Single Authors

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.

The short stories in Mary-Beth Hughes’ collection The Ocean House are linked, not by the titular manse—the last of the great seafront houses in Long Branch, New Jersey, its property covete

“The Danger of Smoking in Bed underlines the darkness of evil.

Is it better to read a story collection sequentially?

“Using her remarkable, literary voice to investigate the psychological experiences of victims, Oates requires that we willingly suspend our disbelief and reject realism as a means to identi

This is Shruti Swamy’s debut collection of stories. She is not a debut author. She writes with sureness and grace. Her writing is more poetry than prose.

Readers will find Zadie Smith’s short story collection a mixed bag with a few interesting bits and pieces, and a few good short works.

“Orange World and Other Stories exposes the difficulties of wanting. . . . Characters long for things that have no name. They live on the edge of terror.

“Drager’s intoxicating novel presents itself like the box in Schrödinger’s famous cat experiment. Until you open the box, the cat is both alive and dead.

The stories in Ha Seong-Nan’s Flowers of Mold are an acquired taste. Fortunately, taste for them can be developed awfully fast.

“I have always preferred to disguise my feelings from others.”—almost every character in almost every short story by Gerald Murnane.