VPL Picks: Contemporary Short StoriesLike this list

25 items

• Table for Two

  Fictions

  Towles, Amor

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  "In his first collection, Towles sequel-izes his debut novel, Rules of Civility (2011), with a 200-page novella and adds six short fictions involving unlikely encounters and unexpected outcomes. ... A sneakily entertaining assortment of tales." --…Read moreRead more of this annotation

• Weird Black Girls

  Stories

  Cotman, Elwin, 1984-

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  "From Philip K. Dick Award finalist Elwin Cotman, an irresistibly unnerving collection of stories that explore the anxieties of living while Black--a high-wire act of literary-fantastical hybrid fiction. ... Elegiac in tone, imaginative and humorous…Read moreRead more of this annotation

• You Like It Darker

  Stories

  King, Stephen, 1947-

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  ""You like it darker? Fine, so do I," writes Stephen King in the afterword to this magnificent new collection of twelve stories that delve into the darker part of life--both metaphorical and literal. King has, for half a century, been a master of…Read moreRead more of this annotation

• Your Body Was Made for This

  Bateman, Debbie

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  "Eating too much, eating not enough, having sex, not having sex, aging parents, grief, drugs, childhood trauma, and the last call of ovaries -- a woman's body at mid-life can get messy. Debbie Bateman's stories take a clear-eyed look at the largely…Read moreRead more of this annotation

• So Late in the Day

  Stories of Women and Men

  Keegan, Claire

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  "Celebrated for her powerful short fiction, Claire Keegan now gifts us three exquisite stories together forming a brilliant examination of gender dynamics and an arc from Keegan's earliest to her most recent work. ... Each story probes the dynamics…Read moreRead more of this annotation

• Jewel Box

  Stories

  Yu, E. Lily

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  "Angels, monsters, and bees. Birdwatchers, emperors, and prison wardens. These and more populate the twenty-two new and old stories from award-winning author E. Lily Yu, collected for the first time here in her debut short story collection." --…Read moreRead more of this annotation

• Roman Stories

  Lahiri, Jhumpa

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  "Lahiri (Whereabouts) delivers a dazzling collection of nine stories originally written in Italian and featuring characters who grapple with vast emotional and social chasms that cleave the lives of families, longtime friends, and immigrants. ...…Read moreRead more of this annotation

• Liberation Day

  Stories

  Saunders, George, 1958-

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  "The 'best short story writer in English' (Time) is back with a masterful collection that explores ideas of power, ethics, and justice, and cuts to the very heart of what it means to live in community with our fellow humans. " -- Publisher

• Rainbow Rainbow

  Stories

  Conklin, Lydia, 1983-

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  "Capturing both the dark and lovable sides of the human experience, a collection of humurous and heartrending stories follows queer, trans and gender-nonconforming characters as they seek love and connection." -- Publisher

• Stray Dogs

  and Other Stories

  Hage, Rawi

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  "The characters in this short story collection are restless travellers, moving between nation states and states of mind, seeking connection and trying to escape the past. Set in Montreal, Beirut, Tokyo and more, these stories highlight the often…Read moreRead more of this annotation

• All the Shining People

  Stories

  Friedman, Kathy

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  "All the Shining People explores migration, diaspora, and belonging within Toronto's Jewish South African community, as individuals come to terms with the oppressive hierarchies that separate, and the connections that bind. ... All the Shining…Read moreRead more of this annotation

• Five Tuesdays in Winter

  Stories

  King, Lily

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  "Told in the intimate voices of complex, endearing characters, Five Tuesdays in Winter intriguingly subverts expectations as it explores desire, loss, jolting violence, and the inexorable tug toward love at all costs." -- Publisher's description

• Afterparties

  Stories

  So, Anthony Veasna, 1992-2020

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  "Having already claimed the Joyce Carol Oates Award and been published in The New Yorker, So was poised for literary fame with this first collection when he died tragically at age 28 in December 2020. His stories assay the Cambodian American and…Read moreRead more of this annotation

• Born Into This

  Stories

  Thompson, Adam

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  Indigenous culture and politics are explored in this debut collection by Adam Thompson, an indigenous Tasmanian. There is emotional truth and grit at the core of these tales about colonialism, racism, and violation of heritage and environment.

• Filthy Animals

  Taylor, Brandon (Brandon L. G.)

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  A series of linked stories about young adults entangled in their own complex desires and attachments. A pair of dancers in an open relationship, a fraught babysitter, and teens teetering toward violence are among the characters who search for…Read moreRead more of this annotation

• Binge

  60 Stories to Make Your Brain Feel Different

  Coupland, Douglas

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  A collection of 60 short short stories, some with interconnected characters, inspired by the voices of real people writing in online forums. It’s called Binge “because it’s impossible to read just one.” – Publisher

• The End of Me

  Gould, John, 1959-

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  "The End of Me is a collection of 56 very short stories about death. These 'sudden stories' or 'postcard fiction' or 'flash fiction' explore the experience of mortality. With an ear attuned to the uncanny and the ironic, John Gould catches his…Read moreRead more of this annotation

• Love After the End

  An Anthology of Two-spirit & Indigiqueer Speculative Fiction

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  "A bold anthology of queer Indigenous speculative fiction, edited by the author of Jonny Appleseed. This exciting and groundbreaking fiction anthology showcases a number of new and emerging 2SQ (Two-Spirit and queer) Indigenous writers from across…Read moreRead more of this annotation

• Exhalation

  Chiang, Ted

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  Ted Chiang is an American science fiction writer. His Chinese name is Chiang Feng-nan. His work has won four Nebula awards, four Hugo awards, the John W. Campbell Award for Best New Writer, and four Locus awards. Exhalation was chosen as one of the…Read moreRead more of this annotation

• Your Duck Is My Duck

  Stories

  Eisenberg, Deborah

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  Deborah Eisenberg, an American short-story writer and professor of writing at Columbia University, has won multiple awards for her writing, including the O. Henry award for short stories of exceptional merit.