[Sylver]

Hi,

I need some recommendations on contemporary short story authors or books. I am looking for something that is both interesting to read and helpful for learning modern American English for my friends in China who are college English majors (US equivalent of high school level of English in general) and want to improve. I previously recommended some of W. S. Maugham's short stories and they loved those and asked me for more.

Basically, I would love to have a short story writer that resembles Maugham in the style but more contemporary and ideally an American, so here is roughly what I am looking for:

1. It must reflect modern but structured American English, a little bit colloquial is OK, but not too heavy slang usage or dialects pertaining to a particular locale or social class. They already read quite some Poe, Twain, Jack London, Washington Irving, etc in Chinese colleges, so no such classic American authors, they emphasized "contemporary" - hopefully in the last decade or two.

2. It must be short - I know some so-called short stories can be as long as 100+ pages nowadays, but I am looking for something less than 10 pages yet have enough meat for language learning purpose.

3. Ideally, these are vignettes that embodies the same wisdom, wit and detached observations of human nature similar to the ones Maugham wrote half a century ago. A broad cultural background setting will be nice but not necessarily travel or international settings as Maugham's stories, as they are still more interested in learning modern American culture/language.

4. Some suspense is OK, but they are looking for light-hearted readings, so no horror stories - they've tried some Stephen King and Dean Koontz I recommended, can't say they like those and I don't know myself if King and Koontz have any humorous lighter stories that are short enough.

5. Ideally, one or two authors would be good, but if it is hard to find a particular author, a compilation of stories by several or a dozen writers with similar style will also do.

6. Electronic versions would be a plus - they have Sony readers (I am still not sure how exactly purchase the story in the US and pass on to them), but Kindles wont do. I don't have any issue buying hard copies and ship to them.

7. Finally, does anyone know if "The Best American Short Stories of the Century" currently selling on Amazon would be a good candidate that meets the above?

Many many thanks. As I am not a native English speaker myself and don't read much, it is always a pain each time they asked me for reading recommendations for English books.