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There is no better time for short stories than now, when many people don’t have enough time for reading, and some struggle with shortening attention span.
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Short stories offer the same spectrum of emotions as regular-length novels. The only difference is that you finish the story in a much shorter time.
Novels… Reading – and enjoying – the entire novel can be a dream activity for holidays. It might be really challenging to read on a typical working day.
On the other side, don’t make it an excuse to stop reading. Just make sure you have an e-reading application on your tablet or smartphone, and you can reach for short form books several times a day.
In the selection you’ll find most important short stories and short story collections published in recent months. The list includes recent short story collections from Neil Gaiman (Trigger Warning), Chuck Palahniuk (Make Something Up), and Terry Pratchett (A Blink of the Screen).
The last book collects Terry Pratchett’s major short stories and other short-form reads, and is illustrated by the author himself.
Here are characters both familiar and yet to be discovered; abandoned worlds and others still expanding; adventure, chickens, death, disco and, actually, some quite disturbing ideas about Christmas, all of it shot through with Terry’s inimitable brand of humor.
We also added to the list a couple of classic short story collections that have been recently released as free ebooks on Project Gutenberg.
At the end of this post you’ll find Best short stories 2015 infographic.
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Best short stories to read in 2015
Trigger Warning: Short Fictions and Disturbances
Neil Gaiman
After Smoke and Mirrors and Fragile Things, Neil Gaiman returns with a captivating and enjoyable collection of short fiction.
Trigger Warning includes “Black Dog” – a never-before published American Gods story, written exclusively for this volume.
Short stories explore “the masks we all wear and the people we are beneath them to reveal our vulnerabilities and our truest selves. Here is a rich cornucopia of horror and ghosts stories, science fiction and fairy tales, fabulism and poetry that explore the realm of experience and emotion.”
A Good Marriage
Stephen King
A brilliant and terrifying story of a marriage with truly deadly secrets, from a master of suspense.
The story was originally published in Stephen King’s acclaimed collection, Full Dark, No Stars. Now it comes with a bonus short story, 1922.
Darcy Anderson discovers in the garage a horrific evidence that her husband may be a raging rapist and murderer.
“It’s a horrifying discovery, rendered with bristling intensity, and it definitively ends a good marriage.”
Next Day of the Condor
James Grady
Award-winning short story author, screenwriter and novelist James Grady delivers a bullet-paced, savage journey with the iconic character he created and that Robert Redford made an international sensation in the movie Three Days of the Condor.
A silver-haired man codenamed Condor, a classic American hero in his first appearance since Watergate, on his way in this prequel to the upcoming novel, Last Days of the Condor.
“Love, sex, loyalty, honor and savagery loosed in our modern world electrify this novella, a portrait of heroism and horror and America beyond 9/11. It is an espionage adventure unlike anything you’ve ever read.”
Get in Trouble: Stories
Kelly Link
Kelly Link has been hailed by Neil Gaiman as “a national treasure.” Get in Trouble is her eagerly awaited collection for adult readers, first in a decade.
The collection includes nine, unforgettable, brilliantly constructed, short stories.
In I Can See Right Through You, a movie star makes a disturbing trip to Florida swamp where his former love interest is shooting a ghost-hunting reality show.
In The Summer People, a young girl in rural North Carolina serves as uneasy caretaker to the mysterious visitors who inhabit the cottage behind her house.
“Hurricanes, astronauts, evil twins, bootleggers, Ouija boards, iguanas, The Wizard of Oz, superheroes, the Pyramids . . . These are just some of the talismans of an imagination as capacious and as full of wonder as that of any writer today. But as fantastical as these stories can be, they are always grounded by sly humor and an innate generosity of feeling for the frailty—and the hidden strengths—of human beings.”
Make Something Up: Stories You Can’t Unread
Chuck Palahniuk
From the author of Fight Club, comes a collection of twenty one short stories and a novella, that will disturb and delight you.
Funny, caustic, bizarre, poignant; these stories represent everything readers have come to love and expect from Chuck Palahniuk.
“The absurdity of both life and death are on full display; in Zombies, the best and brightest of a high school prep school become tragically addicted to the latest drug craze: electric shocks from cardiac defibrillators. In Knock, Knock, a son hopes to tell one last off-color joke to his dying father , while in Tunnel of Love, a massage therapist runs the curious practice of providing ‘relief’ to dying clients.”
Odd Thomas: You Are Destined to Be Together Forever
Dean Koontz
A short story featuring Odd Thomas, a main hero from a popular thriller series by Dean Koontz.
This exclusive short story looks back where it all began for Odd Thomas and Stormy Llewellyn, two souls who are destined to be together forever.
“Amid the dizzying rides, tantalizing games of chance, and fanciful attractions of a state fair, two teenage sweethearts on the cusp of life and love’s pleasures find their way to a shadowy carnival tent brimming with curiosities. There, from the bizarre and enthralling Gypsy Mummy, a mechanized merchant of dreams and prognosticator of tomorrows, the young couple learns what fate promises for them.”
Hall of Small Mammals
Thomas Pierce
The stories in Thomas Pierce’s Hall of Small Mammals take place at the confluence of the commonplace and the cosmic, the intimate and the infinite.
A fossil-hunter, a comedian, a hot-air balloon pilot, parents and children, believers and nonbelievers, the people in these stories are struggling to understand the absurdity and the magnitude of what it means to exist in a family, to exist in the world.
In “Shirley Temple Three,” a mother must shoulder her son’s burden—a cloned and resurrected wooly mammoth who wreaks havoc on her house, sanity, and faith.
In “The Real Alan Gass,” a physicist in search of a mysterious particle called the “daisy” spends her days with her boyfriend, Walker, and her nights with the husband who only exists in the world of her dreams, Alan Gass.
The Norton Anthology of Short Fiction
Editor: Richard Bausch
The 8th edition of The Norton Anthology of Short Fiction features 152 works by 130 authors, offering a broad collection of short stories with the most thoughtful annotations and apparatus on the market.
With a new Authors in Depth feature, an extensive Reviews and Commentaries section, and expanded coverage of Writers on Writing, the collection provides a wealth of criticism of key works and authors, as well as the opportunity to look deeper into the craft of fiction.
“One of the most celebrated writers and teachers of fiction, Richard Bausch, pairs his insight and inspiration with Norton’s trusted editorial standards to deliver the finest teaching anthology available.”
Refund: Stories
Karen E. Bender
In Refund, Karen E. Bender creates an award-winning collection of stories that deeply explore the ways in which money and the estimation of value affect the lives of her characters.
The stories reflect our contemporary world—swindlers, reality show creators, desperate artists, siblings, parents — who try to answer the question: What is the real definition of worth?
In “Theft,” an eighty-year-old swindler, accustomed to tricking people for their money, boards a cruise ship to see if she can find something of true value—a human connection.
In the title story, young artist parents in downtown Manhattan escape the attack on 9/11 only to face a battle over their apartment with a stranger who might have lost more than only her deposit.
Making Nice
Matt Sumell
A debut collection of short stories from an author whose fiction appeared in Esquire, the Paris Review, and Electric Literature.
There are thirteen stories in the collection. In each one, the main hero, Alby, distills the anguish, the humor, and the strange grace he experiences in the aftermath of his mother’s death.
He gets drunk and picks fights (all deserved), defends defenseless creatures both large and small, and spews insults at children, slow drivers, old ladies, and every single surviving member of his family.
“Making Nice is a powerful, full-steam-ahead ride that will keep you laughing even as you try to catch your breath; a new classic about love, loss, and the fine line between grappling through grief and fighting for (and with) the only family you’ve got.”
Redeployment
Phil Klay
Phil Klay’s short story is a winner of the 2014 National Book Award for Fiction.
The book takes readers to the frontlines of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, asking us to understand what happened there, and what happened to the soldiers who returned.
The story reveals the intricate combination of monotony, bureaucracy, comradeship and violence that make up a soldier’s daily life at war.
“In Redeployment, a soldier who has had to shoot dogs because they were eating human corpses must learn what it is like to return to domestic life in suburbia, surrounded by people “who have no idea where Fallujah is, where three members of your platoon died.” In “After Action Report”, a Lance Corporal seeks expiation for a killing he didn’t commit, in order that his best friend will be unburdened.”
The Curious Case of the Copper Corpse
Alan Bradley
Something for the fans of of Flavia de Luce. In this original short story, the eleven-year-old connoisseur of chemistry is immersed in a new mystery.
“Murder! the letter says, Come at once. Anson House, Greyminster, Staircase No. 3. How can Flavia de Luce resist such an urgent plea? After all, examining a dead body sounds like a perfectly splendid way to spend a Sunday. So Flavia hops upon her trusted bicycle, Gladys, whose rubber tires hiss happily along the rainy road, and arrives at her father’s mist-shrouded old school. There, a terrified boy leads her to the loo where, sitting in a bathtub, is what appears to be a statue. But, no: To Flavia’s surprise, the thing is in fact a naked dead man. Save his face, he seems to have been carved out of copper.”
The Shell Game: A Fox and O’Hare Short Story
Janet Evanovich, Lee Goldberg
This exclusive short story from Janet Evanovich and Lee Goldberg is a prequel to a crime mystery series Fox and O’Hare. The new book from a series, The Job, will be released on November 18, 2015.
“Con man Nick Fox is after Garson Klepper’s golden Peruvian relics. For Fox, convincing Klepper to hire him as security for the relocation of the relics to the Getty museum in L.A. was easy. Problem is, Fox wasn’t planning on Klepper also enlisting the help of the FBI. Fox also wasn’t planning on being paired up with rookie special agent Kate O’Hare. She’s smart, she’s tenacious, and when she’s conned, she holds a grudge. Life for Fox and O’Hare will never be the same again.”
Flash Fiction International: Very Short Stories from Around the World
Editors: James Thomas, Robert Shapard, Christopher Merrill
A dazzling new anthology of the very best very short fiction from around the world.
These short shorts, usually no more than 750 words, range from linear narratives to the more unusual: stories based on mathematical forms, a paragraph-length novel, a scientific report on volcanic fireflies that proliferate in nightclubs.
The collection includes 86 of the most beautiful, provocative, and moving narratives by authors from six continents, including best-selling writer Etgar Keret, Korean screenwriter Kim Young-ha, and Nobel Prize winner Czesław Miłosz.
These brilliantly chosen stories challenge readers to widen their vision and celebrate both the local and the universal.
Best Short Stories from The Saturday Evening Post 2015
The book includes 25 short stories – the winners of the Saturday Evening Post Great American Fiction Contest 2015.
The Saturday Evening Post has been publishing for more than 200 years. a who’s who of American authors – — Ray Bradbury, F. Scott Fitzgerald, William Faulkner, and Jack London, among others.
The stories selected for the 2015 volume represent all genres of fiction from today’s talented pool of up-and-coming writers, many making their national publishing debut.
You’ll find here works of N. West Moss, Breanne Hill, Bob Hodges, Veronica Chater, and John Van Kirk.
“From a sideshow on Coney Island to a coast-to-coast road trip set in 1939, from a small-town courthouse after WW II to a cocktail party among academics in contemporary Chicago, the Best Short Stories 2015 presents a diversity of style and subject matter guaranteed to engage and entertain.”
Short Sixes
H. C. Bunner
Henry Cuyler Bunner was an American novelist and poet, best known for his short story Zenobia’s Infidelity which was adapted to a big screen. The movie called Zenobia starring Harry Langdon and Oliver Hardy, was released in 1939.
Bunner was an editor at the comic weekly Puck, and developed it from a new struggling periodical into a powerful social and political organ.
Short Sixes, published for the first time in 1891, and recently released as a free ebook on Project Gutenberg, are considered one of his finest works.
The collection, illustrated by S. B. Griffin, offers thirteen stories, including ‘Hector”, “Mr. Copernicus and the Proletariat”, and “The Nine Cent-Girls.”
The Doctor’s Red Lamp
Various authors
The book, published in 1904 by The Saalfield Publishing Company, collects 22 short stories that will let you take a closer look at the doctor’s life one hundred years ago.
The collection includes a story by Arthur Conan Doyle, “The Doctors of Hoyland,” and Ambrose Bierce’s “John Bartine’s Watch.”
“The stories themselves are offered without critical comment. Many of them are old favorites. Many of them are by well-known and standard authors. All relate some episode in the doctor’s life in a manner both striking and original. We believe this is the first volume of its kind ever offered to the public.”
Collected Short Stories of Bertolt Brecht
Editors: John Willett, Ralph Manheim
Everyone knows that Bertolt Brecht was one of the great 20th-century innovators in theatre, but the playwright was also a dazzling writer of stories. Storytelling permeated his art as a dramatist; fundamentally in his plays he was a storyteller.
This volume collects the complete short stories written by Brecht, including the prize-winning ‘The Monster’, and the fragmentary memoir ghost-written by Brecht, ‘Life Story of the boxer Samson-Körner’. Brecht scholar Marc Silberman provides an introduction and editorial notes.
From The Observer:
“Fans of Brecht will find in the 37 stories assembled here the same directness, lack of affectation, and wry humour that characterise his plays. Every lover of short stories will discover an unexpected trove of pleasure in this “mine for short-story addicts.”
A Blink of the Screen: Collected Shorter Fiction
Terry Pratchett
A collection of short fiction from Terry Pratchett, spanning the whole of his writing career from schooldays to Discworld and the present day.
For the first time are his short stories and other short-form fiction collected into one volume. With an introduction by Booker Prize-winning author A.S. Byatt, illustrations by the late Josh Kirby and drawings by the author himself, this is a book to treasure.
“Here are characters both familiar and yet to be discovered; abandoned worlds and others still expanding; adventure, chickens, death, disco and, actually, some quite disturbing ideas about Christmas, all of it shot through with Terry’s inimitable brand of humour.”
The Best American Short Stories 2015
Editors: T.C. Boyle and Heidi Pitlor
The Best American Short Stories is a famous yearly anthology published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt.
Since 1915, the anthology has striven to contain the best short stories by the best-known writers in contemporary American literature.
It’s worth waiting for the 100th anniversary volume of BASS. The stories in the collection will be selected by award-winning and best-selling author T. C. Boyle.
“A master storyteller with a delightfully subversive streak, Boyle mixes brilliance with high-concept pyrotechnics, meditations with whiz-bangery.”
Best short stories to read in 2015 – infographic
Feel free to share this image on your site (Creative Commons license).
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