I'd like to nominate
Rock Springs by Richard Ford as my third choice. Another short story collection i bought last year but still haven't got round to reading, sigh. I remember thinking at the time it would be a good introduction to his novels.
Taken from Kobo
In these ten stories, Ford mines literary gold from the wind-scrubbed landscape of the American West - and from the guarded hopes and gnawing loneliness of the people who live there. A refugee from justice driving across Wyoming with his daughter; an unhappy girlfriend and a stolen Mercedes; a boy watching his family dissolve in a night of tragicomic violence; two men and a woman swapping hard-luck stories in a frontier bar as they try to sweeten their luck. Rock Springs is a masterpiece of taut narration, cleanly chiselled prose, and empathy so generous that it feels like a kind of grace.
Kobo
Amazon