What’s in it
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24 books with the same feel
Include books by the same authorTunneling to the Center of the Earth: Stories
Kevin Wilson · 208 pages
Kevin Wilson's characters inhabit a world that moves seamlessly between the real and the imagined, the mundane and the fantastic. "Grand Stand-In" is narrated by an employee of a Nuclear Family Supplemental Provider -- a company that supplies "stand-ins" for families with deceased, ill, or just plain mean grandparents. And in "Blowing Up On the Spot," a young woman works sorting tiles at a Scrabbl
The Universe in Miniature in Miniature
Patrick Somerville · 304 pages
A novel-in-stories travels from suburbs to outer space and revolves around the tale "The Machine of Understanding Other People," in which a Chicago man is given a supernatural helmet that lets him experience the inner worlds of others.
All Fires the Fire
Julio Cortazar · 157 pages
Here's Your Hat What's Your Hurry
Elizabeth McCracken · 216 pages
No One Belongs Here More Than You
Miranda July · 214 pages
This collection of short stories introduces the possibility of a moment that can change everything. Whether writing about a middle-aged woman's obsession with Prince William, or an aging factory worker who has never been in love, the result is startling, sexy and tender by turns.
Black Vodka: Ten Stories
Deborah Levy · 125 pages
The Collected Stories
Lydia Davis · 733 pages
A single-volume compilation of the National Book Award finalist's short stories includes "Break it Down" and "Varieties of Disturbance."
The Girl in the Flammable Skirt
Aimee Bender · 188 pages
A grief-stricken librarian decides to have sex with every man who enters her library. A half-mad, unbearably beautiful heiress follows a strange man home, seeking total sexual abandon: He only wants to watch game shows. A woman falls in love with a hunchback; when his deformity turns out to be a prosthesis, she leaves him. A wife whose husband has just returned from the war struggles with the hear
Daydreams of Angels
Heather O'Neill
Heather O'Neill's distinctive style and voice fill these charming, sometimes dark, always beguiling stories. From "The Robot Baby," in which we discover what happens when a robot feels emotion for the very first time, to "Heaven," about a grandfather who died for a few minutes when he was nine and visited the pearly gates, to "The Little Wolf-Boy of Northern Quebec," in which untamed children run
The Metamorphosis and Other Stories
Franz Kafka · 271 pages
This collection of new translations brings together the small proportion of Kafka's works that he thought worthy of publication. It includes 'Metamorphosis', his most famous work, an exploration of horrific transformation and alienation; 'Meditation', a collection of his earlier studies; 'The Judgement', written in a single night of frenzied creativity; 'The Stoker', the first chapter of a novel s
Interzone
William S. Burroughs · 194 pages
While living in Tangiers in the 1950s, Burroughs wrote "a startling collection of short stories, autobiographical sketches, letters, and diary entries, all of which showcase his trademark mordant humor, while delineating the addictions to drugs and sex that are the central metaphors of his work."--Cover, Penguin ed.
The Fun Parts
Sam Lipsyte · 229 pages
Presents a collection of stories featuring such characters as a deranged male birth doula, an aerobics instructor trying to save her soul, and a doomsday hustler.
Voodoo Heart
Scott Snyder · 288 pages
Scott Snyder's protagonists inhabit a playfully deranged fictional world in which a Wall Street trader can find himself armed with a speargun, guarding a Dumpster outside a pawnshop in Florida; or an employee at Niagara Falls (his job: watching for jumpers) will take off in a car after a blimp in which his girlfriend has escaped. But in Snyder's wondrous imagination there's a thin membrane betwee
Bang Crunch
Neil Smith · 244 pages
In nine richly varied stories, written in intense, clear-eyed prose, the reader is led into an exploration of the human need for connection, however tenuous or absurd, and at whatever cost.
Flying Leap
Judy Budnitz · 256 pages
In her tales of people with ordinary hopes and fears who are forced to confront situations that are skewed, surreal, even fantastic, Judy Budnitz plays with the boundaries of time and reality. But each story is grounded in the possible, and each is enriched and empowered by a sense of humanity and hope rare in any writer, of any age.
A Thousand Morons
Quim Monzo · 111 pages
Presents a collection of short stories with a theme of irony, including one in which a young boy in scolded by his teacher for coming to school with a neck wound.
City of Saints and Madmen
Jeff VanderMeer · 456 pages
Leaving the Sea
Ben Marcus · 273 pages
A collection of life-affirming tales includes the dystopian "Rollingwood," in which a divorced father struggles with employment while caring for an ailing infant; and the title story, in which a narrator's marriage and sanity unravel in a single breathless sentence.
Not the End of the World
Kate Atkinson · 278 pages
Arthur is a precocious eight-year-old boy whose mother is a B-list celebrity more concerned with the state of her bank account than with her son's development. Then an enigmatic young nanny named Missy introduces him to a world he never knew existed.
Murder in the Dark: Short Fictions and Prose Poems
Margaret Atwood · 98 pages
These short fictions and prose poems are beautifully bizarre: bread can no longer be thought of as wholesome comforting loaves; the pretensions of the male chef are subjected to a light roasting; a poisonous brew is concocted by cynical five year olds; and knowing when to stop is of deadly importance in a game of Murder in the Dark.