By
Did you know May is National Short Story Month? I didn't either, which is why I'm blogging about it with just a week left in the month. But I stock up on short story collections at this time of year because I think they're a great way to get ready for the warm-weather. Short stories are bite-sized and non-committal--the perfect compliment to a summer that's strange, surprising, and spontaneous. (I also like owning short story collections more than I do novels, since I'm more likely to revisit them.) So I've listed a few new collections (some of which I'm looking forward to), a handful of tried-and-true classics, and a few from the past ten years that I believe are new classics.
If you have more short story recommendations, let us know in the comments!
New and Upcoming
- Orientation: And Other Stories by Daniel Orozco
- Pulse: Stories by Julian Barnes
- Saints and Sinners: Stories by Edna O'Brien
- You Think That's Bad: Stories by Jim Shepard
- Volt: Stories by Alan Heathcock
- Binocular Vision: New and Selected Stories by Edith Pearlman
- Ladies and Gentlemen by Adam Ross
- Crimes in Southern Indiana: Stories by Frank Bill
- Before You Suffocate Your Own Fool Self by Danielle Evans
Classics
- Where I'm Calling From: Selected Stories by Raymond Carver
- The Complete Stories by Flannery O'Connor
- The Short Stories of F. Scott Fitzgerald
- The Collected Stories of William Faulkner
- The Stories of John Cheever
- Stories of Anton Chekhov
- Franz Kafka: The Complete Stories
New Classics
- Too Much Happiness by Alice Munro
- Interpreter of Maladies by Jhumpa Lahiri
- Blind Willow, Sleeping Woman by Haruki Murakami
- Everything Here is the Best Thing Ever by Justin Taylor
- Drown by Junot Diaz
- The Collected Stories of Lydia Davis
- Pastoralia by George Saunders
- The Boat by Nam Le
- Faithless: Tales of Transgression by Joyce Carol Oates
Photo courtesy of Sasha and the Silver Fish
