Short Stories

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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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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

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“Fiorito’s prose is magical, evocative, mesmerizing.”

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recommended for readers who prize beautiful prose and story moments that linger.”

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This is the latest in Akashic Books city noir series set in Africa. The 13 stories visit various locations in Accra, all of which show the poverty but hope of the people who survive there.

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Following her 2011 debut collection, This Is Not Your City, and her 2019 novel, The Vexations, Caitlin Horrocks returns with a stellar second story collection, Life Among the

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

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“Word by word, Schwartz chooses her language with a surgeon’s precision. Her craftsmanship is a joy to behold.”

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“Mengiste and Akashic have done us a service by putting together this intriguing collection.”

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“With exceptional precision, concision, grace, wisdom, and insight Nicole Krauss creates a magnificent collection of stories that explore what the narrator effectively asks her son in the l

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Is it better to read a story collection sequentially?

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“has greater resonance, the characters are older, have lived more, have more to say. As a result, the stories are . . . more rewarding . . .”

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“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

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Caroline Bock’s hybrid collection, Carry Her Home, could be the collection to read in 2020 for several reasons, most notably because it focuses on family, home, and loss.

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“deeply evocative, eminently readable . . .”

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“although McNally’s stories seem unbelievable at first, they throb with a recognizable human heartbeat, powered by love and regret and the mystery of life.”

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