Best of
Short-Story-Collection

1

Slaughterhouse Five/ The Sirens Of Titan/ Player Piano/ Cat's Cradle/ Breakfast Of Champions/ Mother Night


Kurt Vonnegut Jr.
    

The Arabian Nights: Tales of 1001 Nights, Volume 2 of 3


Anonymous
    Published here in three volumes, this magnificent new edition brings these tales to life for modern readers in the first complete English translation since Richard Burton’s of the 1880s. Every night for three years the vengeful King Shahriyar sleeps with a different virgin, and the next morning puts her to death. To end this brutal pattern, the vizier's daughter, Shahrazad, begins to tell the king enchanting tales of mystical lands peopled with princes and hunchbacks, of the Angel of Death and magical spirits, and of jinnis trapped in rings and in lamps—a sequence of stories that will last 1,001 nights, and that will save her own life.

This Won't Take But a Minute, Honey


Steve Almond
    This innovative, self-published book comprises 30 short short stories, and 30 brief essays on the psychology and practice of writing.

The Arabian Nights: Tales of 1001 Nights; Volume 3 of 3


Anonymous
    To end this brutal pattern and to save her own life, the vizier's daughter, Shahrazad, begins to tell the king tales of adventure, love, riches and wonder - tales of mystical lands peopled with princes and hunchbacks, the Angel of Death and magical spirits, tales of the voyages of Sindbad, of Ali Baba's outwitting a band of forty thieves and of jinnis trapped in rings and in lamps. The sequence of stories will last 1,001 nights.

Out There: Stories


Kate FolkKate Folk
    A medical ward for a mysterious bone-melting disorder is the setting of a perilous love triangle. A curtain of void obliterates the globe at a steady pace, forcing Earth’s remaining inhabitants to decide with whom they want to spend eternity. A man fleeing personal scandal enters a codependent relationship with a house that requires a particularly demanding level of care. And in the title story, originally published in "The New Yorker," a woman in San Francisco uses dating apps to find a partner despite the threat posed by “blots,” preternaturally handsome artificial men dispatched by Russian hackers to steal data. Meanwhile, in a poignant companion piece, a woman and a blot forge a genuine, albeit doomed, connection.Prescient and wildly imaginative, Out There depicts an uncanny landscape that holds a mirror to our subconscious fears and desires. Each story beats with its own fierce heart, and together they herald an exciting new arrival in the tradition of speculative literary fiction.

Abstinence Only


Meghan Phillips
    In this more than slightly tilted world, all female students are issued chastity belts and forced to wear fake pregnancy bellies, students are given “V-cards” that they must protect at all costs, and teachers and administrators take stranger and stranger measures, like using logic puzzles to assign punishments for sexual impropriety.These stories highlight Phillips’ incredible talents as a writer of flash fiction. She cuts to the heart of the thing and lays bare something about the world and the strange experience of living in it without so much shining a spotlight as burning a quick, weird flare off to the side.Printed in an edition of 200. Bound with red staples. Four color interior art and cover by Killian Czuba.

Grammar of Love


Ivan Alekseyevich Bunin
    These stories all deal with the common theme of the awakening of love at unpremeditated time and place, catching the victims off-guard. For the essential flavor of the tales, read Sunstroke, the story of a chance encounter on board ship; and A Night at Sea, perhaps the most unusual story of the group. Russian -- some about cultured people, some about peasants. The market is:- all who like exceptional short stories; all who are interested in getting the feel of one of the most famous writers.

How Strange a Season


Megan Mayhew BergmanMegan Mayhew Bergman
    A competitive swimmer negotiates over which days she will fulfill her wifely duties, and which days she will keep for herself. A peach farmer wonders if her orchard will survive a drought. And generations of a family in South Carolina struggle with fidelity and their cruel past, some clinging to old ways and others painfully carving new paths.In these haunting stories, Megan Mayhew Bergman portrays women who wrestle with problematic inheritances: a modern glass house on a treacherous California cliff, a water-starved ranch, and an abandoned plantation on a river near Charleston. Bergman’s provocative prose asks the questions: what are we leaving behind for our ancestors to hold, and what price will they pay for our mistakes?

Some of My Best Friends: Essays on Lip Service


Tajja IsenTajja Isen
     These nine daring essays explore the sometimes troubling and often awkward nature of that discord. Some of My Best Friends takes on the cartoon industry’s pivot away from colorblind casting, the pursuit of diverse representation in the literary world, the law’s refusal to see inequality, and the cozy fictions of nationalism. Isen deftly examines the quick, cosmetic fixes society makes to address systemic problems, and reveals the unexpected ways they can misfire. In the spirit of Zadie Smith, Cathy Park Hong, and Jia Tolentino, Isen interlaces cultural criticism with her lived experience to explore the gaps between what we say and what we do, what we do and what we value, what we value and what we demand.

This Paradise


Ruby Cowling
    Amidst it all, twins, heroines, mothers and rebels play out their lives under the strange grips of technology, governments, corporations and the capricious planet on which we all, in our different ways, just about manage to live. This Paradise is a rare and beautiful collection of stories about people fleeing towards places or times or situations they hope might be better – trying to outrun their nature, to deny the undeniable. Written with an arresting eye for detail, a rich sense of compassion and a darkly comic understanding of the human psyche, the stories in this volume propose a series of haphazard questions, not least of which is: where do we run to when there’s nowhere left to run? “No other writer of short fiction has such a firm finger on the unsteady pulse of the suppurating British body politic.” – Joanna Walsh, author of Words From The World’s End.“With these stories, Ruby Cowling shows a brilliantly instinctive understanding that a story can be anything, go anywhere, and say the things you were least expecting it to say. These are stories that will tip the ground out from beneath your feet.” – Jon McGregor, author of Reservoir 13.

Appusamy Paritchai Ezhuthukirar!


Bakkiyam Ramasamy
    Raa. Sundaresan (born June 1, 1932). He was born in Jalakandapuram, Salem district. His pen name is a combination of his mother's name (Bakkiyam) and his father's (Ramasamy). His first breakthrough was the publication of the story Appusami and the African Beauty in Kumudam in 1963. Since then he has published a number of serialized novels, stage plays and short stories featuring the same set of characters. Some of the stories were published under various pen names including Yogesh, Vanamali, Selvamani, Mrinalini, Sivathanal, and Jwalamalini. He also worked as a journalist in Kumudam, eventually retiring in 1990 as its joint editor.

The Trouble with Happiness: And Other Stories


Tove Ditlevsen
    Underneath the surface of these precisely observed tales of marriage and family life in mid-century Copenhagen pulse currents of desire, violence, and despair, as women and men struggle to escape from the roles assigned to them and dream of becoming free and happy—without ever truly understanding what that might mean.Tove Ditlevsen is one of Denmark’s most famous and beloved writers, and her autobiographical Copenhagen Trilogy was hailed as a masterpiece on re-publication in English, lauded for its wry humor, limpid prose, and powerful honesty. The poignant and understated stories in The Trouble with Happiness, written in the 1950s and 1960s and never before translated into English, offer readers a new chance to encounter the quietly devastating work of this essential twentieth-century writer.

Captain Stormfield's Visit to Heaven/The Diaries of Adam and Eve


Mark Twain
    Begun in 1869, the narrative was alternately expanded then set aside, and finally saw publication in 1909. Like many Twain characters, Captain Stormfield is based on an actual person Clemens knew; in this case Captain Ned Wakeman, a colorful American seaman Clemens met on a steamship journey from San Francisco to Nicaragua in 1866. The real Captain regaled Clemens with his stories of his many astounding, mostly true adventures on the high seas, even claiming to have visited heaven in a dream. Wakeman made a powerful impression on Clemens, who afterwards included literary versions of him in many of his tales. Captain Stormfield remained a personal favorite of Clemens his entire life; he named his final residence in Redding, Connecticut, 'Stormfield.' The Diaries of Adam and Eve continue Twain's humorous examination of Biblical themes and characters; their underlying message of the fragile joy of human companionship is both funny and poignant. Clemens himself was happily married for 36 years, and never fully recovered emotionally from his wife Livy's death in 1904. The stories were initially published separately - Adam's Diary in 1893 and Eve's Diary in 1906; they are presented here as companion pieces per Clemens' original intent.

Heart Throbs (Vol I); The Old Scrap Book


Various
    

Neela Scarf


Anu Singh Choudhary
    The stories range from both urban and rural settings. All the stories included in the book are different from each other with a range of diverse characters. Some of the stories in this selection are Mukti, Kuch Yun hona Uska, Cigarette Ka Aakhri Kash, and Bisesar Bo Ki Premika. This book will make for a riveting and engaging read for those who enjoy Hindi short stories.

The Shorter Novels And Stories Of Carson Mc Cullers


Carson McCullers