The most recommended short story collections

This book's heightened literary consciousness suggests a lifetime of practice, but it is, in fact, Gwendolyn Kiste's debut (she has quickly become one of contemporary dark fiction’s most celebrated, leading figures). Throughout Untether, the author examines both societal and individual forms of suffering (e.g. depression, dissociation, and the dangers of socially imposed normativities). My favorite piece is “Skin Like Honey and Lace,” which depicts a group of women who achieve social induction by taking skin from strangers and applying it to their own bodies. A staggeringly accomplished collection. 

Set during the Second World War, these hilarious stories are about William, a young boy who has a very strong sense of himself. I identify with the scruffy, rebellious William. He’s always in trouble but has very passionate reasons for doing the things he does. The adult world baffles him, he’s the head of a gang that he leads, with his logic, into all kinds of scrapes. The world is unjust and he has to fit in with incomprehensible family values and oppose terrors like the vile and spoilt Violet Elizabeth Bott. I cheer for William against his older siblings and against the world that just doesn’t understand.

I found this story collection by Machado to be not only dark and sad, but wickedly funny. How often does our laughter turn to tears, or vice versa? These things are not mutually exclusive, and Machado lives within that uncomfortably liminal space with obvious relish.

I also appreciate it's unabashed feminism. So much of the horror genre is seen through a male lens that leaves me feeling cold and left out. In Machado's writing, I feel not only seen but celebrated, and I will happily live within her ferociously accepting stories of darkness as many times as she offers them.

Other, newer books on the Battle of Berlin are available. And Ryan’s other books, The Longest Day and A Bridge Too Far, are more famous. But The Last Battle is the book whose style and mood I most try to emulate in my own writings.

Ryan interviewed many of the participants, collected reams of documents from both sides—at a time when the Cold War was at its height—and the result is a wonderful book. You can smell the cigarette and gunsmoke, picture the military and political leaders talking, laugh or cry at some of the vignettes.

Beevor’s book on Berlin is better history—thanks to the sources he was able to access—but Ryan is my ‘go-to’ book if I want to feel and experience the fall of Berlin.

Maybe the weirdest and most beautiful collection of stories in my house full of books.

In “The Circular Ruins,” a man dreams up another man, only to realize that he, too, is a dream. “The Library of Babel” imagines a world containing every possible book, most of which are nonsense but some of which, if only you could find them, contain the most profound truths ever written. “Funes the Memorious” imagines a boy paralyzed by a perfect memory, one that retains every single detail of every event ever experienced.

Every sentence of these stories is bizarre and fascinating, with a richness that leaves me understanding them differently with every re-read.

Hold on! Anton Chekhov? Not that giant of Russian literature who gave us some of the most poignant, brooding, melancholy views of family life in dramatic works like The Seagull and The Cherry Orchard? Probably the biggest surprise on this list, Anton Chekhov wrote comedy for years and as a young adult supported his family by writing humorous sketches about Russian life for the magazine Oskolki. While most famous for his plays, Chekhov was an incredibly gifted short story and humor writer. In one of his tightest yarns, “An Avenger,” confused young Fyodor Sigaev goes shopping for an appropriate revolver to mete out justice after he discovers his spouse cheating on him. But once at the shop, the sheer number of firearm choices he’s presented with quickly overwhelm him. 

“. . . I would advise you, M'sieur, to take this superb revolver, the Smith and Wesson pattern, the… show more.

In a Glass Darkly is a collection of unusual Gothic tales. The shorter stories provide the foreboding inevitability of the genre, with atmospheric hauntings and ghostly floating eyes. Fans of M. R. James or H. P Lovecraft will appreciate these.

In addition, the collection features two novella-length stories. Carmilla, an early and influential vampire story, and "The Room At The Dragon Volant", which is a romance horror. Carmilla inspired many of the elements Bram Stoker used in Dracula. Both these longer stories are atmospheric and wonderfully picturesque in their descriptions of the people and places.

I’m not usually a fan of short story anthologies, but the author’s command of descriptive language and ability to keep the theme of humanity throughout swept me away.

The question of what it is to be human is left for the reader to decide. The collection is thought-provoking while still engaging the imagination and remaining entertaining. This book is a rare treasure.

One of the few books that moved me to tears when it was read to me as a child, and moved me to tears again when reading it as an adult to my children.

The strange thing is that on both occasions, my responses came as a surprise to me when they really it should not have, as Wilde loves to push a reader's emotions as far as they can go, completely unashamed in his brazen use of sentimentality and pathos. 

This classic short story by Flannery O'Connor follows a family on a road trip through the South.

Included on the journey is the manipulative and deceitful grandmother, who somehow convinces the family to take a detour to visit an old plantation home that she remembers from her childhood. The consequences of this detour are chilling.

Spoiler alert, but in the context of the ongoing investigations of our former President, one of the passages really struck a chord, “I found out the crime don't matter. You can do one thing or you can do another, kill a man or take a tire off his car, because sooner or later you're going to forget what it was you done and just be punished for it”