Book picks similar to
Mute Phone Calls and Other Stories by Ruth Zernova


short-stories
afemale
readers-guide-500-great-books
zhelf

I Been in Sorrow's Kitchen and Licked Out All the Pots


Susan Straight - 1992
    When Marietta's mother dies, she heads to Charleston in search of her uncle - only to find a lover and return pregnant with twins two years later. She raises her sons back home in the low country before moving the family to Charleston, where she takes a growing interest in football and the civil rights movement. The boys grow huge and talented at the game, playing pro football in California. A new world and new travails await, but Marietta's great resilience endures.

Girl in Hyacinth Blue


Susan Vreeland - 1999
    The professor swears it's a Vermeer -- but why exactly has he kept it hidden so long? The reasons unfold in a gripping sequence of stories that trace ownership of the work back to Amsterdam during World War II and still further to the moment of the painting's inception.

John Dollar


Marianne Wiggins - 1989
    As a schoolteacher in Rangoon she is rejuvenated by the sensuous Oriental climate, and she meets John Dollar, a sailor who becomes her passionate love and whose ill-fated destiny inextricably binds her to him. On a festive seafaring expedition, the tightly knit British community confronts disaster in the shape of an earthquake and ensuing tidal wave. Swept overboard, Charlotte, John Dollar, and eight young girls who are Charlotte's pupils awake on a remote island beach. As they struggle to stay alive, their dependence on John overwhelms him, and an atmosphere of menace and doom builds, culminating in shocking and riveting scenes of both death and survival.

Red Ant House: Stories


Ann Cummins - 2003
    Set mainly amid Indian reservations and uranium mills, these twelve stories create a kaleidoscopic view of family, myth, love, landscape, and loss in a place where infinite skies and endless roads suggest a world of possibility, yet dreams are deceiving, like an oasis, just beyond reach. Whether it’s a young woman pushed quite literally to the edge on a desolate mountain pass, an orphaned brother and sister trying to patch together an existence one stitch at a time, a cop who suspects his kleptomaniac wife is stealing from other people — materially and emotionally — or a wily roadside hypnotist whose alleged power is both wonderful and strange, Ann Cummins’s characters want to transcend the circumstances of their lives, to believe in the eventuality of change. Again and again, Ann Cummins generates imagery of white-hot intensity and pushes the limits of both the human spirit and the short story form. Gritty, seductive, and always daring, this unforgettable collection puts forth a haunting new vision of hope and heartache in contemporary America and confirms the arrival of an important new voice.

Who Will Run the Frog Hospital?


Lorrie Moore - 1994
      The summer Berie was fifteen, she and her best friend Sils had jobs at Storyland in upstate New York where Berie sold tickets to see the beautiful Sils portray Cinderella in a strapless evening gown. They spent their breaks smoking, joking, and gossiping. After work they followed their own reckless rules, teasing the fun out of small town life, sleeping in the family station wagon, and drinking borrowed liquor from old mayonnaise jars. But no matter how wild, they always managed to escape any real danger—until the adoring Berie sees that Sils really does need her help—and then everything changes.

So Long a Letter


Mariama Bâ - 1980
    It is the winner of the Noma Award.

The Blood of Others


Simone de Beauvoir - 1945
    He is the one who sent her on the mission that led to her death, and before morning, he must ultimately decide how many others to send to a similar fate.

Sultana's Dream and Padmarag


Rokeya Sakhawat Hossain - 2005
    Written in English in 1905, Sultana's Dream is a delightful satirical work set in Ladyland, where men are in purdah and women firmly in charge of home and government. Published in 1924 and translated here for the first time, Padmarag complements Sultana's Dream in its espousal of women's personal journeys towards emancipation. Resonant with autobiographical undertones, the novella is both a powerful indictment of male oppression and a celebration of Rokeya's faith in a universalist society where women, regardless of race, class, creed and religion, reject the diktat of a tyrannical patriarchal society in favour of a life devoted to improving their lot. Playful, fascinating and intelligent, these novellas offer a keen insight into the psyche of a largely self-taught social activist who has, more than seventy years after her death, come to acquire near-iconic status in South Asia.

Walking Wounded


William McIlvanney - 1989
    The walking wounded. These are the stories of ordinary people.

Great American Stories: Ten Unabridged Classics


Ambrose Bierce - 1994
    The following stories are included in this collection: "The One Million Pound Bank Note" by Mark Twain"The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County" by Mark Twain"A Visit to Niagara" by Mark Twain"Mysterious Visit" by Mark Twain"The Blue Hotel" by Stephen Crane"The Bride Comes to Yellow Sky" by Stephen Crane"The Eyes of the Panther" by Ambrose Bierce"An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge" by Ambrose Bierce"The Love of Life" by Jack London"To Build a Fire" by Jack London

In a Summer Season


Elizabeth Taylor - 1961
    'People say I married her for her money', he thought contentedly, and for the moment was full of the self-respect that loving her had given him.Kate Heron is a wealthy, charming widow who marries, much to the disapproval of friends and neighbours, a man ten years her junior: the attractive, feckless Dermot. Then comes the return of Kate's old friend Charles - intelligent, kind and now widowed, with his beautiful young daughter. Kate watches happily as their two families are drawn together, finding his presence reassuringly familiar, but slowly she becomes aware of subtle undercurrents that begin to disturb the calm surface of their friendship. Before long, even she cannot ignore the gathering storm . . .

The Writer on Her Work


Janet Sternburg - 1980
    Seventeen novelists, poets, and writers of nonfiction explore how they have become writers, why they write, and what it means to be a woman and a writer.

Fear


Roald Dahl - 2017
    Discover a collection of deliciously dark ghost stories for adults, picked by Dahl himself . . . Do you enjoy being scared? Featuring fourteen classic spine-chilling stories chosen by Roald Dahl, these terrible tales of ghostly goings-on will have you shivering with fear as you turn the pages.They include such timeless and haunting stories as Sheridan Le Fanu's The Ghost of a Hand, Edith Wharton's Afterward, Cynthia Asquith's The Corner Shop and Mary Treadgold's The Telephone.Featuring extraordinary cover art by Charming Baker, whose paintings echo the dark and twisted world of Dahl's short stories.Roald Dahl reveals even more about the darker side of human nature in seven other centenary editions featuring his own stories: Lust, Madness, Cruelty, Deception, Trickery, Innocence and War.

Lady's Maid


Margaret Forster - 1990
    Lily is quickly drawn to her mistress’s gaiety and sharp intelligence, the power of her poetry, and her deep emotional need. It is a strange intimacy that will last sixteen years.It is Lily who smuggles Miss Barrett out of the gloomy Wimpole Street house, witnesses her secret wedding to Robert Browning in an empty church, and flees with them to threadbare lodgings and the heat, light, and colors of Italy. As housekeeper, nursemaid, companion, and confidante, Lily is with Elizabeth in every crisis – birth, bereavement, travel, literary triumph. As her devotion turns almost to obsession, Lily forgets her own fleeting loneliness. But when Lily’s own affairs take a dramatic turn, she comes to expect the loyalty from Elizabeth that she herself has always given.

Paradise of the Blind


Dương Thu Hương - 1988
    Through the eyes of Hang, a young woman in her twenties who has grown up amidst the slums and intermittent beauty of Hanoi, we come to know the tragedy of her family as land reform rips apart their village. When her uncle Chinh‘s political loyalties replace family devotion, Hang is torn between her mother‘s appalling self–sacrifice and the bitterness of her aunt who can avenge but not forgive. Only by freeing herself from the past will Hang be able to find dignity –– and a future.