100 Must-Read Short Story Collections
I discovered my love of short fiction in school. Novels are great, but for someone with zero patience (like me), a good short story is just what I need – near instant gratification.
The list below is made up of some collections of the best short fiction out there, and it all packs the kind of punch that a good short story should. There’s a mix of authors from different places and different times. The subject matter is all over the place. Some of it sweet. Some of it is strange. All of it is good.
This list is just a jumping off point. There is so much more out there, and we’d love to hear your suggestions in the comments below.
These collections are some of my personal favorites from the list.
St. Lucy’s Home for Girls Raised by Wolves by Karen Russell
Paradise Elsewhere by Kathy Page
The Great Frustration by Seth Fried
Volt by Alan Heathcock
Battleborn by Claire Vaye Watkins
Civilwarland in Bad Decline by George Saunders
Blasphemy by Sherman Alexie
There Once Lived a Girl Who Seduced Her Sisters Husband and He Hanged Himself by Ludmilla Petrushevskaya
Lovers on All Saints’ Day by Juan Gabriel Vasquez
Indigo by Satyajit Ray
What is Not Yours Is Not Yours by Helen Oyeyemi
The Pier Falls and Other Stories by Mark Haddon
Interpreter of Maladies by Jhumpa Lahiri
Dark Lies the Island by Kevin Barry
These Heroic, Happy Dead by Luke Mogelson
Crow Fair by Thomas McGuane
The Dream Life of Astronauts by Patrick Ryan
Leaving the Sea by Ben Marcus
Amor and Psycho by Carolyn Cooke
Spectacle by Susan Steinberg
Ghost Summer by Tananarive Due
The Frangipani Hotel by Violet Kupersmith
The Loss of All Lost Things by Amina Gautier
American Housewife by Helen Ellis
In the Country by Mia Alvar
Oye What I’m Gonna Tell You by Cecilia Rodriguez Milanes
In Cuba I Was a German Shepherd by Ana Menéndez
Ayiti by Roxane Gay
The Safety of Objects by A.M. Homes
Monday or Tuesday by Virginia Woolf
The Garden Party by Katharine Mansfield
Pale Horse, Pale Rider by Katherine Anne Porter
Falling In Love With Hominids by Nalo Hopkinson
The Thing Around Your Neck by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
The Boat by Nam Le
Stories of Your Life and Others by Ted Chiang
Trash by Dorothy Allison
Cowboys Are My Weakness by Pam Houston
Night Shift by Stephen King
The Illustrated Man by Ray Bradbury
North American Lake Monsters by Nathan Ballingrud
At the Mouth of the River of Bees by Kij Johnson
Get in Trouble: Stories by Kelly Link
Gut Shot by Amelia Gray
Bobcat and Other Stories by Rebecca Lee
Thunderstruck and Other Stories by Elizabeth McCracken
Revenge: Eleven Dark Tales by Yoko Ogawa
The Bloody Chamber by Angela Carter
Moral Disorder and Other Stories by Margaret Atwood
Woman Hollering Creek by Sandra Cisneros
Brownsville by Oscar Casares
What the World Will Look Like When All the Water Leaves Us by Laura van den Berg
Delicate Edible Birds by by Lauren Groff
This is How You Lose Her by Junot Diaz
The Metamorphosis and Other Stories by Franz Kafka
Labyrinths by Jorge Luis Borges
Bloodchild and Other Stories by Octavia Butler
Monstress by Lysley Tenorio
The Things They Carried by Tim O’Brien
Fragile Things: Short Fictions and Wonders by Neil Gaiman
The Magic of Blood by Dagoberto Gilb
Family Furnishings by Alice Munro
Because They Wanted To by Mary Gaitskill
Birds of America by Lorrie Moore
Enormous Changes at the Last Moment by Grace Paley
What We Talk About When We Talk About Love by Raymond Carver
Everything That Rises Must Converge by Flannery O’Connor
After the Quake by Haruki Murakami
East, West by Salman Rushdie
The Lottery and Other Stories by Shirley Jackson
Ancient, Ancient by Kiini Ibura Salaam
Everything Ravaged, Everything Burned by Wells Tower
Oblivion by David Foster Wallace
We Should Never Meet by Aimee Phan
Zigzagger by Manuel Munoz
You Can’t Keep a Good Woman Down by Alice Walker
Lady with the Dog and Other Stories by Anton Chekov
The Red Convertible by Louise Erdrich
Miguel Street by V.S. Naipaul
How to Leave Hialeah by Jennine Capó Crucet
The Southern Cross by Skip Horack
How to Escape from a Leper Colony by Tiphanie Yanique
Cities I Never Lived In by Sara Majka
Dog Run Moon by Callan Wink
Fortune Smiles by Adam Johnson
The Tsar of Love and Techno by Anthony Marra
Binocular Vision by Edith Pearlman
There’s Something I Want You to Do by Charles Baxter
The Love Object by Edna O’Brien
A Manual for Cleaning Women by Lucia Berlin
The Barrens and Others by F. Paul Wilson
High Lonesome by Joyce Carol Oates
Bagombo Snuff Box: Uncollected Short Fiction by Kurt Vonnegut
The Birthday of the World by Ursula K. Le Guin
The Girl in the Flammable Skirt by Aimee Bender
A Better Angel by Chris Adrian
Little Black Book of Stories by A.S. Byatt
The Woman Who Gave Birth to Rabbits by Emma Donoghue
Burning Bright by Ron Rash
Difficult Loves by Italo Calvino
