My reading has been dropping off in the past few years, so I made a new year’s resolution to read 365 short stories this year, one a day, and to make it as diverse and interesting an experience as possible. The only rule was I can’t have read the story before.
I’m looking for any recommendations on short stories, collections, or authors you all have enjoyed or found interesting. I’m open to any genre, any period, and I’m actively looking for authors beyond the US and UK – although I only read in English.
Any and all suggestions gratefully received!
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**The short stories I’ve read so far this year below, for reference:**
“The Repairer of Reputations,” Robert W. Chambers (1895)
“Pomegranate Seed,” Edith Wharton (1931)
“The Name, the Nose,” Italo Calvino (1972)
“Bulletin,” Shirley Jackson (1954)
“Yorkshire,” Graham Swift (2015)
“The Fantastic Horror of the Cat in the Bag,” Dorothy L. Sayers (1928)
“Scene,” Alain Robbe-Grillet (1955)
“Luella Miller,” Mary E. Wilkins Freeman (1902)
“The Bike,” Alan Sillitoe (1963)
“The Ducks,” Raymond Carver (1976)
“Obscurity,” Victor Sage (1984)
“As Drink the Dead,” John Dickson Carr (1926)
“Green Tea,” Sheridan Le Fanu (1869)
“The Pedestrian,” Ray Bradbury (1951)
“The Beach House,” Joy Williams (2024)
“The Sandman,” E.T.A Hoffmann (1817)
“Martyrdom,” Yukio Mishima (1965)
“The Contents of the Coffin,” J.S. Fletcher (1909)
“The Three Strangers,” Thomas Hardy (1883)
by BruSprSte
7 Comments
Terry Pratchett wrote some short stories under a pseudonym, and they got made into an anthology. Its called A Stroke of the Pen: the Lost Stories. What a great resolution!
Joyce Carol Oates is an excellent writer of short stories.
I don’t read a ton of short story collections and unfortunately very few from authors outside the United States, but here are a handful I’ve enjoyed over the years (genre and/or vibe estimations approximate):
* Love and Other Wounds by Jordan Harper (noir/crime)
* Bleed Into Me by Stephen Graham Jones (heartbreaking/literary)
* All the Wrong Ideas by Jeremy Robert Johnson (weird/gross)
* Earth Angel by Madeline Cash (funny/snappy)
* A Collapse of Horses by Brian Evenson (abstract/horror)
* Knockemstiff by Donald Ray Pollack (gritty/angry)
* Cry Your Way Home by Damien Angelica Walters (surreal/spooky)
Edit: I know the website design looks straight outta the late ’90s (which I love tbh), but Free Speculative Fiction Online is a fantastic resource if you want to read short stories that mainly fall in the realm of sci-fi/fantasy/horror
i really like rebecca lee’s collection Bobcat and Other Stories.
for a non-US suggestion, i think samanta schweblin is a really interesting writer. she has a book of short stories called Seven Empty Houses.
oh, and as a one-off suggestion, check out Black Box by Jennifer Egan
sounds like a fun project. enjoy!
can’t recall any specific titles but you could fill a few months with bradbury alone and a few more with philip k. dick, isaac asimov and arthur c. clarke. and of course stephen king. for funny sci-fi there’s robert sheckley, for funny crime there’s lawrence block. patricia highsmith also has a bunch to choose from.
Roald Dahl
The Complete Short Stories: Volume One
The Complete Short Stories: Volume Two
Ruth Rendell
Collected Short Stories: The Fallen Curtain and Other Stories,Means of Evil and Other Stories,The Fever Tree and Other Stories and The New Girlfriend and Other Stories
Collected Stories 2
Patricia Highsmith
Tales of Natural and Unnatural Catastrophe
Little Tales of Misogyny: A Virago Modern Classic (Virago Modern Classics)
Nothing that Meets the Eye: The Uncollected Stories of Patricia Highsmith: A Virago Modern Classic
Agatha Christie
Hercule Poirot: the Complete Short Stories
Miss Marple and Mystery: The Complete Short Stories
Detectives and Young Adventurers: The Complete Short Stories
My favorite anthology is [The Weird: A Compendium of Strange and Dark Stories](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/12344319-the-weird), which has over a hundred short stories by different authors from around the world, with a range of styles and themes (there’s a list of the stories and authors [here](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Weird#Contents)). It’s been a really good way to sample a lot of different writers, I’ve found several that I love through this book.