 DonateLove to read but short on time? Try short stories, or nonfiction essay collections!
Fiction
Tenth of December / George Saunders Saunders, a self-identified disciple of Twain and Vonnegut, is hailed for the topsy-turvy, gouging satire in his three previous, keenly inventive short story collections. In the fourth, he dials the bizarreness down a notch to tune into the fantasies of his beleaguered characters, ambushing readers with waves of intense, unforeseen emotion.
Hateship, Friendship, Courtship, Loveship, Marriage / Alice Munro Opulent in their beauty and gem-bright psychology, the extraordinary stories in Munro’s tenth stellar collection span the spectrum from romance to tales of manners to deep meditations on love and mortality, and all evince Munro’s profound understanding of the power of memories and the stories we tell ourselves.
Olive Kitteridge / Elizabeth Strout In 13 linked stories that delineate the life and times of fussy but sympathetic Olive Kitteredge, Strout beautifully captures the sticky little issues of small-town life-and the entire universe of human longing, disappointment, and love.
The Best Short Stories of O. Henry / selected by Bennett A. Cerf and Van H. Cartmell The final selection of the thirty-eight stories in this collection offers for the reader’s delight those tales honored almost unanimously by anthologists and those that represent, in variety and balance, the best work of America’s favorite storyteller.
The Lottery and Other Stories / Shirley Jackson The only collection of stories to appear during Shirley Jackson’s lifetime, this unites “The Lottery” with twenty-four equally unusual short stories. Together they demonstrate Jackson’s remarkable range–from the hilarious to the horrible, the unsettling to the ominous–and her power as a storyteller.
The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes / Sir Arthur Conan Doyle This gripping collection includes many of the famous cases – and great strokes of brilliance – that made the legÂendary Sherlock Holmes one of fiction’s most popular creations. With his devoted secretary, Dr. Watson, Holmes emerges from his smoke-filled rooms on Baker Street to grapple with the forces of treachery, intrigue, and evil.
Nonfiction
All There Is: Love Stories from Storycorps / Dave Isay In this touching, and often heartbreaking, collection drawn from the oral history project StoryCorps, participants young and old recount what love means to them. Love stories for people who don’t read love stories.
You’ll Grow Out of It / Jessi Klein As both a tomboy and a late bloomer, comedian Jessi Klein grew up feeling more like an outsider than a participant in the rites of modern femininity. Klein offers-through an incisive collection of real-life stories – a relentlessly funny yet poignant take on a variety of topics she has experienced along her strange journey to womanhood and beyond.
Me Talk Pretty One Day / David Sedaris Sedaris is Garrison Keillor’s evil twin: like the Minnesota humorist, Sedaris focuses on the icy patches that mar life’s sidewalk, though the ice in his work is much more slippery and the falls much more spectacularly funny than in Keillor’s.
I Thought My Father Was God: And other true tales from NPR’s National Story Project / edited by Paul Auster Auster asked NPR listeners for succinctly written true stories. Within a year, he received more than 4,000 submissions. He selected 179 of the best and most representative to create a unique and unexpectedly affecting book. Here are clearly written and simply told stories by people of all ages and from all walks of life.
We Are Never Meeting in Real Life: essays / Samantha Irby Whether Irby is talking about how her difficult childhood led to problems in making “adult” budgets; explaining why she should be the new Bachelorette (she’s “35-ish, but could easily pass for 60-something”); or dispensing advice on navigating friendships with former drinking buddies who are now suburban moms (hang in there for the Costco loot!); she’s as deft at poking fun at the ghosts of her past self as she is at capturing powerful emotional truths.
Bad Vibes Only: (and other things I bring to the table) : essays / Nora McInerny Host of the beloved podcast Terrible, Thanks for Asking, McInerny writes essays that revisit her cringey past and anticipate her rapidly approaching, early middle-aged future, She lays bare her own chaos, inviting us to drop the façade of perfection and embrace the truth: that we are all–at best–slightly unhinged.