Exploring Top Books of Shelfari

Navigating between the Indian traditions they've inherited and the baffling new world, the characters in Jhumpa Lahiri's elegant, touching stories seek love beyond the barriers of culture and generations. In "A Temporary Matter," published in The New Yorker, a young Indian-American couple faces the heartbreak of a stillborn birth while their Boston neighborhood copes with a nightly blackout. In the title story, an... (more)

The Lottery and Other Stories (The Haunting of Hill House We Have Alwasys Lived in the Castle)

The Lottery and Other Stories (The Haunting of Hill House We Have Alwasys Lived in the Castle)

by Shirley Jackson

The Lottery , one of the most terrifying stories written in this century, created a sensation when it was first published in The New Yorker . "Power and haunting," and "nights of unrest" were typical reader responses. This collection, the only one to appear during Shirley Jackson's lifetime, unites "The Lottery:" with twenty-four equally unusual stories. Together they demonstrate Jack son's remarkable... (more)

Dogwalker: Stories (Vintage Contemporaries)

Dogwalker: Stories (Vintage Contemporaries)

by Arthur Bradford

Tender and satiric, hilarious and humane, Dogwalker plunks readers down in a land of misfits and the circumstantially strange–where one young man buys drugs from a dealer who locks his customers in a closet, while another lands a cat-faced circus freak for a roommate, and yet another must choose between his pregnant wife and the ten-pound slug he’s convinced will bring him a fortune. And throughout these stories... (more)

Stranger Things Happen

by Kelly Link

This first collection by award-winning author Kelly Link takes fairy tales and cautionary tales, dictators and extraterrestrials, amnesiacs and honeymooners, revenants and readers alike, on a voyage into new, strange, and wonderful territory. The girl detective must go to the underworld to solve the case of the tap-dancing bank robbers. A librarian falls in love with a girl whose father collects artificial... (more)

Letting Loose the Hounds

by Brady Udall

Exploding with an unsettling exuberance, Brady Udall's stories traverse a geography of lost love, fragmented lives, and satisfying revenge. Shimmering with life, these eleven stories literally let loose--and leave readers with a raw yet romantic vision of the men and women in today's still-wild West Author publicity.

Emperor of the Air

by Ethan Canin

EMPEROR OF THE AIR "explores tricky family relationships and tender moments of self-discovery with a voice of compassion rarely found in contemporary short fiction" (San Francisco Chronicle). Whether his characters are struggling to save trees in their yards, their marriages, or themselves, Cannin renders their moments of revelation with rich observation, energy, humor, and grace.

Cowboys Are My Weakness : Stories

by Pam Houston

"Exhilarating, like a swift ride through river rapids with a spunky, sexy gal handling the oars."— Washington Post Book World In Pam Houston's critically acclaimed collection of strong, shrewd, and very funny stories, we meet smart women who are looking for the love of a good man, and men who are wild and hard to pin down. "I've always had this thing for cowboys, maybe because I was born in New Jersey.... (more)

Stranger Than Fiction: True Stories

by Chuck Palahniuk

Chuck Palahniuk’s world has always been, well, different from yours and mine. In his first collection of nonfiction, Chuck Palahniuk brings us into this world, and gives us a glimpse of what inspires his fiction. At the Rock Creek Lodge Testicle Festival in Missoula, Montana, average people perform public sex acts on an outdoor stage. In a mansion once occupied by The Rolling Stones, Marilyn Manson reads his own... (more)

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Tags: normally i skip short stories but these i love

Interpreter of Maladies

by Jhumpa Lahiri