Best Short Stories you've just read

[kennyc]

Originally Posted by BenG

The New Yorker has his story Tenth of December online.
http://www.newyorker.com/fiction/fea...ction_saunders

Review of the Collection Here: http://www.newyorker.com/fiction/fea...urrentPage=all

I took a look and remember reading that story somewhere...not sure where...It's a good one. 3/5 stars for me.

[ebook.lover]

Any of the Roald Dahl's short stories. Always a funny and totally unexpected ending....I just bought a thick volume of his works and can't stop reading it

[caleb72]

I'm not much of a short story reader, but I've been trying to improve.

I really loved The Paper Menagerie by Ken Liu.
I also loved Movement by Nancy Fulda. In fact, I've liked everything I've read of hers.
There was a story called Creation by Jeffrey Ford which impressed me as well.

[Pablo]

I seldom read short stories, but I liked and sometimes re-read Dumb martian and Pillar to post, both by John Wyndham and The feeling of power by Isaac Asimov.

[Gazella]

Originally Posted by ebook.lover

Any of the Roald Dahl's short stories. Always a funny and totally unexpected ending....I just bought a thick volume of his works and can't stop reading it

I really like his children's fiction books. Are all of Dahl's short stories for adults?

[kennyc]

Here's an Alice Munro Story in the New Yorker (she just won the Nobel Prize):

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/b...ive-story.html

[kennyc]

The Prophet from Jupiter by Tony Earley is my current favorite short story. It has everything but the kitchen sink and that might be in there too. It’s got a submerged town at the bottom of a lake, marital infidelity, a dog named shithead, a disabled boy that wears a coat hanger around his neck to ward off the evil spirits, it’s got dead mules rotting in the sun, dams about to burst and catfish as big as Jesus, political ambitions and of course the prophet and his very satisfied wife who is filled with the spirit of the lord when they make love.
I love this story and my only regret is that I didn’t read it years ago. I’ve read it several times in the past year and it has not lost anything in the re-reading. It’s jam-packed with characters, action, emotion and intrigue all wrapped around a man-made lake and the dam-keeper that tends it and the town built up around it.

I read this in The Scribner Anthology of Contemporary Short Fiction 1999, but it is in his collection Here We Are in Paradise: Stories as well. Find it, read it.

[BenG]

You can now get the Complete Short Stories of Theodore Sturgeon (in 13 volumes) at Amazon.

[Rizla]

Deleted.

[meeera]

The best stories I've read in the past couple of years have been the Ted Chiang and Kij Johnson collections, and the Twelve Planets books. Diving Belles wasn't bad, too.

[kennyc]

Ted Chiang is amazing!

Story of Your Life is incredible: http://www.ime.usp.br/~jstern/miscel...l/Chiang98.pdf

[alansplace]

The Man Who Could Work Miracles by H.G. Wells, available from, The University of Adelaide Library.

After George McWhirter Fotheringay discovers that he is able to perform miracles in a local bar after he professes not to believe in them, he experiments in his home with whimsical results. He seeks the advice of local clergyman, Mr. Maydig, who decides to begin a campaign of using Fotheringay's powers to reform the world. But even with best of intentions, Mr. Fotheringay has little knowledge and less foresight. Before long a miracle backfires and he must use his power one last time to undo the cataclysm.

[Petronius J.]

A Clean, Well-Lighted Place by Hemingway.

The Chekhov story where the girl has a drunken, hunchback husband.

The Faulkner one where the guy deliberately steps in horse poop before marching into a mansion.

I wish Cormac McCarthy did short stories. (I think he has two.)

[iPeteBot]

I'm reading "Cranston Baxter and the Red Button Set" by A.E Coates (it's on Amazon currently for a quid), pretty new but for a first-published book it's very enjoyable I have to say. It's a 1920's-set investigative novel, with pretty detailed, researched and often witty writing. Not too taxing for most readers too (right up my street!)

[kennyc]

I just reread this one as it is her birthday and it's one of my all-time favorites:

The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas:

http://harelbarzilai.org/words/omelas.txt