Short Story Collections

The Nine Billion Names of God is a collection of science-fiction short stories published in 1974 by the English author Arthur C. Clarke. Most of the stories in the collection were written in the late 1940s and ’50s. One of the most successful and prolific early science fiction writers, Clarke wrote about space exploration, scientific inventions such as satellites, and aliens long before humans even landed on the moon. His short story “The Sentinel,” which... Read The Nine Billion Names of God Summary

Ethan Canin is an American novelist and short story writer, born in 1960. He currently holds the F. Wendell Miller Professorship of English at his alma mater, the University of Iowa, as a member of its Writers’ Workshop faculty. Canin’s third book, The Palace Thief (1994), is a collection of short stories, which won the California Book Award in the year of its publication. Some of the stories were also published in illustrious literary journals;... Read The Palace Thief Summary

The Paper Menagerie and Other Stories is a collection of 15 short stories from the award-winning science fiction author, Ken Liu. The collection includes tales of magical realism, futuristic technology, historical fiction, and gritty noir. Simon and Schuster published the book in 2016.Through these narratives, which often switch back from past to present or from story to book excerpts or legends, Liu invokes several diverse worlds with many Asian protagonists. In his stories, he references... Read The Paper Menagerie Summary

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The Setting Sun and the Rolling World is a short story collection published in 1987 by Zimbabwean author Charles Mungoshi. Across 17 stories, Mungoshi explores profound cultural divides in his native country between tradition and modernization, rural and urban life, and colonialism and African nationalism. Although the characters are different in each piece, taken together the stories comprise a coming-of-age narrative, as the protagonist of each tale is generally a little older and more experienced... Read The Setting Sun and the Rolling World Summary

Published in 1990, The Things They Carried is a collection of interrelated short stories about the Vietnam War written by American author Tim O’Brien. The historical fiction collection is considered essential literature about the Vietnam War and is often used to teach fiction writing techniques. An authorial persona, Tim O’Brien, narrates the stories in the first-person about his experiences during the war. The collection explores themes of Survivor’s Guilt, Talking as a Way of Processing... Read The Things They Carried Summary

In the follow-up to his award-winning novel A Constellation of Vital Phenomena, American writer Anthony Marra released The Tsar of Love and Techno (2015), a collection of interconnected short stories. Shifting from first to third person narration across various characters’ perspectives in different time periods, The stories begin in Communist Russia in the 1930s and end in modern Russia the 2010s, connecting the characters to their descendants and ancestors. Marra weaves together a tapestry whose common... Read The Tsar of Love and Techno Summary

The Turning is Tim Winton’s 2004 collection of short stories set primarily in the small Western Australia town of Angelus. The book won the Christina Snead Prize for Fiction and the Queensland Fiction Book Award. The seventeen linked stories in this collection explore themes of generational change, socioeconomic anxieties, and the lingering effects of trauma using the modes of 21st century realism.Plot SummaryThe stories in The Turning take place over several decades of life in... Read The Turning Summary

Published in 1934, The Ways of White Folks is Langston Hughes’s collection of 14 short stories focusing on race relations in the United States. With somber tales of struggle and violence, as well as moments of irony and humor, the collection addresses racism, economic disparity, and hope. This study guide quotes and obscures Hughes’s use of the n-word.Plot Summary“Cora Unashamed” tells the story of Cora Jenkins, who works as a maid for a cruel White... Read The Ways of White Folks Summary

This Is How You Lose Her is a short story collection published in 2012 by the Dominican American author Junot Díaz, and his second story collection. The book is comprised of nine stories, most of which were originally published in The New Yorker magazine. Eight of the stories feature the same narrator, Yunior, who also appears as a character in Díaz’s other major works, Drown and The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao. This Is... Read This Is How You Lose Her Summary

The short stories in Tadeusz Borowski’s collection, This Way for the Gas, Ladies and Gentlemen, were selected from two earlier volumes of stories, Farewell to Maria and The World of Stone, both published in Poland in 1948. The collection was translated into English in 1967 and published in the United States. Borowski’s stories are based on his experiences as a concentration camp inmate at Auschwitz-Birkenau during the Holocaust. His fiancée, Maria Rundo, was arrested as... Read This Way for the Gas, Ladies and Gentlemen Summary

Trouble Is My Business is a short story collection by author Raymond Chandler. The individual tales were originally published in the 1930s in various crime fiction magazines and were compiled in book form in 1950. The stories are categorized as “hard-boiled” mystery fiction.Raymond Chandler is regarded as the quintessential author of the unsentimental, often graphic “hard-boiled” subgenre because of his distinctively elegant prose style. Aside from several short-story compilations and a handful of screenplays, Chandler... Read Trouble Is My Business Summary

Unaccustomed Earth is a 2008 story collection by Pulitzer-Prize-winning author Jhumpa Lahiri. Part 1 contains four stories with distinct characters and plotlines, while Part 2 follows the story of Hema and Kaushik through three different stories. Each story chronicles an important phase or event within the lives of the characters it addresses, and most of the protagonists are Bengali or Bengali-American individuals. Most of the storylines seem take place in the 1980s or 1990s, with... Read Unaccustomed Earth Summary

Karen Russell’s Vampires in the Lemon Grove and Other Stories, published in 2013, is a collection of short stories that are linked by the supernatural. The collection can be considered a work of magical realism because each story combines a realistic setting with magical elements; however, perhaps a more fitting label is that of speculative fiction, since many of the magical elements are darker in nature, and border on horror. Due to the many mature... Read Vampires in the Lemon Grove Summary

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Woman Hollering Creek, a short story collection published in 1991, presents compelling narratives featuring female characters of all ages, eras and walks of life. The youngest of the characters are girls still occupied with elementary school and making friends. Teenagers are also presented, exploring the new challenge of romantic and sexual relationships. Lastly, adult women’s stories are told, as they work to navigate complex lives filled with personal and professional relationships.The first section of the... Read Woman Hollering Creek Summary