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5 Short Story Collections From Your Favorite Authors
When you read a short story, you experience its author at her most undiluted. The constraints of the genre force writers to compress emotion and action. They’re also useful for people who like to read in brief bursts: a short story is the perfect way to while away a subway ride, for example. And this is a great year for the form. Here are give new and forthcoming collections from authors we already know and love.
Make Something Up: Stories You Can’t Unread, by Chuck Palahniuk
This is the first collection from Palahniuk, best known as the author of Fight Club and Choke. Fans will be delighted to learn the collection includes “Expedition,” a new Tyler Durden story that’s a precursor to Fight Club. All 23 tales highlight Palahniuk’s trademark blend of the upsetting, the horrifying, the macabre, and the hilarious. If you enjoy laughing while simultaneously wincing and grimacing, this collection is for you.
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Fortune Smiles: Stories, by Adam Johnson
From the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The Orphan Master’s Son come six new stories about ordinary people, swept up in circumstances beyond their control, who must find ways to survive and go on. Set around the globe, in places like East Germany, North Korea, and a hurricane-decimated Louisiana, Fortune Smiles blends struggle and hope together in beautiful and poignant explorations of average people dealing with extraordinary burdens.
To Hold the Bridge, by Garth Nix
Garth Nix is a remarkable storyteller (if you haven’t read Sabriel, drop everything and do so), and the delightful tales in To Hold the Bridge span several of his worlds, including the Old Kingdom and those of Shade’s Children and A Confusion of Princes, as well as unfolding in new ones. Dipping into genres ranging from science fiction to mystery to realism, To Hold the Bridge is a Swiss army knife of a book, with a story for every occasion.
The State We’re In: Maine Stories, by Ann Beattie
The latest collection from award-winning writer Beattie, The State We’re In contains fifteen linked stories set on the southern coast of Maine. Centering around a teenager named Jocelyn, the narratives follow the people that come in and out of her life, trailing their own experiences and widening her perspective. A beautiful collection from a master of the genre, The State We’re In is a must-read for short story enthusiasts.
The Tsar of Love and Techno: Stories, by Anthony Marra
This awesomely titled collection is the latest from the bestselling author of A Constellation of Vital Phenomena. Another linked collection, The Tsar of Love and Techno introduces us to 1930s Soviet censors, ballerinas, gulag prisoners and their descendants, young men in the USSR, and many more in stories about art, love, and war. A stunning book, both heartfelt and heartbreaking, from a major new author.