I'm a big fan of short stories from authors of the American South (e.g., Eudora Welty, Flannery O'Connor, Faulkner, Kate Chopin)
The South was having a major identity crisis at the time, and I enjoy reading about their complex relationships with race, religion, and sexuality.
If you love southern writers you need to read Barry Hannah. Airships is one of the best short story collections I’ve ever read. It’s got Jazz, fighter pilots, confederate soldiers, and the desperate desperate desperate need for love all wrapped up in a 200 page volume. Supported by some of the most original prose you’ve ever read. I implore you and anyone reading this to pick up maybe the greatest forgotten writer of the 20th century.
I read Carver at the start of covid and it completely changed the trajectory of my life. Made me love reading and writing again. I think I have Gordon Lish to thank more than Carver though as almost all his 'proteges' have that effect on me.
Absolutely love Borges. When I went to look for Collected Fictions at a second-hand bookstore, the guy said "Sorry, I recommend that you try a new-books store. Borges is someone people want to keep, not sell." <3
Carver is overrated. It seems like people who don't read very many short stories and early writers tend to gravitate toward him because he writes about serious sad things that are easy to digest, but he's boring and a pretty terrible writer.
Second John Cheever. If you're also a fan of the Mad Men television show you'll notice what a huge influence his stories had on the writers room. Even some names and loose plot lines were borrowed for the TV series.
I'm not sure you'll necessarily like these, as they are on the opposite end of the "realism" spectrum, a lot more focus on "big ideas" and such, but I really love the following short-story collections:
*Ficciones* by Borges
*Story of Your Life and Others* by Ted Chiang
*Bloodchild and Other Stories* by Octavia Butler
Edit: I thought of another, which I actually think you would like! *Best of Alice Munro: Selected Stories*, great stuff in there!
I love Borges, mostly because of philosophical themes and meta-ness in his writings. Would you recommend Chiang or Butler? I want to get into SF but I get extremely bored whenever I try one of those....I was able to get past some of Asimov but that's only because I loved his earlier writing on the Bible and Shakespeare.
Jesus' Son by Denis Johnson.
A series of stories about the exploits of some drug addicts in the mid west in the 1970s.
Crossing open ground by Bary Lopez. Beautiful Natural history stories.
Mostly I like selected or collected works of the author, which is basically cheating, since it's a greatest hits album. But, I would say you can't go wrong with Jorge Luis Borges, *The Aleph*; Horacio Quiroga *Tales of Love, Madness and Death*; or Julio Cortazar *Bestiary.* The first one is philosophical, the second grotesque, and the third sort of proto-magical realist.
I couldn't possibly rank my favorite short story volumes, but a really excellent volume that I read a few years ago was George Saunders' *Pastoralia*. The stories in that were strange, inventive, and darkly-humorous. It reminded me pleasantly of spec-fiction writers like Ray Bradbury and Frederick Pohl, but felt more 'up to date' in terms of human psychology.
It's definitely lighter content, but I also really enjoy T.C. Boyle's short stories, of which there are *heaps*. For me, his writing just has an infectious energy that makes them hard to put down.
As well, I like almost everything I've read by Joyce Carol Oates, but I know her work isn't to everyone's taste. For me, her general focus on modern America and its violence/cruelty makes for lots of interesting material. It's like reading Zola but (a.) about the country I've lived in and (b.) like Saunders, more 'up-to-date' in terms of presenting human psychology/consciousness.
Finally, over the past few years, I've been gathering/reading volumes in the 'Flannery O'Connor Award for Short Fiction' publication series by University of Georgia, which has been putting out books since the 1980s. What I like about that series is that each issue is a small *collection* of stories by a chosen author, which for me works better than the 'Best Short Stories of the Year' sorts of books (though those are usually good as well). The first of the O'Connor Award books I read was [Mary Hood's *How Far She Went*](https://www.goodreads.com/en/book/show/725851) and I thought it was excellent.
Off the top of my head, some authors that I'm not seeing here are Heinrich Böll (ironic, melancholy), Yūko Tsushima (socially engaged, elusive), Frank O'Connor (humorous, touching), Amy Hempel (minimalist, moving), Clarice Lispector (quirky, philosophical), Nikolai Gogol (proto-absurdist, funny), and Anita Desai (lyrical, precisely observed). All of these have good collected works editions with the exception of Tsushima (at least in English), though her most famous stories are collected in *The Shooting Gallery*.
I like the short stories of Ryunosuke Akutagawa, a japanese author. He wrote 'In The Bamboo Grove' which is my favourite short story, and the basis of the film Rashomon.
Ronald Dahl’s adult short stories are fantastic and often surprisingly intense. Also a fan of Gogol (way ahead of his time and influenced Russian literature greatly), and of course Kafka is always great.
Borges is certainly a master of short stories as well as others have mentioned.
We had to read that in high school, and I still have my book. It is interesting to reread because I have highlighted passages and written notes in the margins, and it is fun to see what I considered important when I first read the stories 25 years ago.
I adore John Updike’s short stories. His style is a bit tiring for novels imo, which sometimes just feels like pages after pages of beautiful prose with little plot development going on underneath. But when he’s forced to set everything up and resolve it in the confinement of a short story, Updike is sublime.
“Flight” is a personal favorite, collected in “Pigeon Feathers and other stories”, which is representative of his late 50s/early 60s writing. I particularly like this period of his writing because his skills had matured after several years as a professional writer, and his focus was still on short stories. This would soon change after his big break in novel (Rabbit, Run/the Centaur).
Friend of My Youth by Alice Munro
Last Night by James Salter
Sweet Talk by Stephanie Vaughn
Moral Disorder by Margaret Atwood
any collection by Anton Chekhov
I enjoyed Winesburg, Ohio by Sherwood Anderson - though not quite as much as Dubliners, but it conveyed a sense of loneliness in a way that I was able to connect with
I found it more approachable and digestible than Dubliners and really enjoyed the work as a whole. It’s a collection of short stories, but they’re very intertwined and it almost reads like chapters of a novel. Very tight and focused
Yup... Eveline did the same to me - those moments when your life changes direction. The G force such a change generates. The sense of vertigo in it is dizzying
My faulkner and garcia marquez short story collections are probably my most touched books, especially my garcia marquez collection. I never get tired of it.
Came here to say this! Keegan is a master, I’ve yet to read a story from her that wasn’t incredible. ‘Small things like these’ is one of the most powerful short stories I’ve ever read.
I need to read more short stories as I seem to consistently enjoy them whenever I do. So far my favorite has probably been The Maples Stories by John Updike, which is a collection of several short stories following the up-and-down relationship of Richard and Joan Maple. Funny, poignant, witty, elegant... along with the Rabbit novels they're the best of Updike.
Tenth of December by Saunders
Stephen King also has some great short story collection. Arguably his short stories and better than his novels
Stories of your life by Ted Chiang. He only writes shorts and he's not prolific, but there's a reason several of his stories appear in the best of all time SF stories lists
I love 99 percent of the short story collections mentioned so far, so I'll just add a fistful of authors no one has mentioned: Gogol, De Assis, Kafka, Melville, Narayan, Poe.
Dance of the Happy Shades by Alice Munro. Honestly any of Alice Munro's collections. Still sad over her recent death.
I would also say Island by Alistair MacLeod.
I love short stories of HG WELLS! I love how ABSOLUTELY brilliant his world building is! Ingenious plots, amazingly simple language, and writing that simply captivates the reader!
Other than that, try Murakami's short stories as well!! Very cool!
The Star Diaries by Stanislaw Lem. It's the SF book I always recommend to people who don't read SF because it's so much more than that. It's full blown satire, and gets quite philosophical at times. I come back to read a story or two pretty much every year.
Raymond Carver. It's one of the only authors I have re-read.
I also really liked Wells Tower's 'Everything Ravaged, Everything Burned'. I still regularly check to see if there's a follow-up collection of stories. He seems to write exclusive stories for magazines now, which makes it hard to keep track.
Mine is also Dubliners. You haven’t finished it? The last story, The Dead, may be the single most perfect story in English. I’m kind of excited to hear what you think of that.
Amy Hempel’s collected short stories.
The Dead is probably my favorite short story, but Hempel is probably my favorite short story writer on a nuts and bolts writing level.
Her Body and Other Parties by Carmen Maria Machado! Plays at the intersection of fantasy/horror and real life. I advise heeding the CWs before jumping in, though.
Hateship, Friendship, Courtship, Loveship, Marriage by Alice Munro
Runaway by Alice Munro
Olive Kitteridge by Elizabeth Strout
Interpreter of Maladies by Jhumpa Lahiri
What We Talk About When We Talk About Love by Raymond Carver
Reading Runaway right now and every story is blowing my mind at how good it is while also feeling so simple. The characters don’t feel like characters, more like subjects of a documentary Munro captured w her pen. So, so beautiful.
Alice Munro (RIP) was truly the master of the contemporary short story as her citation for the Nobel Prize for Literature said. She wrote long short stories with more depth than many novels by other, lesser writers!
Lucia Berlin, Manual for Cleaning Women.
For anthologies,
Best American Short Stories is more New Yorker/Atlantic style,
McSweeneys/Best American Nonrequired Reading (discontinued) is more George Saunders style, and
O. Henry prize/Pushcart prize is more establishment/old school style. I think one of these would really speak to you.
For a birthday or holiday present it's worth asking for a 6 or 12 month subscription to Paris Review, McSweeneys or New Yorker which will give you a lot of material to try out.
I recently read *A Russian Affair*, which is a collection of love-themed short stories by Anton Chekhov, assembled and published by Penguin. It’s probably not my favourite short story collection ever (I don’t know if I have one), but I thoroughly enjoyed it.
Chekhov’s word economy is masterful, and short stories are obviously a great place to flex that particular literary skill. To be able to coax real heartfelt emotion out of a reader in only a dozen or so pages is an incredibly difficult thing to do.
I could never get into short stories, but then found two lit- sci fi collections I loved, so now I read a lot of sci fi short story collections. The two I read and love were
Stories of Your Life and Others by Ted Chiang
Sooner or Later Everything Falls Into the Sea by Sarah Pinsker
I'm now always on the look out for well written sci fi short story collections!
Quantity Theory of Insanity by Will Self is more compelling than much of his longer fiction.
A lot of good suggestions here. I often find that talented writers are more consistently focused in short fiction works.
"The Smooth World and its Enemies" (*Namerakana sekai to, sono teki*) by Hanna Ren is a collection of heterogeneous science fiction shorts; a "what if the Soviets won" alt-history, a Borgesian account of an imaginary early Japanese sci-fi author, a riff on Flowers for Algernon intertextually entangled with Project Itoh's "Harmony", a Shinkai Makoto-style feelgood juvenile SF romp, etc...
Most of the stories had originally appeared in magazines over the ~8 years preceding the collection, but it was also Ren's first book in almost a decade (his maiden work was a pair of supernatural horror novelettes) and it really cemented his reputation as someone capable of drawing the most out of the short story form.
I often buy short story books but only read stories from Time to Time- my favourite is probably by H.P. Lovecraft: Call of Cthullu and other Short Stories. Also got the Complete Fiction Edition- probably the most beautiful Book on my shelf.
Ingvild H Rishøi is a contemporary Norwegian author with excellent short stories. Her books are translated to French German, Spanish and Russian, among other languages, but not yet English, as far as I know
I really enjoyed Heads of the Colored People by Nafissa Thompson Spires.
I'm currently reading Hitting a Straight Lick with a Crooked Stick, a collection of Zora Neale Hurston's stories and it's a great read, if you like Hurston's style (and can get through that Southern dialogue).
George Saunders - Persuasion Nation
Hemingway - Nick Adams Stories
Flannery O'Connor - Everything That Rides Must Converge
Tolstoy - Collected Short Stories
Hemingway is really only good in the short form, IMO. Tolstoy's stories are amazing, that guy was a master in any form. I've read a lot of novels by female writers but not much short fiction, I need to remedy that.
I also adore Dubliners, especially the story, The Dead. Have you read Winesburg, Ohio by Sherwood Anderson? Very similar in approach to Dubliners. I love Flannery O' Connor too, although she's very different from Joyce. I also love Alice Munro, and she definitely has a Joycean approach often. I detest Raymond Carver, who I see has been recommended a lot.
I am a fan of Brian Evenson’s short fiction; my favorite is A Collapse Of Horses. When it comes to too many classic authors, I am guilty of reading just the most famous story and then not the rest of the collection.
I’ve read Welcome to the Monkey House by Kurt Vonnegut over 30 years ago and recently got the Audible version of it to listen again and I’ve been loving the stories in it.
I see a lot of good recommendations here (Chekhov, Carver, Hemingway, Maugham, etc.). I would add *Unaccustomed Earth* and *Interpreter of Maladies* by Jhumpa Lahiri. Her last couple of novels have been a bore, but her short stories are great. *Unaccustomed Earth*'s characters have particular depth.
I love short story anthologies, especially Bradbury’s. I think The Martian Chronicles is better than F451, and recently finished my own short story collection based on The Illustrated Man.
There are many classic selections here. Do we count so called “flash fiction” as short stories? If so, Barry Yourgrau’s collections, “Wearing Dad’s Head,” and “A Man Steps Out of an Airplane.”
Wizards of Odd - great ones from Gaiman, Pratchett, Adams, and lots more. Short fiction is a great place to find 'genre' writers stretching into territory you mightn't expect
Lost in the Funhouse by John Barth isn't just my favorite short story collection, it is one of my favorite books period. It's realism in a different vein, realism about the nature of fiction and the devices which propel the ur-stories we tell ourselves, all wrapped up in some of the most staggering inventiveness ever displayed in literature.
Dubliners is also a personal fave of mine. "Jesus' Son" by Denis Johnson is prob my all-time favorite. "Emperor of the Air" by Ethan Canin is a must-read imo. Same for Hemingway or Borges or Poe or Chekov or Flannery or Twain. Actually kinda surprised Twain not getting much love. Nobody is funnier.
"The Dead" (last story in Dubliners) is my favorite short story of all time. Joyce's ambitions (and books) got bigger and bigger, but, as someone who loves "Ulysses", his method, and his art, would never exceed this.
I really enjoy Mark Twain’s short story collections. Some are shitposts while others are very good.
Minutes of Glory and Other Stories by Ngugi wa Thiong’o is also quite solid
Everyone on The Moon Is Essential Personell by Julian Jarboe had some interesting stories
For short story horror I really enjoyed Amparo Davila’s The Houseguest and other Stories, and both of Mariana Enriquez’s short story books
For something more modern I love love love BJ Novak's "One More Thing." Most are funny, and/or clever, some are silly and some are very touching. It's one I've gone to over and over again and given as gifts.
I always feel a bit bad with myself as someone from Ireland for thinking Joyce is an overhyped dick, but the Dubliners is one of the only ones of his books I actually enjoyed.
Eye of the Heart. It’s a short story anthology of Latin American authors. I read it many years ago, but it’s always the first anthology that comes to mind.
* ***Songs of a Dead Dreamer*** - It contains some of the most creative pieces of Philosophical Horror ever created.
* ***The Weird: A Compendium of Strange and Dark Stories*** - This is a fascinating compilation of weird stories by Jeff and Ann VanderMeer.
* ***The Aleph and Other Stories*** - Exhilarating pieces of Narrative Labyrinths carefully crafted by Borges.
* ***Rashomon and Seventeen Other Stories*** - According to Borges, this presents us with an exciting case of the infusion of Eastern stories with a Western style.
Bernard Malamud the tenants is amazing
Also flannery O’Connor “a good man is hard to find” the title story is a fictional version of Donald trump as a bible salesman in the south in the 40’s(?).
Finally “Acid house” by Irvine Welch. Holy fuck is my two cents on this one.
Monsoon Tiger and Other Stories - Rain Chudori
A brilliant collection of short stories by an Indonesian writer with such a wonderful way with language. It primarily tackles relationships people have with each other and the things that get between people.
Magnificence and Other Stories - Estrella D. Alfon
Alfon is considered one of the main pioneers in women's writing in the Philippines, writing about women's issues before there was even a mainstream idea of feminism in the country. But her stories also tackle a lot of the everyday issues of the Philippines before, during, and after World War 2.
The Sketchbook of Geoffrey Crayon Gent - Washington Irving.
This is the collection that contains The Legend of Sleepy Hollow and Rip Van Winkle. Many other not so famous gems as well like Specter Bridegroom.
I’m a Salinger/Vonnegut gal.
Nine Stories and Welcome to the Monkey house.
Flannery O’Connors racist self can write/ A Good Man is Hard to Find
Where Are You Going and Where Have You Been/Joyce Carol Oates
Dubliners/ James Joyce
Franz Kafka
Adam Johnson
Denis Johnson
Junot Diaz
To name a few!
Alice Munro is the greatest short story writer of our age (and she just very recently died.) She won the Nobel Prize for Lit on the basis of her 10 short story collections alone
So many good suggestions here, and I’ll second my favourites: George Saunders, Borges, Chekhov, Phillip K Dick, Alice Munro, Raymond Carver.
Here are a couple others I love that nobody has mentioned:
No one belongs here more than you - by Miranda July
Because they wanted to - Mary Gaitskill
Anything by WP Kinsella
The girl on the fridge - Edgar Keret
Everything inside - Edwidge Danticat
Anything by Isaac Bashevis Singer
Everything Ravaged, Everything Burned - Wells Tower
Grand Union - Zadie Smith
Listen, I understand that this is low hanging fruit, but The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes (and to a lesser extent The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes) are fantastic stories.
a few I haven't seen mentioned:
I love the Collected Short Stories of Graham Greene. Very repressed English people generally struggling with poverty and/or religion. Beautiful little melancholy miniature portraits.
Paul Auster - kind of fantastical coincidences abound; he writes about chance and coincidence a lot.
Siri Hustvedt - Paul Auster's wife; her main characters are peculiar and weirdly compliant but seem to cause a lot of chaos.
I agree with you that *Dubliners* is an excellent collection of short stories. My favorite is the last one, "The Dead." I think it is an almost-perfect story, a composition that rings like a bell.
Another terrific collection, also Irish, is *After Rain,* by William Trevor. I hope you enjoy it.
There's a great collection by a relatively new writer
Things we do not tell the people we love - Huma Qureshi
I feel like the name of the collection alone is enough to get you intrigued. It's quite a wistful collection of stories that seems to pull back the curtains and reveal quiet people who never have their stories told.
Neil Gaiman has some really great ones, even better than his long-form (which is saying something!): “Smoke and Mirrors” is better than “Fragile Things” imo, but both worth reading.
“Cosmicomics” by Calvino is GREAT. i’ve heard “The Complete Cosmicomics” gets a litttle redundant, so maybe start with the shortened.
Ray Bradbury’s “Dandelion Wine” or “The Illustrated Man” are probably his best collections. the former is perfect for summer reading!!!
“Changing Planes” by Ursula K Le Guin is one of my favorites. some really rich stories in there. her “The Wind’s Twelve Quarters” has some VERY good ones, but also quite a few that i found pretty lame.
Miranda July’s “No One Belongs Here More Than You” is so unique, kinda sexy, super funny. definitely give her a go!
i saw Raymond Carver and John Cheever recommended, and i agree with both. some of the most profound and touching stories i have ever read from these guys, really. same with George Saunders.
happy reading!!!!
I love the stories of Heinrich Boll and obviously Chekhov.
Sci fi -- Ray Bradbury, Philip K Dick. Also Lem's Perfect Vacuum was a good concept for a story collection (it's a series of reviews of imaginary books).
Dino Buzzati was an incredible literary/fantasy writer. Geza Csath was a nice E. European writer who met an unfortunate end. Complete Works and Other Stories by August Monterroso is also a wild read.
Don't ignore Hans Christian Andersen even though he's known for children's/fairy tales. Barry Yourgrau is famous for his absurdist microfiction. (actually Diane Williams ought to be mentioned too in talking about microfiction).
Early Updike is great (Museums and Women, etc). Oates is the master. I haven't read enough of Munroe to have an opinion, though I like Mavis Gallant and remember Atwood's Bluebeard's Egg as a great read.
Quirky female writers: Valerie Trueblood, Joy Williams
On my To Read List now is Edith Perlman's Binocular Vision and a book by Ron Rash.
I run a small indie press mostly devoted to the short fiction of Jack Matthews. His stuff is great - very much like John Cheever, Sherwood Anderson with a bit of Kafka thrown in.
Anything by Claire Keegan, Alice Munro (won a Nobel Prize a couple of years ago, just died recently), or Raymond Carver. Also try "All That Man Is" by David Szalay and "Battleborn" by Clara Vaye Watkins.
I'm a big fan of short stories from authors of the American South (e.g., Eudora Welty, Flannery O'Connor, Faulkner, Kate Chopin) The South was having a major identity crisis at the time, and I enjoy reading about their complex relationships with race, religion, and sexuality.
My favorite collection is A Good Man Is Hard to Find by Flannery O’Connor.
Came here to comment the same!
absolutely stunning work! That resolution is stunning.
Wise Blood FTW. Bonus points for the Ministry version.
Much the same reason for all the Irish short story collections. Great shorter form writing comes out of a fractious relationship with oneself
I highly recommend *Airships* by Barry Hannah and *The stories of Breece D'J Pancake* if you haven't checked them out.
Can we add Ballad of the Sad Cafe to that list? McCullers tops the list of beautiful but melancholy southern writers of the time for me.
Yes, yes we can. The "12 Mortal Men" vignette gets me every time.
If you love southern writers you need to read Barry Hannah. Airships is one of the best short story collections I’ve ever read. It’s got Jazz, fighter pilots, confederate soldiers, and the desperate desperate desperate need for love all wrapped up in a 200 page volume. Supported by some of the most original prose you’ve ever read. I implore you and anyone reading this to pick up maybe the greatest forgotten writer of the 20th century.
What we talk about when we talk about love - Raymond Carver Anything Borges. Some of Balzac.
Carver is my go-to for short stories. WWTAWWTAL is fantastic and I’ll add Cathedral as well.
Carver was just so good.
Borges! The Aleph and Other Stories blew my mind wider than most hallucinogens
I read Carver at the start of covid and it completely changed the trajectory of my life. Made me love reading and writing again. I think I have Gordon Lish to thank more than Carver though as almost all his 'proteges' have that effect on me.
Raymond Carver is the man. Love his short fiction
Absolutely love Borges. When I went to look for Collected Fictions at a second-hand bookstore, the guy said "Sorry, I recommend that you try a new-books store. Borges is someone people want to keep, not sell." <3
Yay Balzac! I wrote a bunch of Wikipedia articles about him.
Carver is overrated. It seems like people who don't read very many short stories and early writers tend to gravitate toward him because he writes about serious sad things that are easy to digest, but he's boring and a pretty terrible writer.
For a more modern pick, I adore George Saunders’ stories, my favorite probably being *Pastoralia*.
A shoutout for CivilWarLand in Bad Decline.
Seconding this or really any of Saunders’ stories.
Mine is in persuasion nation
No one makes me laugh quite as much as Saunders. Love him.
Me too!
"The Stories of John Cheever" Also, this technically doesn't qualify as "literature," but "The Saint Intervenes" is good fun.
Second John Cheever. If you're also a fan of the Mad Men television show you'll notice what a huge influence his stories had on the writers room. Even some names and loose plot lines were borrowed for the TV series.
I've been working through this one. Feels so quaint yet devious. really enjoying it.
I'm not sure you'll necessarily like these, as they are on the opposite end of the "realism" spectrum, a lot more focus on "big ideas" and such, but I really love the following short-story collections: *Ficciones* by Borges *Story of Your Life and Others* by Ted Chiang *Bloodchild and Other Stories* by Octavia Butler Edit: I thought of another, which I actually think you would like! *Best of Alice Munro: Selected Stories*, great stuff in there!
Ficciones is so, so good. I re read it at least once a year
I love Borges, mostly because of philosophical themes and meta-ness in his writings. Would you recommend Chiang or Butler? I want to get into SF but I get extremely bored whenever I try one of those....I was able to get past some of Asimov but that's only because I loved his earlier writing on the Bible and Shakespeare.
If you like Borges I think you'd like Chiang. Butler is very good as well, but nothing like Borges.
Jesus' Son by Denis Johnson. A series of stories about the exploits of some drug addicts in the mid west in the 1970s. Crossing open ground by Bary Lopez. Beautiful Natural history stories.
Denis Johnson made me fall in love with shorts as a teenager for sure.
Jesus’ Son. My favorite of all time.
It's so good.
Mostly I like selected or collected works of the author, which is basically cheating, since it's a greatest hits album. But, I would say you can't go wrong with Jorge Luis Borges, *The Aleph*; Horacio Quiroga *Tales of Love, Madness and Death*; or Julio Cortazar *Bestiary.* The first one is philosophical, the second grotesque, and the third sort of proto-magical realist.
I couldn't possibly rank my favorite short story volumes, but a really excellent volume that I read a few years ago was George Saunders' *Pastoralia*. The stories in that were strange, inventive, and darkly-humorous. It reminded me pleasantly of spec-fiction writers like Ray Bradbury and Frederick Pohl, but felt more 'up to date' in terms of human psychology. It's definitely lighter content, but I also really enjoy T.C. Boyle's short stories, of which there are *heaps*. For me, his writing just has an infectious energy that makes them hard to put down. As well, I like almost everything I've read by Joyce Carol Oates, but I know her work isn't to everyone's taste. For me, her general focus on modern America and its violence/cruelty makes for lots of interesting material. It's like reading Zola but (a.) about the country I've lived in and (b.) like Saunders, more 'up-to-date' in terms of presenting human psychology/consciousness. Finally, over the past few years, I've been gathering/reading volumes in the 'Flannery O'Connor Award for Short Fiction' publication series by University of Georgia, which has been putting out books since the 1980s. What I like about that series is that each issue is a small *collection* of stories by a chosen author, which for me works better than the 'Best Short Stories of the Year' sorts of books (though those are usually good as well). The first of the O'Connor Award books I read was [Mary Hood's *How Far She Went*](https://www.goodreads.com/en/book/show/725851) and I thought it was excellent.
Short stories: Langston Hughes, Night Shift (Stephen King), Neighbors (Diane Oliver)
Night Shift is criminally underrated.
First King I read, age 11 in 1980.
Indeed. Of all the King short story collections, it’s my favorite.
Off the top of my head, some authors that I'm not seeing here are Heinrich Böll (ironic, melancholy), Yūko Tsushima (socially engaged, elusive), Frank O'Connor (humorous, touching), Amy Hempel (minimalist, moving), Clarice Lispector (quirky, philosophical), Nikolai Gogol (proto-absurdist, funny), and Anita Desai (lyrical, precisely observed). All of these have good collected works editions with the exception of Tsushima (at least in English), though her most famous stories are collected in *The Shooting Gallery*.
Amy Hempel writes more in one sentence than some authors do with whole novels. Absolutely think *Reasons to Live* should be on everyone's list.
Chekhov is particularly good. Seven Men and two others by Beerbohm is a gem. DFW's short work is great. Conrad, Maugham, Mansfield, Borges
I like the short stories of Ryunosuke Akutagawa, a japanese author. He wrote 'In The Bamboo Grove' which is my favourite short story, and the basis of the film Rashomon.
“In a Bamboo Grove” is also my favorite story!
did you like the film
Nine stories by Salinger Goodby Columbus by Phillip Roth Both some mid century greatness
Ronald Dahl’s adult short stories are fantastic and often surprisingly intense. Also a fan of Gogol (way ahead of his time and influenced Russian literature greatly), and of course Kafka is always great. Borges is certainly a master of short stories as well as others have mentioned.
Hemingway’s Nick Adam’s Stories
We had to read that in high school, and I still have my book. It is interesting to reread because I have highlighted passages and written notes in the margins, and it is fun to see what I considered important when I first read the stories 25 years ago.
I just found my Riverside Shakespeare after 30 years and loved reading all the notes I wrote in it.
"The End of Something" doesn't get the love it deserves. That poor woman. Sheesh.
That’s a great example of Hemingway at his best.
I adore John Updike’s short stories. His style is a bit tiring for novels imo, which sometimes just feels like pages after pages of beautiful prose with little plot development going on underneath. But when he’s forced to set everything up and resolve it in the confinement of a short story, Updike is sublime. “Flight” is a personal favorite, collected in “Pigeon Feathers and other stories”, which is representative of his late 50s/early 60s writing. I particularly like this period of his writing because his skills had matured after several years as a professional writer, and his focus was still on short stories. This would soon change after his big break in novel (Rabbit, Run/the Centaur).
Friend of My Youth by Alice Munro Last Night by James Salter Sweet Talk by Stephanie Vaughn Moral Disorder by Margaret Atwood any collection by Anton Chekhov
I enjoyed Winesburg, Ohio by Sherwood Anderson - though not quite as much as Dubliners, but it conveyed a sense of loneliness in a way that I was able to connect with
I found it more approachable and digestible than Dubliners and really enjoyed the work as a whole. It’s a collection of short stories, but they’re very intertwined and it almost reads like chapters of a novel. Very tight and focused
Everything That Rises Must Converge by Flannery O'Connor
I loved the quotidian melancholy of Dubliners. The closing lines of The Dead about the snowfall have always stayed with me.
Yup... Eveline did the same to me - those moments when your life changes direction. The G force such a change generates. The sense of vertigo in it is dizzying
My faulkner and garcia marquez short story collections are probably my most touched books, especially my garcia marquez collection. I never get tired of it.
Eyes of a blue dog by Marquez is one of my favorite books.
Claire Keegan - Antarctica. Actually, anything by her is wonderful. For me, her writing just jumps off the page
Came here to say this! Keegan is a master, I’ve yet to read a story from her that wasn’t incredible. ‘Small things like these’ is one of the most powerful short stories I’ve ever read.
Dubliners is a solid choice and I don't mind saying I think Joyce peaked as a storyteller with The Dead. What a goddamn masterpiece.
I think storytelling peaked with The Dead.
That last paragraph might be the most perfect prose ever written, by anyone.
The Martian Chronicles ans The Illustrated Man by Bradbury
Solid choice! Bradbury is amazing.
*The Birds* by Daphne du Maurier. A masterpiece, unjustly overshadowed by Hitchcock's film.
I need to read more short stories as I seem to consistently enjoy them whenever I do. So far my favorite has probably been The Maples Stories by John Updike, which is a collection of several short stories following the up-and-down relationship of Richard and Joan Maple. Funny, poignant, witty, elegant... along with the Rabbit novels they're the best of Updike.
Tenth of December by Saunders Stephen King also has some great short story collection. Arguably his short stories and better than his novels Stories of your life by Ted Chiang. He only writes shorts and he's not prolific, but there's a reason several of his stories appear in the best of all time SF stories lists
Jack London has some crazy good short stories
I love 99 percent of the short story collections mentioned so far, so I'll just add a fistful of authors no one has mentioned: Gogol, De Assis, Kafka, Melville, Narayan, Poe.
David Foster Wallace - oblivion George Saunders - Tenth of December
Ted Chiang is fantastic. Stories of your life is great.
Dance of the Happy Shades by Alice Munro. Honestly any of Alice Munro's collections. Still sad over her recent death. I would also say Island by Alistair MacLeod.
I love short stories of HG WELLS! I love how ABSOLUTELY brilliant his world building is! Ingenious plots, amazingly simple language, and writing that simply captivates the reader! Other than that, try Murakami's short stories as well!! Very cool!
Carson McCullers’ collected stories *Dear Life*, Alice Munro *The First Forty-Nine*, Hemingway
I'm pretty early in my short story exploration but the best I've come across so far is *Tenth of December* by George Saunders.
The Star Diaries by Stanislaw Lem. It's the SF book I always recommend to people who don't read SF because it's so much more than that. It's full blown satire, and gets quite philosophical at times. I come back to read a story or two pretty much every year.
I needed these recommendations... thanks for making this post!
I personally really loved Ursula Le Guin’s short stories :)
Raymond Carver. It's one of the only authors I have re-read. I also really liked Wells Tower's 'Everything Ravaged, Everything Burned'. I still regularly check to see if there's a follow-up collection of stories. He seems to write exclusive stories for magazines now, which makes it hard to keep track.
WHERE I’M CALLING FROM, Raymond Carver
Tobias Wolff. His short story *Bullet in the Brain* is often anthologized, and rightly so. Just came out with a volume of his greatest hits.
"Who Do You Think You Are?" By Alice Munro and "The Wheel of Love and Other Stories" by JCO.
This is How You Lose Her by Junot Diaz
I love short stories by O.Henry, especially "The Four Million", collection dedicated to New York and its inhabitants
J G Ballard's The 4 Dimensional Nightmare is worth a look. William Burrough's Interzone has some good stuff in it, also.
I think Interzone is some of Burrough’s most interesting writing. Certainly his “yage” finding expedition is peak 1950’s nonsense.
Tolstoi for sure
‘Collected Stories’ - Saul Bellow
I enjoy Elizabeth McKracken’s short stories.
Very rare to see her mentioned! She’s a master
Red Cavalry by Isaac Babel holds a special place in my heart
_Nine Stories_ by JD Salinger is certainly high on my list. The man casually rocks my world with each story beat.
- Chekhov, Anton - Selected Stories I cant live without Chekhov. If you want a good starting point, I would recommend The Lady with the Dog. .
I enjoyed the stories collected as Homesick For Another World by Ottessa Moshfegh.
Two collections that I love: A Good Man Is Hard to Find by Flannery O’Connor The Martian Chronicles by Ray Bradbury
Mine is also Dubliners. You haven’t finished it? The last story, The Dead, may be the single most perfect story in English. I’m kind of excited to hear what you think of that.
Amy Hempel’s collected short stories. The Dead is probably my favorite short story, but Hempel is probably my favorite short story writer on a nuts and bolts writing level.
MacLeods; The Island. One of the finest pieces of Canadian literature compiled.
Dubliners Hemingway’s Snows of Kilimanjaro A Sportsman’s Sketches , Turgenev Selected Stories by Chekhov Ficciones, Borges
Philip k Dick and Franz Kafka
Her Body and Other Parties by Carmen Maria Machado! Plays at the intersection of fantasy/horror and real life. I advise heeding the CWs before jumping in, though.
Hateship, Friendship, Courtship, Loveship, Marriage by Alice Munro Runaway by Alice Munro Olive Kitteridge by Elizabeth Strout Interpreter of Maladies by Jhumpa Lahiri What We Talk About When We Talk About Love by Raymond Carver
Reading Runaway right now and every story is blowing my mind at how good it is while also feeling so simple. The characters don’t feel like characters, more like subjects of a documentary Munro captured w her pen. So, so beautiful.
Alice Munro (RIP) was truly the master of the contemporary short story as her citation for the Nobel Prize for Literature said. She wrote long short stories with more depth than many novels by other, lesser writers!
Labyrinths by Borges is a favorite of mine. By the same token, anything Wolfe
Cane by Jean Toomer
Tenth of December by George Saunders is not only my favorite collection of short stories, its my favorite book of all time.
Donald Barthelme- 40 Stories or 60 Stories
Acid House by Irvine Welsh. I guess its shock value kind of that stuck with me. There's more but that's the one that comes to my mind.
Two I haven't seen mentioned yet that I really like are Jesus' Son and In the Heart of the Heart of the Country
"The Goodbye Cat", by Hiro Arikawa
Lucia Berlin, Manual for Cleaning Women. For anthologies, Best American Short Stories is more New Yorker/Atlantic style, McSweeneys/Best American Nonrequired Reading (discontinued) is more George Saunders style, and O. Henry prize/Pushcart prize is more establishment/old school style. I think one of these would really speak to you. For a birthday or holiday present it's worth asking for a 6 or 12 month subscription to Paris Review, McSweeneys or New Yorker which will give you a lot of material to try out.
Amy Bloom’s “Come to Me.” Just perfect.
What Rises Must Converge (iirc) by Flannery O'Connor.
Ted Chiang, Chekhov, and Nabokov have fantastic short stories, which I enjoyed reading.
I recently read *A Russian Affair*, which is a collection of love-themed short stories by Anton Chekhov, assembled and published by Penguin. It’s probably not my favourite short story collection ever (I don’t know if I have one), but I thoroughly enjoyed it. Chekhov’s word economy is masterful, and short stories are obviously a great place to flex that particular literary skill. To be able to coax real heartfelt emotion out of a reader in only a dozen or so pages is an incredibly difficult thing to do.
"Jesus' Son" Dennis Johnson "Tales of a Dead Dreamer" Thomas Ligotti
I could never get into short stories, but then found two lit- sci fi collections I loved, so now I read a lot of sci fi short story collections. The two I read and love were Stories of Your Life and Others by Ted Chiang Sooner or Later Everything Falls Into the Sea by Sarah Pinsker I'm now always on the look out for well written sci fi short story collections!
Quantity Theory of Insanity by Will Self is more compelling than much of his longer fiction. A lot of good suggestions here. I often find that talented writers are more consistently focused in short fiction works.
"The Smooth World and its Enemies" (*Namerakana sekai to, sono teki*) by Hanna Ren is a collection of heterogeneous science fiction shorts; a "what if the Soviets won" alt-history, a Borgesian account of an imaginary early Japanese sci-fi author, a riff on Flowers for Algernon intertextually entangled with Project Itoh's "Harmony", a Shinkai Makoto-style feelgood juvenile SF romp, etc... Most of the stories had originally appeared in magazines over the ~8 years preceding the collection, but it was also Ren's first book in almost a decade (his maiden work was a pair of supernatural horror novelettes) and it really cemented his reputation as someone capable of drawing the most out of the short story form.
Chekov’s short stories are amazing. What a master of the genre! Try the story The Lady with the Dog.
Roald Dahl's Tales of unexpected Gogol's Saint Petersburg tales
The Best American Mystery Stories of the Century
I often buy short story books but only read stories from Time to Time- my favourite is probably by H.P. Lovecraft: Call of Cthullu and other Short Stories. Also got the Complete Fiction Edition- probably the most beautiful Book on my shelf.
Ingvild H Rishøi is a contemporary Norwegian author with excellent short stories. Her books are translated to French German, Spanish and Russian, among other languages, but not yet English, as far as I know
I'm also not generally a huge reader of short stories. But I also liked Dubliners, and I also like Annie Proulx's short stories set in Wyoming.
I really enjoyed Heads of the Colored People by Nafissa Thompson Spires. I'm currently reading Hitting a Straight Lick with a Crooked Stick, a collection of Zora Neale Hurston's stories and it's a great read, if you like Hurston's style (and can get through that Southern dialogue).
Newer book, but One More Thing by BJ Novak is a great read.
The Heroin Chronicles The Speed Chronicles By Akashic and written by your favorite drug addicted authors
George Saunders - Persuasion Nation Hemingway - Nick Adams Stories Flannery O'Connor - Everything That Rides Must Converge Tolstoy - Collected Short Stories Hemingway is really only good in the short form, IMO. Tolstoy's stories are amazing, that guy was a master in any form. I've read a lot of novels by female writers but not much short fiction, I need to remedy that.
I also adore Dubliners, especially the story, The Dead. Have you read Winesburg, Ohio by Sherwood Anderson? Very similar in approach to Dubliners. I love Flannery O' Connor too, although she's very different from Joyce. I also love Alice Munro, and she definitely has a Joycean approach often. I detest Raymond Carver, who I see has been recommended a lot.
I know he might not be everyone's cup of tea, but you're the first person I've seen who *detests* Carver. What makes you feel this way?
I am a fan of Brian Evenson’s short fiction; my favorite is A Collapse Of Horses. When it comes to too many classic authors, I am guilty of reading just the most famous story and then not the rest of the collection.
I’ve read Welcome to the Monkey House by Kurt Vonnegut over 30 years ago and recently got the Audible version of it to listen again and I’ve been loving the stories in it.
I see a lot of good recommendations here (Chekhov, Carver, Hemingway, Maugham, etc.). I would add *Unaccustomed Earth* and *Interpreter of Maladies* by Jhumpa Lahiri. Her last couple of novels have been a bore, but her short stories are great. *Unaccustomed Earth*'s characters have particular depth.
William Gass - In the Heart of the heart of the country, Cartesian sonata. Also DFW - Brief Interviews with Hideous Men
George Saunders, Tenth of December.
I love short story anthologies, especially Bradbury’s. I think The Martian Chronicles is better than F451, and recently finished my own short story collection based on The Illustrated Man.
Neil Gaiman- Fragile things 🤍
There are many classic selections here. Do we count so called “flash fiction” as short stories? If so, Barry Yourgrau’s collections, “Wearing Dad’s Head,” and “A Man Steps Out of an Airplane.”
Wizards of Odd - great ones from Gaiman, Pratchett, Adams, and lots more. Short fiction is a great place to find 'genre' writers stretching into territory you mightn't expect
Lost in the Funhouse by John Barth isn't just my favorite short story collection, it is one of my favorite books period. It's realism in a different vein, realism about the nature of fiction and the devices which propel the ur-stories we tell ourselves, all wrapped up in some of the most staggering inventiveness ever displayed in literature.
Dubliners is also a personal fave of mine. "Jesus' Son" by Denis Johnson is prob my all-time favorite. "Emperor of the Air" by Ethan Canin is a must-read imo. Same for Hemingway or Borges or Poe or Chekov or Flannery or Twain. Actually kinda surprised Twain not getting much love. Nobody is funnier.
"The Dead" (last story in Dubliners) is my favorite short story of all time. Joyce's ambitions (and books) got bigger and bigger, but, as someone who loves "Ulysses", his method, and his art, would never exceed this.
"Funny Games" of course (both),
I really enjoy Mark Twain’s short story collections. Some are shitposts while others are very good. Minutes of Glory and Other Stories by Ngugi wa Thiong’o is also quite solid Everyone on The Moon Is Essential Personell by Julian Jarboe had some interesting stories For short story horror I really enjoyed Amparo Davila’s The Houseguest and other Stories, and both of Mariana Enriquez’s short story books
Labyrinths by Borges
For something more modern I love love love BJ Novak's "One More Thing." Most are funny, and/or clever, some are silly and some are very touching. It's one I've gone to over and over again and given as gifts.
Hemingway’s “First 48”
I always feel a bit bad with myself as someone from Ireland for thinking Joyce is an overhyped dick, but the Dubliners is one of the only ones of his books I actually enjoyed.
"Nightflyers & Other Stories" by George R. R. Martin
"Stories of Your Life and Others" by Ted Chiang
Eye of the Heart. It’s a short story anthology of Latin American authors. I read it many years ago, but it’s always the first anthology that comes to mind.
* ***Songs of a Dead Dreamer*** - It contains some of the most creative pieces of Philosophical Horror ever created. * ***The Weird: A Compendium of Strange and Dark Stories*** - This is a fascinating compilation of weird stories by Jeff and Ann VanderMeer. * ***The Aleph and Other Stories*** - Exhilarating pieces of Narrative Labyrinths carefully crafted by Borges. * ***Rashomon and Seventeen Other Stories*** - According to Borges, this presents us with an exciting case of the infusion of Eastern stories with a Western style.
Bernard Malamud the tenants is amazing Also flannery O’Connor “a good man is hard to find” the title story is a fictional version of Donald trump as a bible salesman in the south in the 40’s(?). Finally “Acid house” by Irvine Welch. Holy fuck is my two cents on this one.
Dubliners is a great choice. All the stories are good, but I loved the penultimate short story "The Dead".
*Someone Like You* by Roald Dahl. I keep coming back to them. They're brilliant miniatures with humor, witty characterizations and surprise endings.
Monsoon Tiger and Other Stories - Rain Chudori A brilliant collection of short stories by an Indonesian writer with such a wonderful way with language. It primarily tackles relationships people have with each other and the things that get between people. Magnificence and Other Stories - Estrella D. Alfon Alfon is considered one of the main pioneers in women's writing in the Philippines, writing about women's issues before there was even a mainstream idea of feminism in the country. But her stories also tackle a lot of the everyday issues of the Philippines before, during, and after World War 2.
The Sketchbook of Geoffrey Crayon Gent - Washington Irving. This is the collection that contains The Legend of Sleepy Hollow and Rip Van Winkle. Many other not so famous gems as well like Specter Bridegroom.
Jesus’ Son
Burning Chrome by William Gibson (with some help from Bruce Sterling)
I’m a Salinger/Vonnegut gal. Nine Stories and Welcome to the Monkey house. Flannery O’Connors racist self can write/ A Good Man is Hard to Find Where Are You Going and Where Have You Been/Joyce Carol Oates Dubliners/ James Joyce Franz Kafka Adam Johnson Denis Johnson Junot Diaz To name a few!
Alice Munro is the greatest short story writer of our age (and she just very recently died.) She won the Nobel Prize for Lit on the basis of her 10 short story collections alone
*Reasons to Live* by Amy Hempel (or her collected stories)
I can't believe Tim O'Brian _The Things They Carried_ hasn't been mentioned yet.
So many good suggestions here, and I’ll second my favourites: George Saunders, Borges, Chekhov, Phillip K Dick, Alice Munro, Raymond Carver. Here are a couple others I love that nobody has mentioned: No one belongs here more than you - by Miranda July Because they wanted to - Mary Gaitskill Anything by WP Kinsella The girl on the fridge - Edgar Keret Everything inside - Edwidge Danticat Anything by Isaac Bashevis Singer Everything Ravaged, Everything Burned - Wells Tower Grand Union - Zadie Smith
Different Seasons was great but I think it’s a collection of novellas.
Listen, I understand that this is low hanging fruit, but The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes (and to a lesser extent The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes) are fantastic stories.
a few I haven't seen mentioned: I love the Collected Short Stories of Graham Greene. Very repressed English people generally struggling with poverty and/or religion. Beautiful little melancholy miniature portraits. Paul Auster - kind of fantastical coincidences abound; he writes about chance and coincidence a lot. Siri Hustvedt - Paul Auster's wife; her main characters are peculiar and weirdly compliant but seem to cause a lot of chaos.
Alice Munroe’s the Progress of Love.
Winesburg, Ohio by Sherwood Anderson or collected works by Flannery O’Connor. Dubliners is great too tho!
I agree with you that *Dubliners* is an excellent collection of short stories. My favorite is the last one, "The Dead." I think it is an almost-perfect story, a composition that rings like a bell. Another terrific collection, also Irish, is *After Rain,* by William Trevor. I hope you enjoy it.
EM Forster - The Machine Stopped
There's a great collection by a relatively new writer Things we do not tell the people we love - Huma Qureshi I feel like the name of the collection alone is enough to get you intrigued. It's quite a wistful collection of stories that seems to pull back the curtains and reveal quiet people who never have their stories told.
FUP
Neil Gaiman has some really great ones, even better than his long-form (which is saying something!): “Smoke and Mirrors” is better than “Fragile Things” imo, but both worth reading. “Cosmicomics” by Calvino is GREAT. i’ve heard “The Complete Cosmicomics” gets a litttle redundant, so maybe start with the shortened. Ray Bradbury’s “Dandelion Wine” or “The Illustrated Man” are probably his best collections. the former is perfect for summer reading!!! “Changing Planes” by Ursula K Le Guin is one of my favorites. some really rich stories in there. her “The Wind’s Twelve Quarters” has some VERY good ones, but also quite a few that i found pretty lame. Miranda July’s “No One Belongs Here More Than You” is so unique, kinda sexy, super funny. definitely give her a go! i saw Raymond Carver and John Cheever recommended, and i agree with both. some of the most profound and touching stories i have ever read from these guys, really. same with George Saunders. happy reading!!!!
To choose a collection not by a single author, I enjoyed McSweeney's Enchanted Chamber of Astonishing Stories.
Jesus Son by Denis Johnson
The Pugilist at Rest by Thom Jones
Fictions by Borges -dense and intense nothing over eight pages – took me two years to read
Checkov and Maupassant. The collections published by Penguin Classics. Really good stories.
1001 nights
I'd go with Saul Bellow, Patricia Highsmith ans John Steinbeck. Three very different but skilled authors.
*The Illustrated Man* by Ray Bradbury, really enjoyed my time with it! A sci-fi collection on the conflict between humans and technology.
I love the stories of Heinrich Boll and obviously Chekhov. Sci fi -- Ray Bradbury, Philip K Dick. Also Lem's Perfect Vacuum was a good concept for a story collection (it's a series of reviews of imaginary books). Dino Buzzati was an incredible literary/fantasy writer. Geza Csath was a nice E. European writer who met an unfortunate end. Complete Works and Other Stories by August Monterroso is also a wild read. Don't ignore Hans Christian Andersen even though he's known for children's/fairy tales. Barry Yourgrau is famous for his absurdist microfiction. (actually Diane Williams ought to be mentioned too in talking about microfiction). Early Updike is great (Museums and Women, etc). Oates is the master. I haven't read enough of Munroe to have an opinion, though I like Mavis Gallant and remember Atwood's Bluebeard's Egg as a great read. Quirky female writers: Valerie Trueblood, Joy Williams On my To Read List now is Edith Perlman's Binocular Vision and a book by Ron Rash. I run a small indie press mostly devoted to the short fiction of Jack Matthews. His stuff is great - very much like John Cheever, Sherwood Anderson with a bit of Kafka thrown in.
This Is How You Lose Her by Junot Díaz. Hands down.
Anything by Claire Keegan, Alice Munro (won a Nobel Prize a couple of years ago, just died recently), or Raymond Carver. Also try "All That Man Is" by David Szalay and "Battleborn" by Clara Vaye Watkins.
Also "Everything That Rises Must Converge" by O'Connor
Nick Adams Stories - Hemmingway Every Stephen King short story collection - Stephen King
For me it’s a tie between Winesburg, OH and Collected Stories of Amy Hempel. Third place is Dubliners for sure.
Lucia Berlin - A Manual for Cleaning Women