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. 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