Short Stories

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“The assortment of ethnicities and grudges displayed in Paris Noir: The Suburbs could become a treasure chest of resources for any noir author seeking a more gruesome approach or a

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“demonstrates the power of storytelling in our everyday lives and how it might be a good idea to listen more carefully to the stories that others are telling us.”

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“Hyperbole and exaggeration are the definition of camp, an air of performance also part of the package, and Walker’s characters obligingly give the impression of always being always in desp

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“‘Why am I here?’ he keeps asking, up until his inevitable execution at which point his keeper finally answers: No more questions.’

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“At times uproariously funny, uncannily accurate, and glaringly insightful, David Butler’s Fugitive is a collective exposé on human nature delivered in entertaining snippets with s

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Medusa’s Ankles opens with a haunting and strangely gentle ghost story (‘A July Ghost’) and ends with a terse contemporary fable about our feckless destruction of the planet (‘Sea

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“Midnight Hour operates from a stimulating conceit: an anthology of 20 crime stories, all taking place at midnight, all written by writers of color.”

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“These tales are presented as humorous, but it’s a humor that hides a piercing sorrow at the state of the world and the costs of love and friendship in such a world.”

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“‘Nothing about me adds up . . . People are that way, not adding up.’”  

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Allan Gurganus planted his flag on the literary landscape in 1989 with The Oldest Living Confederate Widow Tells All.

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“For those familiar with Williams' work, her latest short story collection How High?—That High is more of the same: oft-perplexing, oft-illuminating.”

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“an enjoyable assembly of novellas sure to lift the holiday spirit of every reader.”   

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“Few fiction writers have captured the trauma of India’s partition as powerfully as Saadat Hasan Manto, called ‘the undisputed master of the modern Indian short story’ by Salman Rushdie.”

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“a work of singular creativity.”

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Accessible, challenging, and fun by turns, Speculative Los Angeles possesses everything a fan could want.”

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Filthy Animals is a bravura performance, an emphatic statement of literary power from a writer whose first novel was Booker shortlisted.”

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“A roller coaster ride that’s filled with loads of suspense, mystery, and steamy sexiness.”

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Let Me Think is often frightening, but it’s wonderfully readable and surprisingly accessible.

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“Wang has the distinct skill of evoking time and place, many eras, many places, and putting his characters, and the reader in them.”

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“Rutherford is especially good at describing the liminal space between reality and imagination, especially in the storyteller’s mind . . .”

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“When a Stranger Comes to Town will give you the very best of what crime fiction should deliver. Means, opportunity, and obsession—right?”

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What is made clear in this latest collection of stories is that Murakami is a master storyteller.”

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Maybe you thought it was impossible. That it didn’t exist. You would never find a contemporary short story collection that was more than well written.

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This collection is not easy to approach because of the different realities and forms of expression it uses—and they might have been useful had they prompted deeper reflections. But not.

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Dorthe Nors’ Wild Swims is a collection of 14 short stories written tightly and tensely, with most under a thousand words.

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