I am in a reading slump (just coming out of my first trimester and this pregnancy has wrecked my attention span) and think I need some short stories rather than my usual novels to help get me back on track. I have read a few Stephen King novels and really enjoy his work, but haven’t read any of his short stories, so if someone has a good place to start there, that would be great.
Some other short story collections I’ve read and liked are:
The History of Sound (Ben Shattuck)
All the Names They Used for God (Anjali Sachdeva)
Her Body and Other Parties (Carmen Maria Machado)
The Bloody Chamber and Other Stories (Angela Carter)
The Ladies of Grace Adieu (Susanna Clarke)
The Yellow Wall-paper (Charlotte Perkins Gilman).
I’m also reading a collection of ghost stories by Edith Wharton right now that I’m really enjoying. Love stuff that is moody/atmospheric, eerie/unsettling/creepy/scary, with beautiful writing.
by Silent-Proposal-9338
8 Comments
You need to be reading Shirley Jackson yesterday. The Lottery
Mariana Enriquez has like 3 different short story collections. I’ve only read The Things We Lost in The Fire so far and I thought it was pretty similar to Her Body and Other parties in terms of tone and themes. I haven’t read A Sunny Place for Shady People and The Dangers of Smoking in Bed myself yet but I’ve heard good things
IMO Stephen King does shorts and novellas better than novels.
Read some. Start with the old collections.
Daphne Du Maurier’s short stories are excellent. I think “The Blue Lenses” is my favorite of hers, but it was also really interesting reading “The Birds” after only ever having seen the Hitchcock movie.
I also like Clive Barker’s “Books of Blood” collections, especially the first one. “In the Hills, the Cities” is one of the more uncanny, unsettling things I’ve ever read.
You gotta check out Roald Dahl’s short stories. “The Roald Dahl Omnibus” is a good collection, but there are others.
[The Weird: A Compendium of Strange and Dark Stories](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/12344319-the-weird) is an incredible (and huge) anthology of stories ranging from slightly unsettling to full-on horror.
Friday Black by Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah
It wouldn’t be Reddit if someone didn’t recommend this one.
The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas
by Ursula K. Le Guin