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Murder in the Dark: Short Fictions and Prose Poems

Margaret Atwood · back to the book

What’s in it

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24 books with the same feel

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Motel Chronicles

Sam Shepard · 165 pages

Short StoriesLiterary FictionPoetry CollectionSparse Prose
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God Bless You, Dr. Kevorkian

Kurt Vonnegut Jr. · 80 pages

In God Bless You, Dr. Kevorkian, Kurt Vonnegut skips back and forth between life and afterlife as if the difference between them were rather slight.This fictional adventure, that began as a series of 90-second interludes for WNYC, New York City's public radio station, has evolved over the past year as a strange and lasting work of the imagination. God Bless You, Dr. Kevorkian follows on Vonnegut's

Short StoriesLiterary FictionSparse ProseAbsurdist Humor
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Almost No Memory

Lydia Davis · 208 pages

Lydia Davis's new collection, Almost No Memory, is a richly inventive array of playful philosophical investigations, involuted domestic disputes, and fables of the dark fantastic. With wittily restrained intensity, she again portrays the contemplative self caught in the paradoxical world. In "Pastor Elaine's Newsletter," a harried mother studies a Bible passage; in "Foucault and Pencil," a troubl

Short StoriesLiterary FictionSparse ProseAbsurdist Humor
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The Voice Imitator

Thomas Bernhard · 114 pages

Short StoriesLiterary FictionSparse ProseAbsurdist Humor
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Fine, Fine, Fine, Fine, Fine

Diane Williams · 131 pages

"The very short stories of Diane Williams have been aptly called 'folk tales that hammer like a nail gun,' and these forty new ones are sharper than ever. They are unsettling, yes, frequently revelatory, and more often than not downright funny."--Publisher website.

Short StoriesLiterary FictionSparse ProseAbsurdist Humor
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Betting on the Muse: Poems and Stories

Charles Bukowski · 402 pages

Charles Bukowski is one of America's best-known contemporary writers of poetry and prose, and, many would claim, its most influential and imitated poet. He was born in Andernach, Germany, and raised in Los Angeles, where he lived for fifty years. He published his first story in 1944, when he was twenty-four, and began writing poetry at the age of thirty-five. He died in San Pedro, California, on M

Short StoriesLiterary FictionSparse ProsePoetry Collection
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Forty Stories

Donald Barthelme · 256 pages

Short StoriesLiterary FictionSparse ProseAbsurdist Humor
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The Nimrod Flipout: Stories

Etgar Keret, Institute for Translation of Hebrew Literature · 176 pages

Short StoriesLiterary FictionSparse ProseAbsurdist Humor
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Rolling the R's

R. Zamora Linmark · 149 pages

Thirty-seven stories and poems on Hawaii's Kalihi Valley. The subjects range from the clash of cultures between whites and natives, to the plight of a 10-year-old girl who becomes pregnant.

Short StoriesLiterary FictionPoetry Collection
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Stick Out Your Tongue

Ma Jian · 100 pages

Short StoriesLiterary FictionSparse Prose
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The Girl on the Fridge

Etgar Keret · 171 pages

Short StoriesLiterary FictionSparse ProseAbsurdist Humor
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Winesburg, Ohio

Sherwood Anderson · 247 pages

Through twenty-three connected short stories, the author looks into the lives of the inhabitants of a small town in the American heartland. In a simple and intense style, these psychological portraits of the sensitive and imaginative of Winesburg's population are seen through the eyes of a young reporter-narrator, George Willard. Their stories are about loneliness and alienation, passion and virgi

Short StoriesLiterary FictionSparse Prose
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Cane

Jean Toomer, Rudolph P. Byrd · 224 pages

Published in 1923, Jean Toomer’s Cane was widely heralded as one of the first masterpieces of the Harlem Renaissance, and its author as “a bright morning star” of the movement. Toomer himself, however, was reluctant to embrace an explicitly racialized identity, preferring to define himself as simply an American writer. Inspired in part by Sherwood Anderson’s short story cycle Winesburg, Ohio , T

Short StoriesLiterary FictionPoetry Collection
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Venus Drive: Stories

Sam Lipsyte · 192 pages

Short StoriesLiterary FictionSparse Prose
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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.

Short StoriesLiterary FictionAbsurdist Humor
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The Melancholy of Anatomy

Shelley Jackson · 179 pages

Short StoriesLiterary FictionAbsurdist Humor
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Coronado: Stories

Dennis Lehane · 240 pages

From Dennis Lehane, the award-winning author of Mystic River, Shutter Island, and the Kenzie-Gennaro series, comes a striking collection of five short stories and a play.A small southern town gives birth to a dangerous man with a broken heart and a high-powered rifle. . . .A young girl, caught up in an inner-city gang war, crosses the line from victim to avenger. . . . An innocent man is hunted by

Short StoriesLiterary FictionSparse Prose
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Short StoriesLiterary FictionSparse Prose
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The Tokyo-Montana Express

Richard Brautigan · 258 pages

Short StoriesLiterary FictionAbsurdist Humor
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I Wish Someone Were Waiting for Me Somewhere

Anna Gavalda · 352 pages

"With arresting naturalism and a lively variety of perspectives, Gavalda writes simply of human beings longing to connect. Gavalda, "a gifted literary stylist" (Vogue), has a knack for capturing our inner as well as our outer dialogues with perfect pitch, evoking reflection, pain, and laughter in equal measure. The stories in I Wish Someone Were Waiting for Me Somewhere are as wicked as they are i

Short StoriesLiterary FictionSparse Prose
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Selected Short Stories

Guy de Maupassant · 326 pages

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Pieces for the Left Hand

J. Robert Lennon · 213 pages

A collection of 100 short pieces-- some not even a page long-- full of subtle humor and surprising incidents. They are grouped into seven themes.

Short StoriesLiterary FictionSparse Prose
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Amphigorey

Edward Gorey · 204 pages

Collects fifteen works by the U.S. artist and author Edward Gorey, providing a journey into a macabre world. --

Short StoriesPoetry CollectionLiterary FictionAbsurdist Humor

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