Staff Picks
Love to Read, Short on Time
- Morgan R.
- Wednesday, August 03, 2022
Collection
Do you love to read but also have to work, eat, sleep, take the kids to school, make dinner, remember to call the vet and the plumber, mow the lawn, get your oil changed and just...don't have time? Try one of these short story collections!
Black Sci-fi Short Stories
Anthology of New & Classic Tales
Published in 2021
Dystopia, apocalypse, gene-splicing, cloning and colonization are explored here by new authors and combined with proto-sci-fi and speculative writing of an older tradition (by W.E.B. Du Bois, Martin R. Delany, Sutton E. Griggs, Pauline Hopkins and Edward Johnson) whose first-hand experience of slavery and denial created their living dystopia.
Crime Hits Home
A Collection of Stories from Crime Fiction's Top Authors
Published in 2022
A collection of short stories from some of today's biggest crime writers, including Naomi Hirahara, David Bart, and Sara Paretsky, explores the idea of "home" and the crimes that endanger one’s feelings of safety there.
On Girlhood
15 Stories from the Well-Read Black Girl Library
Published in 2021
"Glory Edim launches her Well-Read Black Girl Library with this vital anthology celebrating stories from such luminaries as Toni Morrison and Alice Walker. Since founding the Well-Read Black Girl Book Club in 2015, Glory Edim's profile has skyrocketed. From her roots in a Brooklyn-based community to a massive online following, she has been heralded as the literary tastemaker for a new generation. With On Girlhood, Edim has beautifully curated a canonical work centering around the voices of young Black characters as they contend with innocence, belonging, love, and self-discovery. From the timeless lessons in Jamaica Kincaid's "Girl" ("this is how you smile to someone you like completely") to those in Dana Johnson's "Melvin in the Sixth Grade" ("this is how kids start fights"), these short stories illuminate the power and the precariousness of Black girlhood. Highlighting both iconic and lesser-known authors-Edwidge Danticat, Amina Gautier, Dorothy West, Paule Marshall, Shay Youngblood, and more-this is an indispensable compendium that will instill readers with "the nerve to walk [their] own way" (Zora Neale Hurston)"-- Provided by publisher.
Mestiza Blood
Published in 2022
A short story collection of nightmares, dreams, desire and visions centered around the Chicana experience. The stunning, star-reviewed V. Castro weaves urban legend, folklore, life experience and heartache in this intimate anthology of modern horrors. From the lauded author of The Queen of the Cicadas (which picked up starred reviews from PW, Kirkus and Booklist who called her "a dynamic and innovative voice") comes a short story collection of nightmares, dreams, desire and visions focused on the Chicana experience. V.Castro weaves urban legend, folklore, life experience and heartache in this personal journey beginning in south Texas: a bar where a devil dances the night away; a street fight in a neighborhood that may not have been a fight after all; a vengeful chola at the beginning of the apocalypse; mind swapping in the not so far future; satan who falls and finds herself in a brothel in Amsterdam; the keys to Mictlan given to a woman after she dies during a pandemic. The collection finishes with two longer tales: The Final Porn Star is a twist on the final girl trope and slasher, with a creature from Mexican folklore; and Truck Stop is an erotic horror romance with two hearts: a video store and a truck stop.
Useful Phrases for Immigrants
Stories
Published in 2018
In the title story of this timely and innovative collection, a young woman wearing a Prada coat attempts to redeem a coupon for plastic storage bins while her in-laws are at home watching the Chinese news and taking her private phone calls. It is the lively and wise juxtaposition of cultures, generations, and emotions that characterize May-lee Chai's amazing stories. Within them, readers will find a complex blend of cultures spanning China, the Chinese diaspora in America, and finally, the world at large. With luminous prose and sharp-eyed observations, Chai reveals her characters' hopes and fears, and our own: a grieving historian seeking solace from an old lover in Beijing, a young girl discovering her immigrant mother's infidelity, workers constructing a shopping mall in central China who make a shocking discovery. Families struggle with long-held grudges, reinvent traditions, and make mysterious visits to shadowy strangers from their past--all rendered with economy and beauty. With hearts that break and sometimes mend, with families who fight and sometimes forgive, the timely stories in Useful Phrases for Immigrants illuminate complicated lives with empathy and passion.
Gods of Want
Stories
Published in 2022
"In "Auntland," a steady stream of aunts adjust to American life by sneaking surreptitious kisses from women at temple, buying tubs of strawberry ice-cream to prepare for citizenship tests, and hatching plans to name their daughter "Dog." In "The Chorus of Dead Cousins," ghost-cousins cross space, seas, and skies to haunt their live-cousin, wife to a storm-chaser. In "Xaifù," a mother-in-law tortures a wife in increasingly unsuccessful attempts to rid the house of her. In "Mariela," two girls explore oneanother's bodies for the first time while in "Virginia Slim," a woman from a cigarette ad comes to life. And in "Resident Aliens," a former slaughterhouse serves as a residence to a series of widows, each harboring her own calamitous secrets"-- Provided by publisher.
The Man Who Sold Air in the Holy Land
Stories
Published in 2022
"The poignant, whimsically imaginative stories in Omer Friedlander's debut transport readers to the narrow limestone alleyways of Jerusalem, the desolate beauty of the Negev Desert, and the sprawling orange groves of Jaffa. Across the sharply drawn borders that divide them, Friedlander's characters, often outsiders or even outcasts, are haunted by the past, or by the promise of a future that they can see but often cannot reach. A divorced con artist and his young daughter sell empty bottles of "holy" air to credulous tourists; a Lebanese Scheherazade enchants with her nightly tales the three young soldiers occupying a radio station in Beirut; a lonely young boy, obsessed with the bravery of a Polish-Jewish ballerina during the Holocaust, daringly "rooftops" at night, climbing steel cranes in his scuffed sneakers; an Israeli volunteer at a West Bank checkpoint mourns the death of her son, a soldier killed in Gaza. In these stories, moments of fragile intimacy mix with comedy and notes of the absurd; these are fairy tales turned on their heads by the stakes of real life. These stories are the literary equivalent of Chagall's brushstrokes, offering enchantment as they take you somewhere far away yet achingly near, revealing the shared humanity that transcends physical, political, and religious boundaries, with a universal appeal to the heart"-- Provided by publisher.
Trigger Warning
Short Fictions and Disturbances
Published in 2015
This third collection of short fiction by Gaiman includes previously published pieces of short fiction -- stories, verse, and a very special Doctor Who story that was written for the fiftieth anniversary of the beloved series in 2013 -- as well "Black Dog," a new tale that revisits the world of American Gods.
Fruiting Bodies
Stories
Published in 2022
"This genre-bending debut collection of stories constructs eight eerie worlds full of desire, wisdom, and magic blooming amidst decay. In stories that beckon and haunt, Fruiting Bodies ranges confidently from the fantastical to the gothic to the uncanny, as it follows characters-mostly queer, mostly women-on the precipice of change. In "The Changeling," two young cousins wait in dread for a new family member to arrive, convinced that he may be a dangerous supernatural creature. In "Endangered Animals," Jane prepares to say goodbye to her almost-love while they road-trip across a country irrevocably altered by climate change. In the title story, partners Agnes and Geb feast peacefully on the mushrooms that sprout from Agnes's body-until an unwanted male guest disturbs their cloistered home. For readers of Carmen Maria Machado and Karen Russell, Fruiting Bodies offers stories about knowledge in a world on the verge of collapse, knowledge that alternately empowers or devastates. Pulling beautifully, brazenly, from a variety of literary traditions, Kathryn Harlan firmly establishes herself as a thrilling new voice in fiction"-- Provided by publisher.
Self-portrait with Ghost
Short Stories
Published in 2022
"From the acclaimed author of Little Gods, whose 'gift merges science, politics and art: the kind of audacity our world needs now' (Gina Apostol), comes an immersive and electrifying story collection that explores self-construction, female resilience, and migrations both literal and transformative"-- Provided by publisher.
The Merry Spinster
Tales of Everyday Horror
Published in 2018
"A collection of darkly mischievous stories based on classic fairy tales"--Front flap.
The Hidden Girl and Other Stories
Published in 2020
"From award-winning author Ken Liu comes his much anticipated second volume of short stories. Ken Liu is one of the most lauded short story writers of our time. This collection includes a selection of his science fiction and fantasy stories from the last five years-sixteen of his best-plus a new novelette. In addition to these seventeen selections, The Hidden Girl and Other Stories also features an excerpt from book three in the Dandelion Dynasty series, The Veiled Throne"-- Provided by publisher.
This Strange Way of Dying
Stories of Magic, Desire and the Fantastic
Published in 2013
Perplexing and absorbing, these stories lift the veil of reality to expose the realms of what lies beyond with creatures that shed their skin and roam the night, vampires in Mexico City that struggle with disenchantment, an apocalypse with giant penguins, legends of magic scorpions, and tales of a ceiba tree surrounded by human skulls.
After the Quake
Stories
Published in 2003
A collection of stories inspired by the January 1995 Kobe earthquake and the poison gas subway attacks two months later takes place between the two disasters and follows the experiences of people who found their normal lives undone by surreal events.
The First Person Singular
Stories
Published in 2021
"A riveting new collection of short stories from the beloved, internationally acclaimed, Haruki Murakami. The eight masterful stories in this new collection are all told in the first person by a classic Murakami narrator: a lonely man. Some of them (like "With the Beatles," "Cream," and "On a Stone Pillow" ) are nostalgic looks back at youth. Others are set in adulthood--"Charlie Parker Plays Bossa Nova," "Carnaval," "Confessions of a Shinagawa Monkey" and the stunning title story. Occasionally, a narrator who may or may not be Haruki himself is present, as in "The Yakult Swallows Poetry Collection." Is it memoir or fiction? The reader decides. The stories all touch beautifully on love and loss, childhood and death . . . all with a signature Murakami twist"-- Provided by publisher.
The Secret Lives of Church Ladies
Published in 2020
"The Secret Lives of Church Ladies explores the raw and tender places where black women and girls dare to follow their desires and pursue a momentary reprieve from being good. The nine stories in this collection feature four generations of characters grappling with who they want to be in the world, caught as they are between the church's double standards and their own needs and passions"-- Provided by publisher.
Heads of the Colored People
Stories
Published in 2018
"Calling to mind the best works of Paul Beatty and Junot Diaz, this collection of moving, timely, and darkly funny stories examines the concept of black identity in this so-called post-racial era. A stunning new talent in literary fiction, Nafissa Thompson-Spires grapples with black identity and the contemporary middle class in these compelling, boundary-pushing vignettes. Each captivating story plunges headfirst into the lives of new, utterly original characters. Some are darkly humorous--from two mothers exchanging snide remarks through notes in their kids' backpacks, to the young girl contemplating how best to notify her Facebook friends of her impending suicide--while others are devastatingly poignant--a new mother and funeral singer who is driven to madness with grief for the young black boys who have fallen victim to gun violence, or the teen who struggles between her upper middle class upbringing and her desire to fully connect with black culture. Thompson-Spires fearlessly shines a light on the simmering tensions and precariousness of black citizenship. Her stories are exquisitely rendered, satirical, and captivating in turn, engaging in the ongoing conversations about race and identity politics, as well as the vulnerability of the black body. Boldly resisting categorization and easy answers, Nafissa Thompson-Spires is an original and necessary voice in contemporary fiction"-- Provided by publisher.
Growing Things and Other Stories
Published in 2019
"A chilling collection of psychological suspense and literary horror from the multiple award-winning author of the national bestseller, The Cabin at the End of the World, and A Head Full of Ghosts"-- Provided by publisher.
How to Fracture a Fairy Tale
Published in 2018
"Fantasy icon Jane Yolen (The Devil's Arithmetic, Briar Rose, Sister Emily's Lightship) is adored by generations of readers of all ages. Now she triumphantly returns with this inspired gathering of fractured fairy tales and legends. Yolen breaks open the classics to reveal their crystalline secrets: a philosophical bridge that misses its troll, a spinner of straw as a falsely accused moneylender, the villainous wolf adjusting poorly to retirement. Each of these offerings features a new author note and original poem, illuminating tales that are old, new, and brilliantly refined."-- from publisher.