Riot Headline The Best Books of 2024
Fiction

116 of Your Favorite Short Story Collections

Cassandra Neace

Staff Writer

Cassandra Neace is a high school English teacher in Houston. When she's not in the classroom, she reads books and writes about them. She prides herself on her ability to recommend a book for most any occasion. She can be found on Instagram @read_write_make

u of iowa press giveaway

Lungs Full of Noise “explores a femininity that is magical, raw, and grotesque. Aghast at the failings of their bodies, this cast of misfit women and girls sets out to remedy the misdirection of their lives in bold and reckless ways.”

In If I’d Known You Were Coming, “Kate Milliken unflinchingly shows us what can happen when the uninvited guest of our darkest desires comes to call.”

Both of these debut collections explore ask big questions through the lens of magical and surreal elements, and they remind us that a story need not be long to have lasting impact. In this giveaway sponsored by Lungs Full of Noise by Tessa Mellas and If I’d Known You Were Coming by Kate Milliken, we asked you to tell us your favorite short story collections. You had more than a few suggestions. Take a look…

Interpreter of Maladies and Unaccustomed Earth by Jhumpa Lahiri

Ten Little Indians by Sherman Alexie

Sweet Talk by Stefanie Vaughn

The Shell Collector by Anthony Doerr

Krik? Krak! by Edwidge Danticat

The Bloody Chamber and Other Stories by Angela Carter

Open Secrets and The Beggar Maid by Alice Munro

No One Belongs Here More Than You by Miranda July

The Sergeant’s Cat and Other Stories by Janwillem van de Wetering

Birds of a Lesser Paradise by Megan Mayhew Bergman

Bradbury 100, October Country, The Illustrated Man, and Martian Chronicles by Ray Bradbury

The Necklace and Other Short Stories by Guy D Maupassant

Fragile Things, Unnatural Creatures, and Smoke & Mirrors by Neil Gaiman

Birthday Stories, After the Quake, and The Elephant Vanishes by Haruki Murakami

The Complete Stories by Flannery O’Connor

Women in Their Beds by Gina Berriault

Birds of America  and Self-Help by Lorrie Moore

The Wind’s Twelve Quarters by Ursula LeGuin

I Hate To See That Evening Sun Go Down by William Gay

Portraits Of A Few Of The People I’ve Made Cry by Christine Sneed

Portable Childhoods by Ellen Klages

Tenth of December, CivilWarLand in Bad Decline, and Pastoralia by George Saunders

Twelve Red Herrings by Jeffrey Archer

The Universe in Miniature in Miniature by Patrick Somerville

Saints and Sinners by Edna O’Brien

Labyrinths by Jorge Luis Borges

Nabokov’s Dozen by Vladimir Nabokov

Petersburg Tales by Nikolai Gogol

Flappers and Philosophers by F. Scott Fitzgerald

Willful Creatures by Aimee Bender

We’re In Trouble by Christopher Coake

Volt by Alan Heathcock

Delicate Edible Birds and Other Stories by Lauren Groff

Selected Short Stories by Rabindranath Tagore

Night Train at Deoli and Other Stories and Time Stops at Shamli and Other Stories by Ruskin Bond

Red Spikes by Margo Lanagan

Nothing Gold Can Stay: Stories by Ron Rash

This Is How You Lose Her by Junot Diaz

The Whole Story and Other Stories by Ali Smith

Olive Kitteridge by Elizabeth Strout

Dubliners by James Joyce

Normal People Don’t LIve Like This by Dylan Landis

Woman Hollering Creek And Other Stories by Sandra Cisneros

What I Talk About When I Talk About Love by Raymond Carver

Just an Ordinary Day by Shirley Jackson

Binocular Vision by Edith Perlman

Black Tickets by Jayne Anne Phillips

Moscow but Dreaming by Ekaterina Sedia

Mermaids on the Golf Course by Patricia Highsmith

Jagannath: Stories by Karin Tidbeck

Dreams of Dark and Light by Tanith Lee

St. Lucy’s Home for Girls Raised by Wolves and Vampires in the Lemon Grove by Karen Russell

Stranger Things Happen by Kelly Link

Letting Loose the Hounds by Brady Udall

Night Shift, Nightmares and Dreamscapes, Different Seasons, The Skeleton Crew and Full Dark, No Stars by Stephen King

Say You’re One of Them by Uwem Akpan

The Doctor Stories by William Carlos Williams, edited by Robert Coles

How to Breathe Underwater by Julie Orringer

Poachers by Tom Franklin

The Mixture as Before by W. Somerset Maugham

What We Talk About When We Talk About Anne Frank: Stories by Nathan Englander

Once and Future Lovers by Sheree L Greer

Nocturnes by John Connolly

Wyoming Stories by Annie Proulx

Ship Fever by Andrea Barrett

Recapture and Other Stories by Erica Olsen

The Necessity of Certain Behaviors by Shannon Cain

Her Smoke Rose Up Forever by James Tiptree Jr. (Alice Sheldon)

The Nimrod Flipout by Etgar Keret

The Captain’s Daughter and Other Short Stories by Alexander Pushkin

Nine Stories by JD Salinger

Blue Taxis: Stories About Africa  by Eileen Drew

Venetian Stories by Jane Turner Rylands

Welding With Children by Tim Gautreaux

If I Loved You, I Would Tell You This by Robin Black

A Guide to Being Born by Ramona Ausubel

Brief Interviews With Hideous Men by David Foster Wallace

How We Are Hungry by Dave Eggers

Welcome to the Monkey House by Kurt Vonnegut

This Cake is for the Party by Sarah Selecky

Stories for Nighttime and Some for the Day by Ben Loory

American Salvage  by Bonnie Jo Campbell

Leaf Storm by Gabriel García Márquez

Skin and Other Stories by Roald Dahl

Time and the Riddle by Howard Fast

The Lonely Frog by Edwin Moser

Cathedral by Raymond Carver

20th Century Ghosts by Joe Hill

Ford County: Stories by John Grisham

Who I was Supposed to Be by Susan Perabo

The Snows of Kilimanjaro and Other Stories by Ernest Hemingway

I Want To Show You More by Jamie Quatro

Airships by Barry Hannah

LIght Lifting by Alexander MacLeod

Looking for Jake by China Mieville

First, Body by Melanie Rae Thon

Night Soul and Other Stories by Joseph McElroy

The Brains of Rats by Michael Blumlein

And, of course, ANYTHING by Poe or O’Henry; all of Conan Doyle’s Sherlock stories; and every anthology release to commemorate the finalists for a Short Story Award, from the Nebula and Hugo awards to the Pushcart Prize.

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