Staff Picks Spring 2013

Short Fiction

    For Staff Picks this time, I’ve amassed a listing of many different kinds of short stories. We have your Good Standards (Raymond Carver, Flannery O’Connor, Eudora Welty), which always bear a second look. See these stories in a new way, and realize why these writers are often called "Masters of the Short Form". For those of you who want to be immersed in a fully tangible world for the whole book, I recommend Olive Kitteridge as the stories are linked by characters as well as place and theme. For our mystery readers, I cannot recommend Ruth Rendell’s short stories enough. No one is a better writer of contemporary thrilling shorts.

But where I think short stories really truly shine is in…well, in their Weirdness. Poe was an early master, and he knew well that this kind of intensity was better in several small doses. Angela Carter makes use of fairy tales and reworks them to mirror our adult lives. And Caitlin Kiernan’s Two Worlds and in Between is a life’s work of short stories, and while I will say that they are “not for everyone”, there are those of us who never quite get over them, and dream about them after many years. And Borges…well, I don’t quite know what to say about Borges. Read the story “The Library at Babel” and you will know all about it.

Finally one of my favorite things about short stories is The Anthology. Unlike the Poe or the Aimee Bender, collections of stories written by one author, anthologies are compiled of short stories by many different writers. They are assembled by en editor with some goal in mind – one that might seem familiar is a “Best Of” anthology. But these are not my favorites, generally. I like “Themed Anthologies” where the stories are centered around certain types of mysteries, or images or genres. I’ve found some of my favorite authors through their contributions to anthologies, and think it’s a great way to explore new work. Ellen Datlow, one of the best editors living today compiled Supernatural Noir, and I just can’t say enough about English Country House Murders.

So try some thing new, try something old. Either way, we hope you enjoy them.

• SINGLE AUTHOR

  • TWO WORLDS AND IN BETWEEN, Caitlin Kiernan

  • 20TH CENTURY GHOSTS, Joe Hill

  • DELICATE EDIBLE BIRDS, Lauren Groff

  • THE COMPLETE STORIES, Flannery O'Connor

  • BLUEBEARD’S EGG, Margaret Atwood

  • LITTLE BLACK BOOK OF STORIES, A.S. Byatt

  • THE GIRL IN THE FLAMMABLE SKIRT, Aimee Bender

  • THE LADIES OF GRACE ADIEU, Susanna Clarke

  • WILL YOU PLEASE BE QUIET, PLEASE?, Raymond Carver

  • BURNING YOUR BOATS, Angela Carter

  • PASTORALIA, George Saunders

  • OLIVE KITTERIDGE, Elizabeth Strout

  • THE KNIFE THROWER, Steven Millhauser

  • SELECTED STORIES OF EUDORA WELTY

  • CARRY ON, JEEVES, P.G. Wodehouse

  • LABYRINTHS; SELECTED STORIES, Jorge Luis Borges

  • THE GOLDEN BALL: AND OTHER STORIES, Agatha Christie

  • THE COPPER PEACOCK: AND OTHER STORIES, Ruth Rendell

  • BIRDS OF AMERICA: STORIES, Lorrie Moore

  • STRANGER THINGS HAPPEN, Kelly Link

  • DON’T LOOK NOW, Daphne duMaurier

  • TALES OF MYSTERY AND IMAGINATION, Edgar A. Poe

  • BLIND WILLOW, SLEEPING WOMAN, Haruki Murakami

  ANTHOLOGIES

  • ZOMBIES VS UNICORNS, Holly Black & Justine Larbalester, eds.

  • SUPERNATURAL NOIR, Ellen Datlow, ed.

  • MURDER IN BAKER STREET, Martin Greenberg, ed.

  • READER, I MURDERED HIM, Jen Green, ed.

  • CHILDREN OF THE NIGHT, Gloria Naylor, ed.

  • DARK MATTER, Sheree Thomas, ed.