Short Stories

May is Short Story Month
Short Story Display
May is short story month and our booksellers have created a display of some of their favorite collections. Click the titles or the book covers for the publishers' descriptions of the book.

Visit the May 2nd posting on our Facebook page to see what our customers are recommending.

Day for Night (Paperback)

$14.99
ISBN-13: 9780316077576
Availability: On Our Shelves Now
Published: Reagan Arthur / Back Bay Books, 4/2011

By now, you are probably familiar with novels in the form of linked stories (Colum McCann's Let the Great World Spin, Elizabeth Strout's Olive Kitteridge), but few are as eerie or as mesmerizing as Frederick Reiken's DAY FOR NIGHT (Back Bay, $14.99). Each chapter is a haunting experiment in structure and voice, featuring characters who are grappling with a past mystery or trauma, whether personal (a parent lost to cancer) or historical (the murder of 500 Jewish men in Lithuania in 1941). And while every strand of the narrative connects to a larger whole, the deep reward of Reiken's novel is that each segment contains a universe within itself. - Elizabeth Sher



$14.00
ISBN-13: 9781439170847
Availability: On Our Shelves Now
Published: Free Press, 3/2011

When THE MADONNAS OF ECHO PARK (Free Press, $14) came out about a year ago, I was certain that Brando Skyhorse would be recognized as one of the best young writers working today. This novel is comprised of interconnected stories set in a once lustrous, but now working-class and Chicano, neighborhood in Los Angeles. The characters are realistic, the sights and sounds are vivid and exciting, and the stories pack an emotional punch. Take a moment and read the first page of this marvelous first novel—you'll be hooked. - Mark LaFramboise


$15.00
ISBN-13: 9780805093629
Availability: On Our Shelves Now
Published: Holt Paperbacks, 3/2011

The five women featured in the nine stories of Susi Wyss's debut, THE CIVILIZED WORLD (Holt, $15), are from various cultures and countries linked by the commonalities of life: longing, fear, love, grief. As the stories progress, the women's lives intersect and the novelistic aspects of the book emerge. In "Names," Ophelia, the wife of an American Foreign Service Officer, writes down the names of Malawians she meets—a desperate attempt to manage the emotions around her infertility. Ophelia reappears in "Waiting for Solomon" as she tours Ethiopia with Janice while both women wait for child adoptions to be finalized. In the last story, "There Are No Accidents," Janice happens upon a beauty salon in Ghana run by her former employee, Adjoa, whose twin brother robbed Janice's house. Wyss's humane portrait of modern Africa and African women is carefully drawn and astutely, beautifully delivered. - Lacey Dunham


$15.00
ISBN-13: 9781609450090
Availability: On Our Shelves Now
Published: Europa Editions, 5/2011

Missing J.D. Salinger? The winner of the 2010 Prix Goncourt for the Novella, Eric-Emmanuel Schmitt, reminds me of a more optimistic version of the curmudgeonly old recluse. As with his previous collections The Most Beautiful Book in the World and The Woman with the Bouquet, Schmitt here is philosophical, inventive, humorous, imaginative, and even mystical. The stories in CONCERTO TO THE MEMORY OF AN ANGEL (Europa Editions, $15) may take the reader down dark paths, exploring the worst in human nature, but they end with unpredictable twists, tantalizing both the characters and their readers with a sense of new possibilities. - Andrew Getman


$23.95
ISBN-13: 9780399157202
Availability: Usually Ships in 1-5 days
Published: Amy Einhorn Books/Putnam, 1/2011

No more boots stomping above, no more football games turned up too high, and best of all, no more front doors slamming before dawn as they trudge out for their early formation, sneakers on metal stairs, cars starting, shouts to the windows above to thrown down their gloves on cold desert mornings. Babies still cry, telephones ring, Saturday morning cartoons screech, but without the men, there is a sense of muted silence, a sense of muted life.

And so begins YOU KNOW WHEN THE MEN ARE GONE (Amy Einhorn, $23.95), eight stories in which Siobhan Fallon takes us into the world of Fort Hood during wartime: a place where families struggle, wives miss their husbands and children rebel. For most of us, the sacrifice of war is left to others, but in this collection we’re allowed to peek in the windows of the people who give up the most: a wife who hacks her husband’s email overseas searching for clues of infidelity, a wounded soldier returning home, a runaway teenager. Each story is emotionally acute, beautifully written and will leave you haunted and in awe of this world that feels foreign, but is not so far away. - Jennifer Close


$16.00
ISBN-13: 9780143118640
Availability: On Our Shelves Now
Published: Penguin (Non-Classics), 2/2011
Yes, it's absolutely true: T.C. Boyle is a master storyteller. In "Balto," a young girl is asked to lie in court for her alcoholic father; in "Sin Dolor," a young boy living in squalor astonishes a community—including its detached doctor—with his inability to feel physical pain; in the title story, WILD CHILD (Penguin, $16), Boyle chronicles the heartbreaking tale of the Savage of Aveyron, implicitly asking, “who are the real savages?” Boyle frequently works with issues of social and environmental justice. These tales of humanity brought to weakness by the natural world and our own flawed nature prove that Boyle captures human folly and frailty better than any of his contemporaries. - Lacey Dunham

$15.00
ISBN-13: 9781594484650
Availability: On Our Shelves Now
Published: Riverhead Trade, 7/2010

Maile Maloy's second collection of short stories, BOTH WAYS IS THE ONLY WAY I WANT IT (Riverhead, $15), is so quiet that many climaxes tiptoe by, only to make themselves felt later, as you turn them over in your mind: You'll be washing dishes or brushing your teeth and realize, suddenly, why the perversely casual relationship between a dead woman's father and her murderer's girlfriend in "The Girlfriend" resonates with so much truth; or why you felt so uncomfortable reading the benign "Travis, B.,” where a lonely young man with a limping gait falls in love with a young lawyer he will never see again. Meloy draws her characters through each story with simple, unfettered prose it is easy to lose yourself in. - Lacey Dunham


$13.95
ISBN-13: 9780811218603
Availability: On Our Shelves Now
Published: New Directions Publishing Corporation, 1/2010

$15.00
ISBN-13: 9780143114666
Availability: On Our Shelves Now
Published: Penguin (Non-Classics), 9/2009
So you think Pevear & Volokhonsky's translations have introduced you to Russian literature? Think again, and meet your contemporaries. A WEREWOLF PROBLEM IN CENTRAL RUSSIA: And Other Stories, by Victor Pelevin (New Directions, $13.95) and THERE ONCE LIVED A WOMAN WHO TRIED TO KILL HER NEIGHBOR'S BABY: Scary Fairy Tales, by Ludmilla Petrushevskaya (Penguin, $15) will introduce you to the rough impact on ordinary citizens during the transition at the end of the Soviet period to the failures of the new economy. In classic yet shockingly current Russian style, Pelevin plays with the surreal and absurb; Petrushevskaya explores the realm of strange occurences and fantasy; throughout their stories, there is a relentless hope and longing for a better, more deeply meaningful existence. Aren't these elements what make everyday reality so shockingly brutal and harsh, but also bearable? Because if we can't laugh at bizarre twists of fate and escape into dreams, what else does the world have to offer? - Andrew Getman

$14.00
ISBN-13: 9781400034369
Availability: On Our Shelves Now
Published: Vintage, 4/2005
Each of Julie Orringer’s short stories in HOW TO BREATHE UNDERWATER (Vintage, $14) features a young woman on the cusp of something—an adolescent on the brink of adult experience, a teenager caught between childhood and independence, a college student hovering nervously on the edge of the "real world." Orringer approaches these thresholds with precision and grace. But each story is also shot through with darkness—an undercurrent of violence that disrupts her characters' coming-of-age. Orringer's debut collection emotionally unsettling and completely, compellingly original. - Liz Sher

Jesus' Son: Stories (Paperback)

$14.00
ISBN-13: 9780312428747
Availability: On Our Shelves Now
Published: Picador, 2/2009
Though slim, this collection of short stories trembles with neon garishness, coldly and coolly following the protagonist through a beautiful inferno.

$16.95
ISBN-13: 9781590172483
Availability: On Our Shelves Now
Published: NYRB Classics, 10/2007

Fun with Problems (Paperback)

$13.95
ISBN-13: 9780547394534
Availability: On Our Shelves Now
Published: Mariner Books, 9/2010

$15.00
ISBN-13: 9781933372747
Availability: On Our Shelves Now
Published: Europa Editions, 7/2009

Mother of Sorrows (Paperback)

$14.00
ISBN-13: 9781400096213
Availability: On Our Shelves Now
Published: Vintage, 6/2006

Voice of America (Hardcover)

$19.99
ISBN-13: 9780061990861
Availability: Special Order - Subject to Availability
Published: Harper, 11/2010

$13.95
ISBN-13: 9780156364652
Availability: On Our Shelves Now
Published: Mariner Books, 8/1977

$15.00
ISBN-13: 9780375727436
Availability: On Our Shelves Now
Published: Vintage, 10/2002

$14.00
ISBN-13: 9780743299411
Availability: On Our Shelves Now
Published: Scribner, 5/2008

Lost in the City (Paperback)

$13.99
ISBN-13: 9780060795283
Availability: On Our Shelves Now
Published: Amistad, 12/2004

Selected Stories (Hardcover)

$35.00
ISBN-13: 9780670022069
Availability: Usually Ships in 1-5 days
Published: Viking Adult, 11/2010

Museum of the Weird (Paperback)

$15.50
ISBN-13: 9781573661560
Availability: Usually Ships in 1-5 days
Published: Fiction Collective 2, 9/2010

$16.00
ISBN-13: 9780743291637
Availability: On Our Shelves Now
Published: Scribner, 9/2007

Don't Cry (Paperback)

$15.00
ISBN-13: 9780307275875
Availability: Usually Ships in 1-5 days
Published: Vintage, 3/2010

$13.95
ISBN-13: 9780375705571
Availability: On Our Shelves Now
Published: Vintage, 7/2001

$15.00
ISBN-13: 9780802141675
Availability: On Our Shelves Now
Published: Grove Press, 3/2005

A Good Hanging (Paperback)

$15.99
ISBN-13: 9780312653514
Availability: Usually Ships in 1-5 days
Published: Minotaur Books, 12/2010

$19.00
ISBN-13: 9780312655396
Availability: On Our Shelves Now
Published: Picador, 10/2010

$14.95
ISBN-13: 9780547055329
Availability: On Our Shelves Now
Published: Mariner Books, 10/2010

$13.99
ISBN-13: 9780061661471
Availability: On Our Shelves Now
Published: Harper Perennial, 5/2009

$14.00
ISBN-13: 9780312429294
Availability: On Our Shelves Now
Published: Picador, 2/2010

$16.95
ISBN-13: 9781886157729
Availability: On Our Shelves Now
Published: BkMk Press of the University of Missouri-Kans, 11/2009

$26.95
ISBN-13: 9781934997116
Availability: Usually Ships in 1-5 days
Published: CSA Word, 10/2008

$17.95
ISBN-13: 9781564786005
Availability: On Our Shelves Now
Published: Dalkey Archive Press, 11/2010

$16.00
ISBN-13: 9780374532871
Availability: On Our Shelves Now
Published: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 12/2010

$14.95
ISBN-13: 9780393313963
Availability: On Our Shelves Now
Published: W. W. Norton & Company, 2/1996

$15.95
ISBN-13: 9781400095971
Availability: On Our Shelves Now
Published: Vintage, 4/2009

$15.00
ISBN-13: 9780307455918
Availability: On Our Shelves Now
Published: Anchor, 6/2010

$15.00
ISBN-13: 9780375704437
Availability: On Our Shelves Now
Published: Vintage, 3/2000

$22.00
ISBN-13: 9780312429898
Availability: On Our Shelves Now
Published: Picador, 3/2010