Knisley (Graphic Memoir)

“In her graphic memoirs, New York Times-best selling cartoonist Lucy Knisley paints a warts-and-all portrait of contemporary, twentysomething womanhood, like writer Lena Dunham ( Girls ). In the next installment of her graphic travelogue series, Displacement , Knisley volunteers to watch over her ailing grandparents on a cruise. (The book’s watercolors evoke the ocean that surrounds them.) In a book that is part graphic memoir, part travelogue, and part family history, Knisley not only tries to connect with her grandparents, but to reconcile their younger and older selves. She is aided in her quest by her grandfather’s WWII memoir, which is excerpted. Readers will identify with Knisley s frustration, her fears, her compassion, and her attempts to come to terms with mortality, as she copes with the stress of travel complicated by her grandparents’ frailty.” (Goodreads)

Edinburgh by Alexander Chee

“Twelve-year-old Fee is a shy Korean American boy and a newly named section leader of the first sopranos in his local boys’ choir. But when Fee learns how the director treats his section leaders, he is so ashamed he says nothing of the abuse, not even when Peter, his best friend, is in line to be next. When the director is arrested, Fee tries to forgive himself for his silence. But when Peter takes his own life, Fee blames only himself. In the years that follow he slowly builds a new life, teaching near his hometown. There he meets a young student who is the picture of Peter and is forced to confront the past he believed was gone.” (Amazon)

The End We Start From by Megan Hunter (Fiction)

“Megan Hunter’s debut is a searing original, a modern-day parable of rebirth and renewal, of maternal bonds, and the instinct to survive and thrive in the absence of all that’s familiar.

As London is submerged below floodwaters, a woman gives birth to her first child, Z. Days later, she and her baby are forced to leave their home in search of safety. They head north through a newly dangerous country seeking refuge from place to place. The story traces fear and wonder as the baby grows, thriving and content against all the odds.

The End We Start From  is an indelible and elemental first book―a lyrical vision of the strangeness and beauty of new motherhood, and a tale of endurance in the face of ungovernable change.” (Amazon)

Every Heart a Doorway by Seanan McGuire (Fantasy)

“Children have always disappeared under the right conditions; slipping through the shadows under a bed or at the back of a wardrobe, tumbling down rabbit holes and into old wells, and emerging somewhere… else.

But magical lands have little need for used-up miracle children.

Nancy tumbled once, but now she’s back. The things she’s experienced… they change a person. The children under Miss West’s care understand all too well. And each of them is seeking a way back to their own fantasy world.

But Nancy’s arrival marks a change at the Home. There’s a darkness just around each corner, and when tragedy strikes, it’s up to Nancy and her new-found schoolmates to get to the heart of things.

No matter the cost.” (Amazon)

Ex Libris: Confessions of a Common Reader by Anne Fadiman (Nonfiction)

“Anne Fadiman is–by her own admission–the sort of person who learned about sex from her father’s copy of  Fanny Hill , whose husband buys her 19 pounds of dusty books for her birthday, and who once found herself poring over her roommate’s 1974 Toyota Corolla manual because it was the only written material in the apartment that she had not read at least twice.

This witty collection of essays recounts a lifelong love affair with books and language.” (Amazon)

Fierce Fairytales by Nikita Gill (Poetry)

“In this rousing new prose and poetry collection, Nikita Gill gives Once Upon a Time a much-needed modern makeover. Through her gorgeous reimagining of fairytale classics and spellbinding original tales, she dismantles the old-fashioned tropes that have been ingrained in our minds. In this book, gone are the docile women and male saviors. Instead, lines blur between heroes and villains. You will meet fearless princesses, a new kind of wolf lurking in the concrete jungle, and an independent Gretel who can bring down monsters on her own.

Complete with beautifully hand-drawn illustrations by Gill herself,  Fierce Fairytales  is an empowering collection of poems and stories for a new generation.” (Amazon)

The Fifth Risk by Michael Lewis (Nonfiction)

“Michael Lewis’s brilliant narrative takes us into the engine rooms of a government under attack by its own leaders. In Agriculture the funding of vital programs like food stamps and school lunches is being slashed. The Commerce Department may not have enough staff to conduct the 2020 Census properly. Over at Energy, where international nuclear risk is managed, it’s not clear there will be enough inspectors to track and locate black market uranium before terrorists do….

If there are dangerous fools in this book, there are also heroes, unsung, of course. They are the linchpins of the system―those public servants whose knowledge, dedication, and proactivity keep the machinery running. Michael Lewis finds them, and he asks them what keeps them up at night.” (Amazon)

Fox 8 by George Saunders (Fiction)

“Fox 8 has always been known as the daydreamer in his pack, the one his fellow foxes regard with a knowing snort and a roll of the eyes. That is, until he develops a unique skill: He teaches himself to speak “Yuman” by hiding in the bushes outside a house and listening to children’s bedtime stories. The power of language fuels his abundant curiosity about people—even after “danjer” arrives in the form of a new shopping mall that cuts off his food supply, sending Fox 8 on a harrowing quest to help save his pack.” (Amazon)

The Friend by Sigrid Nunez (Fiction)

“When a woman unexpectedly loses her lifelong best friend and mentor, she finds herself burdened with the unwanted dog he has left behind. Her own battle against grief is intensified by the mute suffering of the dog, a huge Great Dane traumatized by the inexplicable disappearance of its master, and by the threat of eviction: dogs are prohibited in her apartment building.

While others worry that grief has made her a victim of magical thinking, the woman refuses to be separated from the dog except for brief periods of time. Isolated from the rest of the world, increasingly obsessed with the dog’s care, determined to read its mind and fathom its heart, she comes dangerously close to unraveling. But while troubles abound, rich and surprising rewards lie in store for both of them.

Elegiac and searching,  The Friend  is both a meditation on loss and a celebration of human-canine devotion.” (Amazon)

Goodbye, Vitamin by Rachel Khong (Fiction)

“Her life at a crossroads, a young woman goes home again in this funny and inescapably moving debut from a wonderfully original new literary voice.

Freshly disengaged from her fiancé and feeling that life has not turned out quite the way she planned, thirty-year-old Ruth quits her job, leaves town and arrives at her parents’ home to find that situation more complicated than she’d realized. Her father, a prominent history professor, is losing his memory and is only erratically lucid. Ruth’s mother, meanwhile, is lucidly erratic. But as Ruth’s father’s condition intensifies, the comedy in her situation takes hold, gently transforming all her grief.

Told in captivating glimpses and drawn from a deep well of insight, humor, and unexpected tenderness,  Goodbye, Vitamin  pilots through the loss, love, and absurdity of finding one’s footing in this life.” (Amazon)

The Grownup by Gillian Flynn (Mystery)

“A canny young woman is struggling to survive by perpetrating various levels of mostly harmless fraud. On a rainy April morning, she is reading auras at Spiritual Palms when Susan Burke walks in. A keen observer of human behavior, our unnamed narrator immediately diagnoses beautiful, rich Susan as an unhappy woman eager to give her lovely life a drama injection. However, when the “psychic” visits the eerie Victorian home that has been the source of Susan’s terror and grief, she realizes she may not have to pretend to believe in ghosts anymore. Miles, Susan’s teenage stepson, doesn’t help matters with his disturbing manner and grisly imagination. The three are soon locked in a chilling battle to discover where the evil truly lurks and what, if anything, can be done to escape it. ” (Amazon)

The Haunting of Hill House by Shirley Jackson (Horror)

“First published in 1959, Shirley Jackson’s  The Haunting of Hill House  has been hailed as a perfect work of unnerving terror. It is the story of four seekers who arrive at a notoriously unfriendly pile called Hill House: Dr. Montague, an occult scholar looking for solid evidence of a “haunting”; Theodora, his lighthearted assistant; Eleanor, a friendless, fragile young woman well acquainted with poltergeists; and Luke, the future heir of Hill House. At first, their stay seems destined to be merely a spooky encounter with inexplicable phenomena. But Hill House is gathering its powers—and soon it will choose one of them to make its own.” (Amazon)

Heart Berries by Terese Marie Mailhot (Memoir)

“ Heart Berries  is a powerful, poetic memoir of a woman’s coming of age on the Seabird Island Band in the Pacific Northwest. Having survived a profoundly dysfunctional upbringing only to find herself hospitalized and facing a dual diagnosis of post traumatic stress disorder and bipolar II disorder; Terese Marie Mailhot is given a notebook and begins to write her way out of trauma. The triumphant result is  Heart Berries , a memorial for Mailhot’s mother, a social worker and activist who had a thing for prisoners; a story of reconciliation with her father―an abusive drunk and a brilliant artist―who was murdered under mysterious circumstances; and an elegy on how difficult it is to love someone while dragging the long shadows of shame.

Mailhot trusts the reader to understand that memory isn’t exact, but melded to imagination, pain, and what we can bring ourselves to accept. Her unique and at times unsettling voice graphically illustrates her mental state. As she writes, she discovers her own true voice, seizes control of her story, and, in so doing, reestablishes her connection to her family, to her people, and to her place in the world.” (Amazon)

Her Body and Other Parties by Carman Maria Machado (Fiction)

“In  Her Body and Other Parties , Carmen Maria Machado blithely demolishes the arbitrary borders between psychological realism and science fiction, comedy and horror, fantasy and fabulism. While her work has earned her comparisons to Karen Russell and Kelly Link, she has a voice that is all her own. In this electric and provocative debut, Machado bends genre to shape startling narratives that map the realities of women’s lives and the violence visited upon their bodies.” (Amazon)

How to Be a Good Creature by Sy Montgomery (Memoir)

“Understanding someone who belongs to another species can be transformative. No one knows this better than author, naturalist, and adventurer Sy Montgomery. To research her books, Sy has traveled the world and encountered some of the planet’s rarest and most beautiful animals. From tarantulas to tigers, Sy’s life continually intersects with and is informed by the creatures she meets.

This restorative memoir reflects on the personalities and quirks of thirteen animals—Sy’s friends—and the truths revealed by their grace. It also explores vast themes: the otherness and sameness of people and animals; the various ways we learn to love and become empathetic; how we find our passion; how we create our families; coping with loss and despair; gratitude; forgiveness; and most of all, how to be a good creature in the world.” (Amazon)

I’m Afraid of Men by Vivek Shraya (Memoir)

“A trans artist explores how masculinity was imposed on her as a boy and continues to haunt her as a girl–and how we might reimagine gender for the twenty-first century.

Vivek Shraya has reason to be afraid. Throughout her life she’s endured acts of cruelty and aggression for being too feminine as a boy and not feminine enough as a girl. In order to survive childhood, she had to learn to convincingly perform masculinity. As an adult, she makes daily compromises to steel herself against everything from verbal attacks to heartbreak.

Now, with raw honesty, Shraya delivers an important record of the cumulative damage caused by misogyny, homophobia, and transphobia, releasing trauma from a body that has always refused to assimilate.  I’m Afraid of Men  is a journey from camouflage to a riot of colour and a blueprint for how we might cherish all that makes us different and conquer all that makes us afraid.” (Amazon)

The Incendiaries by R.O. Kwon (Fiction)

“Phoebe Lin and Will Kendall meet in their first month at prestigious Edwards University. Phoebe is a glamorous girl who doesn’t tell anyone she blames herself for her mother’s recent death. Will is a misfit scholarship boy who transfers to Edwards from Bible college, waiting tables to get by. What he knows for sure is that he loves Phoebe.

Grieving and guilt-ridden, Phoebe is drawn into a secretive cult founded by a charismatic former student with an enigmatic past. When the group commits a violent act in the name of faith, Will finds himself struggling to confront a new version of the fanaticism he’s worked so hard to escape. Haunting and intense,  The Incendiaries  is a fractured love story that explores what can befall those who lose what they love most.” (Amazon)

Killing and Dying by Adrian Tamine (Graphic Novel)

“ Killing and Dying  is a stunning showcase of the possibilities of the graphic novel medium and a wry exploration of loss, creative ambition, identity, and family dynamics. With this work, Adrian Tomine ( Shortcomings ,  Scenes from an Impending Marriage ) reaffirms his place not only as one of the most significant creators of contemporary comics but as one of the great voices of modern American literature. His gift for capturing emotion and intellect resonates here: the weight of love and its absence, the pride and disappointment of family, the anxiety and hopefulness of being alive in the twenty-first century.” (Amazon)

Kitchen by Banana Yoshimoto (Fiction)

“With the publication of  Kitchen,  the dazzling English-language debut that is still her best-loved book, the literary world realized that Yoshimoto was a young writer of enduring talent whose work has quickly earned a place among the best of contemporary Japanese literature.  Kitchen  is an enchantingly original book that juxtaposes two tales about mothers, love, tragedy, and the power of the kitchen and home in the lives of a pair of free-spirited young women in contemporary Japan. Mikage, the heroine, is an orphan raised by her grandmother, who has passed away. Grieving, Mikage is taken in by her friend Yoichi and his mother (who is really his cross-dressing father) Eriko. As the three of them form an improvised family that soon weathers its own tragic losses, Yoshimoto spins a lovely, evocative tale with the kitchen and the comforts of home at its heart.” (Amazon)

The Marrow Thieves by Cherie Dimaline (YA Fiction)

“Humanity has nearly destroyed its world through global warming, but now an even greater evil lurks. The indigenous people of North America are being hunted and harvested for their bone marrow, which carries the key to recovering something the rest of the population has lost: the ability to dream. In this dark world, Frenchie and his companions struggle to survive as they make their way up north to the old lands. For now, survival means staying hidden—but what they don’t know is that one of them holds the secret to defeating the marrow thieves.” (Amazon)

Men Explain Things to Me by Rebecca Solnit (Nonfiction)

“In her comic, scathing essay, “Men Explain Things to Me,” Rebecca Solnit took on what often goes wrong in conversations between men and women. She wrote about men who wrongly assume they know things and wrongly assume women don’t, about why this arises, and how this aspect of the gender wars works, airing some of her own hilariously awful encounters.

This updated edition with two new essays of this national bestseller book features that now-classic essay as well as “#YesAllWomen,” an essay written in response to 2014 Isla Vista killings and the grassroots movement that arose with it to end violence against women and misogyny, and the essay “Cassandra Syndrome.” This book is also available in hardcover.” (Amazon)

The Merry Spinster by Daniel M. Lavery (Fantasy)

“Adapted from the beloved “Children’s Stories Made Horrific” series, The Merry Spinster takes up the trademark wit that endeared Daniel M. Lavery to readers of both The Toast and the bestselling debut Texts from Jane Eyre . Sinister and inviting, familiar and alien all at the same time, The Merry Spinster twists traditional children’s stories and fairy tales with elements of psychological horror, emotional clarity, and a keen sense of feminist mischief. Unfalteringly faithful to its beloved source material, The Merry Spinster also illuminates the unsuspected and frequently alarming emotional complexities at play in the stories we tell ourselves, and each other, as we tuck ourselves in for the night.” (Amazon)

Milk and Honey by Rupi Kaur (Poetry)

“The book is divided into four chapters, and each chapter serves a different purpose. Deals with a different pain. Heals a different heartache.  Milk and Honey  takes readers through a journey of the most bitter moments in life and finds sweetness in them because there is sweetness everywhere if you are just willing to look.” (Amazon)

The Misfit’s Manifesto by Lidia Yuknavitch (Nonfiction)

“The feeling of not fitting in is universal.  The Misfit’s Manifesto  is for misfits around the world—the rebels, the eccentrics, the oddballs, and anyone who has ever felt like she was messing up. It’s Lidia Yuknavitch’s love letter to all those who can’t ever seem to find the “right” path. She won’t tell you how to stop being a misfit—quite the opposite. In her charming, poetic, funny, and frank style, Lidia will reveal why being a misfit is not something to overcome, but something to embrace. Lidia also encourages her fellow misfits not to be afraid of pursuing goals, how to stand up, how to ask for the things they want most. Misfits belong in the room, too, she reminds us, even if their path to that room is bumpy and winding. An important idea that transcends all cultures and countries, this book has created a brave and compassionate community for misfits, a place where everyone can belong.” (Amazon)

Nutshell by Ian McEwan (Fiction)

“Trudy has been unfaithful to her husband, John. What’s more, she has kicked him out of their marital home, a valuable old London town house, and in his place is his own brother, the profoundly banal Claude. The illicit couple have hatched a scheme to rid themselves of her inconvenient husband forever. But there is a witness to their plot: the inquisitive, nine-month-old resident of Trudy’s womb.

As Trudy’s unborn son listens, bound within her body, to his mother and his uncle’s murderous plans, he gives us a truly new perspective on our world, seen from the confines of his. McEwan’s brilliant recasting of Shakespeare lends new weight to the age-old question of Hamlet’s hesitation, and is a tour de force of storytelling.” (Amazon)

The Only Great Harmless Thing by Brooke Bolander (Sci-Fi)

“ The Only Harmless Great Thing  is a heart-wrenching alternative history by Brooke Bolander that imagines an intersection between the Radium Girls and noble, sentient elephants.

In the early years of the 20th century, a group of female factory workers in Newark, New Jersey slowly died of radiation poisoning. Around the same time, an Indian elephant was deliberately put to death by electricity in Coney Island.

These are the facts.

Now these two tragedies are intertwined in a dark alternate history of rage, radioactivity, and injustice crying out to be righted. Prepare yourself for a wrenching journey that crosses eras, chronicling histories of cruelty both grand and petty in search of meaning and justice.” (Amazon)

The Red Parts by Maggie Nelson (Memoir)

“Late in 2004, Maggie Nelson was looking forward to the publication of her book  Jane: A Murder , a narrative in verse about the life and death of her aunt, who had been murdered thirty-five years before. The case remained unsolved, but Jane was assumed to have been the victim of an infamous serial killer in Michigan in 1969.

Then, one November afternoon, Nelson received a call from her mother, who announced that the case had been reopened; a new suspect would be arrested and tried on the basis of a DNA match. Over the months that followed, Nelson found herself attending the trial with her mother and reflecting anew on the aura of dread and fear that hung over her family and childhood–an aura that derived not only from the terrible facts of her aunt’s murder but also from her own complicated journey through sisterhood, daughterhood, and girlhood.

The Red Parts  is a memoir, an account of a trial, and a provocative essay that interrogates the American obsession with violence and missing white women, and that scrupulously explores the nature of grief, justice, and empathy.” (Amazon)

A Single Man by Christopher Isherwood (Fiction)

“Welcome to sunny suburban 1960s Southern California. George is a gay middle-aged English professor, adjusting to solitude after the tragic death of his young partner. He is determined to persist in the routines of his former life.  A Single Man  follows him over the course of an ordinary twenty-four hours. Behind his British reserve, tides of grief, rage, and loneliness surge―but what is revealed is a man who loves being alive despite all the everyday injustices.” (Amazon)

Sisters by Lily Tuck (Fiction)

“In her singular new novel  Sisters , Tuck gives a very different portrait of marital life, exposing the intricacies and scandals of a new marriage sprung from betrayal.

Tuck’s unnamed narrator lives with her new husband, his two teenagers, and the unbanishable presence of his first wife―known only as  she . Obsessed with her, our narrator moves through her days presided over by the all-too-real ghost of the first marriage, fantasizing about how the first wife lives her life. Will the narrator ever equal  she  intellectually, or ever forget the betrayal that lies between them? And what of the secrets between her husband and  she , from which the narrator is excluded? The daring and precise build up to an eerily wonderful denouement is a triumph of subtlety and surprise.

With  Sisters , Lily Tuck delivers riveting psychological portrait of marriage, infidelity, and obsession; charting with elegance and insight love in all its phases.” (Amazon)

Skim by Mariko and Jillian Tamaki (YA Graphic Novel)

“‘Skim’ is Kimberly Keiko Cameron, a not-slim, would-be Wiccan goth who goes to a private girls’ school in the early ’90s. When her classmate Katie Matthews is dumped by her boyfriend, who then kills himself — possibly because he’s (maybe) gay — the entire school goes into mourning overdrive. It’s a weird time to fall in love, but that’s what happens to Skim when she starts meeting secretly with her neo-hippie English teacher, Ms. Archer. But then Ms. Archer abruptly leaves the school, and Skim has to cope with her confusion and isolation while her best friend, Lisa, tries to pull her into ‘real’ life by setting up a hilarious double-date for the school’s semi formal. Suicide, depression, love, homosexuality, crushes, cliques of popular, manipulative peers — the whole gamut of teen life is explored in this poignant glimpse into the heartache of being 16.” (Amazon)

Sleep No More: Six Murderous Tales by P.D. James (Mystery)

“When it comes to crime, it’s not always a question of ‘who dunnit?’ Sometimes there’s more mystery in the  why  or the  how . And what about the clever few who carry out what appears to be the perfect crime? Or whose most essential selves are changed by the crimes they commit? And what about those who know the identity of the murderer but keep the information to themselves? These are some of the questions that these six stories begin to unlock as they draw us into the inner workings—the thoughts and emotional machinations, the recollections and rationalizations, the dreams and desires—behind both murderous cause and effect. And no one gets inside the head of a perpetrator—or makes it a peerlessly thrilling and entertaining read—like the incomparable P. D. James.” (Amazon)

The Strange Library by Haruki Murakami, translated by Ted Goossen (Fiction)

“Opening the flaps on this unique little book, readers will find themselves immersed in the strange world of best-selling Haruki Murakami’s wild imagination. The story of a lonely boy, a mysterious girl, and a tormented sheep man plotting their escape from a nightmarish library, the book is like nothing else Murakami has written. Designed by Chip Kidd and fully illustrated, in full color, throughout, this small format, 96 page volume is a treat for book lovers of all ages.” (Amazon)

The Uncommon Reader by Alan Bennett (Fiction)

“When her corgis stray into a mobile library parked near Buckingham Palace, the Queen feels duty-bound to borrow a book. Discovering the joy of reading widely (from J. R. Ackerley, Jean Genet, and Ivy Compton-Burnett to the classics) and intelligently, she finds that her view of the world changes dramatically. Abetted in her newfound obsession by Norman, a young man from the royal kitchens, the Queen comes to question the prescribed order of the world and loses patience with the routines of her role as monarch. Her new passion for reading initially alarms the palace staff and soon leads to surprising and very funny consequences for the country at large.” (Amazon)

The Vegetarian by Han Kang, translated by Deborah Smith (Fiction)

“Before the nightmares began, Yeong-hye and her husband lived an ordinary, controlled life. But the dreams—invasive images of blood and brutality—torture her, driving Yeong-hye to purge her mind and renounce eating meat altogether. It’s a small act of independence, but it interrupts her marriage and sets into motion an increasingly grotesque chain of events at home. As her husband, her brother-in-law and sister each fight to reassert their control, Yeong-hye obsessively defends the choice that’s become sacred to her. Soon their attempts turn desperate, subjecting first her mind, and then her body, to ever more intrusive and perverse violations, sending Yeong-hye spiraling into a dangerous, bizarre estrangement, not only from those closest to her, but also from herself.” (Amazon)

Waiting for Eden by Elliot Ackerman (Fiction)

“Eden Malcom lies in a bed, unable to move or to speak, imprisoned in his own mind. His wife Mary spends every day on the sofa in his hospital room. He has never even met their young daughter. And he will never again see the friend and fellow soldier who didn’t make it back home–and who narrates the novel. But on Christmas, the one day Mary is not at his bedside, Eden’s re-ordered consciousness comes flickering alive. As he begins to find a way to communicate, some troubling truths about his marriage–and about his life before he went to war–come to the surface. Is Eden the same man he once was: a husband, a friend, a father-to-be? What makes a life worth living? A piercingly insightful, deeply felt meditation on loyalty and betrayal, love and fear,  Waiting for Eden  is a tour de force of profound humanity.” (Amazon)

We Are Okay by Nina LaCour (YA Fiction)

“Marin hasn’t spoken to anyone from her old life since the day she left everything behind. No one knows the truth about those final weeks. Not even her best friend Mabel. But even thousands of miles away from the California coast, at college in New York, Marin still feels the pull of the life and tragedy she’s tried to outrun. Now, months later, alone in an emptied dorm for winter break, Marin waits. Mabel is coming to visit and Marin will be forced to face everything that’s been left unsaid and finally confront the loneliness that has made a home in her heart.” (Amazon)

We Should All Be Feminists by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie (Nonfiction)

“In this personal, eloquently-argued essay—adapted from the much-admired TEDx talk of the same name—Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie offers readers a unique definition of feminism for the twenty-first century, one rooted in inclusion and awareness. Drawing extensively on her own experiences and her deep understanding of the often masked realities of sexual politics, here is one remarkable author’s exploration of what it means to be a woman now—and an of-the-moment rallying cry for why we should all be feminists.” (Amazon)

The White Darkness by David Grann (Nonfiction)

“Henry Worsley was a devoted husband and father and a decorated British special forces officer who believed in honor and sacrifice. He was also a man obsessed. He spent his life idolizing Ernest Shackleton, the nineteenth-century polar explorer, who tried to become the first person to reach the South Pole, and later sought to cross Antarctica on foot. Shackleton never completed his journeys, but he repeatedly rescued his men from certain death, and emerged as one of the greatest leaders in history.

Worsley felt an overpowering connection to those expeditions. He was related to one of Shackleton’s men, Frank Worsley, and spent a fortune collecting artifacts from their epic treks across the continent. He modeled his military command on Shackleton’s legendary skills and was determined to measure his own powers of endurance against them. He would succeed where Shackleton had failed, in the most brutal landscape in the world.

In 2008, Worsley set out across Antarctica with two other descendants of Shackleton’s crew, battling the freezing, desolate landscape, life-threatening physical exhaustion, and hidden crevasses. Yet when he returned home he felt compelled to go back.” (Amazon)

Women & Power: A Manifesto by Mary Beard (Nonfiction)

“Britain’s best-known classicist Mary Beard, is also a committed and vocal feminist. With wry wit, she revisits the gender agenda and shows how history has treated powerful women. Her examples range from the classical world to the modern day, from Medusa and Athena to Theresa May and Hillary Clinton. Beard explores the cultural underpinnings of misogyny, considering the public voice of women, our cultural assumptions about women’s relationship with power, and how powerful women resist being packaged into a male template.

With personal reflections on her own experiences of the sexism and gendered aggression she has endured online, Mary asks: if women aren’t perceived to be within the structures of power, isn’t it power that we need to redefine?” (Amazon)

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The Met Gala’s Strange but Fitting Literary Inspiration

In 1962, J.G. Ballard published “The Garden of Time,” a short story about aristocrats overrun by “an immense rabble.” Now it’s the dress-code theme for the year’s most lavish ball.

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By Jim Windolf

• May 6, 2024

In an Instagram post on Feb. 15, Vogue rather cryptically announced the dress code for this year’s Met Gala: “The Garden of Time.”

An article published that same day on the Vogue website cleared things up a little, noting that “The Garden of Time” was the title of a short story by J.G. Ballard , a British author who specialized in dystopian works of fiction.

“The Garden of Time” appeared in the February 1962 issue of The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction and was included in the “The Complete Stories of J.G. Ballard,” a collection published not long after the author’s death in 2009. The story describes the last days of Count Axel and his wife, known only as the Countess, who reside in a Palladian villa surrounded by a garden.

They pass the days in seclusion. The count busies himself by attending to rare manuscripts. The countess plays Bach and Mozart on a harpsichord.

The threat to their peaceful existence arrives in the form of an army on the horizon. As it moves closer, Count Axel develops a clearer view of this “vast throng of people, men and women, interspersed with a few soldiers.” In an effort to turn back the advance of this “immense rabble,” he reverses time by plucking blooms from the garden’s most exquisite plant, the time flowers.

Soon enough, the last flower is plucked, and the mob overruns the property. The villa lies in ruins, and all that remains of the count and countess is a pair of statues “gazing out over the grounds” from behind a stand of thorn bushes.

“The Garden of Time” is a fitting but ironic choice as a theme for the year’s most lavish celebration. It’s fitting because the Met Gala celebrates the contemporary equivalents of aristocrats at a time of widespread social anger toward elites; it’s ironic because the reference suggests that the guests and hosts may be doomed.

The same Ballard story inspired a 2021 fashion collection by the designer Thom Browne. The clothing was understated and classic, and the clay-like makeup worn by some of Mr. Browne’s models suggested creatures halfway between statue and human.

The sympathies of “The Garden of Time” seem to lie with the count and countess. And yet the author slips in hints that their lovely existence may be empty. When Count Axel puts his arm around his wife’s waist, he realizes that “he had not embraced her for several years.”

In a 1975 interview with Science Fiction Monthly, Mr. Ballard denied that the story suggested that he missed a bygone way of life. “I think some social changes that took place in this country in the mid-’60s are the best and greatest thing that ever happened here,” he said, adding that it was “marvelous” to see the breakdown of old class divisions.

Our Coverage of the 2024 Met Gala

Zendaya Makes Two Arrivals: The actress wore a second John Galliano design to make a late (re)entrance at the Met Gala . The first was a custom Maison Margiela couture dress he created specifically for her.

A Fitting Literary Inspiration: In 1962, J.G. Ballard published “The Garden of Time,” a short story about aristocrats overrun by “an immense rabble.” It was a fitting but ironic choice as this year’s  dress-code theme .

The Body Spectacle: The night saw Kim Kardashian engaged in a kind of body modification  via extreme corseting. While Tyla, the South African singer and songwriter, appeared coated in sand .

Arrests and Protests: As expected, protesters gathered near the Met Gala to protest the war in Gaza, creating an atmosphere far different  from the one inside the event.

The ‘Naked’ Trend: What better way to distinguish oneself  from hundreds of well-dressed competitors than to wear almost nothing at all?

A Night of Firsts: Here’s the story behind Rebecca Ferguson’s sequin, bird-covered dress , Da’Vine Joy Randolph’s all-denim look , Pamela Anderson’s new incarnation , Christian Cowan and Sam Smith’s debut as a couple , and Amanda Seyfried’s semi-recycled look .

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Story by Rod Serling, Twilight Zone creator, published after 70 years

Daughters of TV great write introductions to First Squad, First Platoon, a story of war in the Pacific released by Strand Magazine

A story of the second world war by Rod Serling, creator of The Twilight Zone , will be published in the US on Thursday after lying among his papers for nearly 70 years.

“I was writing a memoir, called As I Knew Him, My Dad, Rod Serling ,” Anne Serling, one of two daughters, told the Guardian. “And another writer, Amy Boyle Johnston, who had been doing a lot of researching of my dad’s early work and wrote a book called Unknown Serling , sent me the story. She’d found it in the archives in Wisconsin,” at the University of Wisconsin-Madison .

That was 10 years or so ago. Now, the story is published by the Strand Magazine , whose editor, Andrew Gulli, is both a Twilight Zone connoisseur and an old hand when it comes to finding unknown work by great writers. Stories by Truman Capote and James M Cain are among those Gulli has published.

Serling’s story, First Squad, First Platoon, concerns the experiences of American paratroopers in the Philippines towards the end of the war. Serling fought the Japanese there with the 511th Airborne, surviving, as Gulli says in his editorial, “some of the most intense combat of the entire conflict”.

First Squad, First Platoon has five chapters, one each for five soldiers. The description of the death of Melvin Levy is shattering. Amid a long-awaited rations drop, Levy performs a comic monologue for his overjoyed men. After the drop, as Serling describes it, Sgt Edward Etherson “climbed slowly out of his hole, wiping mud from his eyes and grinning broadly. He noticed Levy lying face down a few feet away.

“‘OK, Mel, you can come up for air,’ he said. ‘OK, Mel, start singin’ – they quit droppin’ … Hey Mel … Mel … Levy!”

“He stopped short and noticed that one end of a ration crate sticking up crazily was a lot redder than the Leyte mud. And Levy’s head rested a few feet from the rest of his body.”

The passage is all the more shattering when the reader realises it is true .

Serling, who appears in his own story, died in 1975, aged just 50. Anne Serling and her sister, Jodi Serling, say that like many men of his generation, he did not talk much about his wartime experiences – though he did explain, sometimes, why he screamed in the night.

Jodi Serling said: “I think when you read the story, you have to have the mindset to deal with the tragedy that’s in it. It’s pretty powerful. The first time I read it, I kind of didn’t let it sink in. And now, reading it again, it makes me want to go and hug them. Because my father entered the war right after high school, because that’s where the guys were enlisting. And it’s just amazing that he did what he did and came back somewhat whole.

“While he was over there, his father died at 52. And he was not allowed to return home for the funeral. And I think that was incredibly traumatising, to come home to an empty home, where his dad was gone. So it wasn’t just what he saw in the war.”

Rod Serling wrote First Squad, First Platoon in his early 20s, in the years after the war when he attended Antioch College. Gulli sees “a maturity beyond his years”.

“In terse prose, he delivers the immediacy, sense of place and cutting dialogue you’d expect from Hemingway, Crane or Dos Passos … a powerful, unvarnished look at war in all its brutality – an unforgettable story of ordinary people in extraordinarily hellish situations.”

Anne and Jodi Serling said elements of First Squad, First Platoon surfaced in Serling’s later work, in TV and film. The story would not have been published, however, without the cooperation of Serling’s estate and Nicholas Parisi, a biographer who provided transcription and edits.

Remarkably, the story includes an introduction, entitled To My Children, in which Serling addresses Anne and Jodi – not that he knew then he would be a father of daughters.

Lamenting his misfortune to have been led by politicians who promised “peace in our time” before the world plunged into war, Serling tells his unborn children: “I don’t want you to be among those who choose to forget. I want you to read my war stories and a lot of others like them. I want you to fill your heads with Remarque and Tolstoy and [the US war correspondent] Ernie Pyle. I want you to know what shrapnel, and ‘88s’, and mortar shells, and mustard gas mean.”

The story that follows is published amid hellish war in Ukraine and on the brink of an Israeli invasion of Rafah – to say nothing of other conflicts round the world.

For the Strand, Anne and Jodi Serling provide introductions of their own.

“It’s amazing what my dad went through,” Jodi Serling said. “I was 21 or so when he died. I didn’t really appreciate the impact of what my father was about because I wanted to be my own self. He encouraged me to be independent but I was young, and I would say dumb, not willing to appreciate what my father was offering the world.

“And he’s been gone so long now, 50 years, that I missed out on so much. So I’m learning a lot more about my dad.”

Both sisters hope their father’s story will be widely read, particularly by those who may only know him through The Twilight Zone, its reruns, remakes and reboots.

Anne Serling said: “I think a lot of people still have a lot of respect for my dad. And I think with everything that’s going on in the world, and has gone on in the world, where people are more realistic about war and how dreadful it is, I think the story will be well received. I think people can relate to it. And, you know, he was so young when he wrote it.”

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Kristi Noem Cuts Short Book Tour Citing ‘Bad Weather’

S outh Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem has cut short a disastrous book tour after receiving withering criticism for her story of shooting an ill-behaved puppy and unverified claims of meeting North Korean dictator Kim Jung Un, RealClearPolitics is first to report. The book, released Tuesday, is titled “No Going Back.”

Noem sat for a series of in-person interviews in New York and was scheduled to travel later in the week to Washington, D.C., before canceling the tour, citing inclement weather.

“Gov. Noem has sold a lot of books on this tour and is back in South Dakota to be prepared for some potential emerging bad weather systems,” spokesman Ian Fury told RCP. Tornadoes touched down in the state Monday, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. Noem sat for interviews Monday and Tuesday in New York before returning home.

Noem was slated to sit down with RealClearPolitics on Thursday before her team canceled the interview and declined to make her available over the phone.

Once heralded as a rising star on the right, in one week the governor was reduced to a punchline. She provided all the material. “We were supposed to have Gov. Kristi Noem on the show tonight, but she canceled. Her staff blamed bad weather,” deadpanned Greg Gutfeld Tuesday night. “We go to locals for reaction.” The Fox News funnyman then cut to a clip of barking dogs.

Noem had billed her book as “a how-to guide” for political activism, pegging its publication to the ongoing veepstakes to join former President Trump on the GOP ticket. Calamity followed when an excerpt leaked to The Guardian , and what was planned as a national audition was overshadowed by the grisly stories the governor told about herself.

Noem writes of dragging a 14-month-old dog into a gravel pit on her property after the poorly trained animal spoiled a pheasant hunt and attacked a neighbor's chickens. She killed the puppy named “Cricket” with a shotgun. After dispatching the dog, she turned her attention to an unruly goat. Noem took a shot, but the billy jumped. She writes in her memoir that she left the goat tethered, retrieved more ammunition, then “hurried back to the gravel pit and put him down.”

Despite a growing firestorm of criticism, the author went ahead with her tour, sitting down on Sunday with Margaret Brennan of CBS News. The story from two decades ago, Noem insisted, showed her willingness to make tough decisions.

“This dog was a working dog and had come from a family that had issues with this dog and I had put months and months of training into this dog. This dog had gone to other trainers as well,” Noem said.

“So all of that is the facts of the story, and all of that shows that when you put someone in a position where they have to make a decision and they want to protect their family and protect children and other people from getting attacked from an animal that has attacked others and killed livestock, that’s the choice I made over 20 years ago. And that I didn’t ask somebody else to take that responsibility for me,” she continued.

Noem also appeared to joke in the book about euthanizing President Biden’s dog, Commander, who was removed from White House grounds after numerous biting incidents.

“What would I do if I was president on the first day in office in 2025? Thanks for asking. I happen to have a list. The first thing I’d do is make sure Joe Biden’s dog was nowhere on the grounds (‘Commander, say hello to Cricket for me’),” Noem wrote. The White House was not amused.

“We learned last week, obviously like all of you, in her book that she killed her puppy," White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre told reporters Monday. “You heard me say that was very, very sad. We find her comments from yesterday disturbing. We find them absurd.”

Perhaps more disastrous was the claim Noem made about traveling to North Korea and meeting Kim Jung Un when she served on the House Armed Services Committee in Congress.

“I’m not going to talk about my specific meetings with world leaders. I’m just not going to do that. This anecdote shouldn’t have been in the book and as soon as it was brought to my attention, I made sure that that was adjusted,” she said when pressed about whether the meeting took place.

The publisher of the book, Center Street, announced that subsequent printings of the book would not include the reference. An audiobook, which the governor narrated, is also expected to be edited and updated. The passage in question is brief and sparse in detail.

The North Korean anecdote is two sentences in a 260-page book: “I remember when I met with North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un. I’m sure he underestimated me, having no clue about my experience staring down little tyrants (I’d been a children’s pastor, after all).”

Prior to the book tour, Noem made little secret about her ambitions for national office. She was quick to criticize the field challenging Trump for the nomination, and in February, the governor traveled to Mar-a-Lago to meet with Trump and pitch him on joining the ticket. According to sources with knowledge of the meeting, Noem showed Trump polling from Kaplan Strategies that showed her boosting his chances in Wisconsin and Michigan with her as a running mate.

Noem is now haunted by the dog she dispatched two decades ago. During a Tuesday interview with Stuart Varney on Fox Business, the governor became impatient with the host when he kept returning the conversation to how the dead puppy affected her chances at the vice presidency.

“Enough, Stuart. This interview is ridiculous, which you are doing right now,” Noem said. “So you need to stop. It is OK. It is. Let’s talk about some real topics that Americans care about.”

“I’m afraid we’re out of time,” Varney responded.

Philip Wegmann is White House correspondent for RealClearPolitics.

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David and Goliath a short story book: Bible story Kindle Edition

• Reading age 3 - 10 years
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• Publication date May 2, 2024
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• ASIN ‏ : ‎ B0D37MP92Y
• Publication date ‏ : ‎ May 2, 2024
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Iatse aims to conclude general negotiations thursday as members petition for greater transparency on contract proposals, south dakota governor kristi noem drops out of interviews amid tumultuous book tour.

By Ted Johnson

Ted Johnson

Political Editor

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South Dakota Governor Kristi Noem embarked this week on one of the more tumultuous book tours in recent memory, as she was peppered with questions about an anecdote about killing her dog Cricket, and another story about meeting North Korean leader Kim Jung Un. Major doubts were raised that the latter story was true.

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Now Noem has started to cancel media appearances.

CNN ‘s Dana Bash told viewers today that, after booking her for Inside Politics weeks ago, “she abruptly canceled last night.” Noem also canceled an interview with Greg Gutfeld on Fox News’ Gutfeld! last night, with the host telling viewers that she canceled due to the weather, per Mediaite.

“Blames the weather,” Gutfeld said. “I don’t believe it. I just think it is a little late to keep her on a short leash.” He then went on with Dana Perino “standing in” for Noem, while continuing to mock the governor.

Noem has addressed the severe weather in South Dakota in posts on X/Twitter today.

Noem has defended the decision to kill the dog as an example of the rare politician who has told the truth — “this dog was vicious, it was dangerous, it was killing livestock for the joy of it and attacking people,” she told Fox News’ Jesse Watters. But she has refused to say whether she actually met with the North Korean leader, telling interviewers that she will not talk about her meetings with world leaders, even though she wrote about just that in the book.

“When I became aware of the content, we had it changed,” she told Finnerty. “And that is the way that it is. Should I have put that in, included in the book? I am not going to talk about my meetings. I am not going to talk about my conversations with world leaders.”

Finnerty told her he didn’t think the meeting actually happened.

A spokesperson for Noem’s publisher, Center Street, did not immediately return a request for comment on the plans for the book tour.

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