Short Stories for Long Summer Days

Location: Gohstand Reading Room; PS3607.R6344 B73 2026

Summary: "Read alone, each story in Lauren Groff's electric collection is an individual triumph - bold, agile, and packed with power. Read together, they hum in exhilarating resonance. Ranging from the 1950s to the present day and moving across age, class, and region - from New England to Florida to California - these nine stories reflect and expand upon a shared theme: the ceaseless battle between humans' dark and light angels. 'In every human there is both an animal and a god wrestling unto death,' one character tells us. Among those we see caught in this match are a young woman suddenly responsible for her disabled sibling, a hot-tempered high school swimmer in need of an adult, a mother blinded by the loss of her family, and a banking scion endowed with a different kind of inheritance. Motivated by love, impeded by the double edges of other people's good intentions, they try to do the right thing for as long as they can. Anchored by profound insight into human nature, Brawler reveals the repeated turning points between love and fear, compassion and violence, reason and instinct, altruism and what it takes to survive"--Front jacket flap.

Location: Gohstand Reading Room; PS3565.A8 S68 2010

Summary: “Oates is a master of the dark tale—stories of the hunted and the hunter, of violence, trauma, and deep psychic wounds.”
—Booklist (starred review)

Sourland is a gripping, haunting, and intensely moving collection of short stories by Joyce Carol Oates, one of America’s preeminent authors. Unforgettable tales that re-imagine the meaning of loss—often through violent means—Sourland is yet another extraordinary read from the literary icon who has previously brought us The Gravedigger’s Daughter, Blonde, We Were the Mulvaneys, and numerous other classic works of contemporary fiction. A gripping and moving new collection of stories that reimagines the meaning of loss-- through often unexpected and violent means.
 

Location: Gohstand Reading Room; PS648.H6 O98 2023

Awards: Winner of the Bram Stoker Award and the British Fantasy Award

Summary: A cop begins seeing huge, blinking eyes where the headlights of cars should be that tell him who to pull over. Two freedom riders take a bus ride that leaves them stranded on a lonely road in Alabama where several unsettling somethings await them. A young girl dives into the depths of the Earth in search of the demon that killed her parents. These are just a few of the worlds of Out There Screaming, Jordan Peele’s anthology of all-new horror stories by Black writers. Featuring an introduction by Peele and an all-star roster of beloved writers and new voices, Out There Screaming is a master class in horror, and—like his spine-chilling films—its stories prey on everything we think we know about our world . . . and redefine what it means to be afraid. -- Provided by publisher.

Location: Gohstand Reading Room ; PS3569.A7897 T46 2013

Summary: A collection of stories which includes "Home," a wryly whimsical account of a soldier's return from war; "Victory lap," a tale about an inventive abduction attempt; and the title story, in which a suicidal cancer patient saves the life of a young misfit.
"In the taut opener, "Victory Lap," a boy witnesses the attempted abduction of the girl next door and is faced with a harrowing choice: Does he ignore what he sees, or override years of smothering advice from his parents and act? In "Home," a combat-damaged soldier moves back in with his mother and struggles to reconcile the world he left with the one to which he has returned. And in the title story, a stunning meditation on imagination, memory, and loss, a middle-aged cancer patient walks into the woods to commit suicide, only to encounter a troubled young boy who, over the course of a fateful morning, gives the dying man a final chance to recall who he really is. A hapless, deluded owner of an antiques store; two mothers struggling to do the right thing; a teenage girl whose idealism is challenged by a brutal brush with reality; a man tormented by a series of pharmaceutical experiments that force him to lust, to love, to kill--the unforgettable characters that populate the pages of Tenth of December are vividly and lovingly infused with Saunders's signature blend of exuberant prose, deep humanity, and stylistic innovation."--Publisher's description
 

Location: Gohstand Reading Room ; PS3569.A7897 T46 2013

Summary: Longlisted for the 2022 National Book Award for Fiction

"For fans of Kali Fajardo-Anstine and Lesley Nneka Arimah, a darkly funny and imaginative debut conjuring tales of Mexican American mystics and misfits. "The first witch of the waters was born in Destruction. The moon named her Maria." From former PEN America Emerging Voices Fellow Marytza K. Rubio comes Maria, Maria, an inimitable collection set across the tropics and megacities of the Americas. Readers will be enticed and infuriated as characters negotiate with nature to cast their desired ends-such as the enigmatic community college professor in "Brujeria for Beginners'; the disturbingly faithful widow in "Tijuca"; and the lonely little girl in "Burial," who awakens a sabretooth tiger. Brimming with sharp wit and ferocious female intuition, the book bubbles over into a novella of fantastical proportions-a "tropigoth" family drama set in a reimagined California micro-rainforest about the legacies of three Marias, possibly all Marias. Writing in prose so lush it threatens to creep off the page, Rubio emerges as a bold voice new voice in contemporary short fiction"-- Provided by publisher.
 

Location: Gohstand Reading Room; PT8951.24.E83 S5313 2021

Summary: A dark, thrilling short-story collection about twisted minds and vengeful hearts, from a true master of suspense. A detective with a nose for jealousy is on the trail of a man suspected of murdering his twin; a bereaved father must decide whether vengeance has a place in the new world order after a pandemic brings about the collapse of society; a woman finally overcomes her intimacy issues through a dark encounter with her Peeping Tom neighbor; a hired assassin pits his wits against his greatest adversary, another assassin, in a dangerous game for survival; and an instantly electric connection between passengers on a flight to London may spell romance, or may spell something more sinister.

Location: Gohstand Reading Room ; PS3562.A316 U53 2008

Summary: A collection following up on the author’s Pulitzer Prize Winning short story collection, The Interpreter of Maladies, Unaccustomed Earth explores the secrets and complexities lying at the heart of family life and relationships, a collection of eight stories includes the title work, about a young mother in a new city whose father tends her garden while hiding a secret love affair.

Location: Gohstand Reading Room; PS2602 1981

Summary: One of the world's greatest and most influential masters of the short story, Edgar Allan Poe is often cited as a master of the short story. “Poe's singular ability to probe into the caverns of the psyche and reveal, through the medium of imaginative prose and poetry, that combination of fear, guilt and obsession common to mankind has insured his permanence among the great writers of the world” (Amazon).

Location: Gohstand Reading Room ; PS3553.A7894 W5 1991

Summary: “Among the masterpieces of American fiction." —The New York Times Book Review

The final story collection from “one of the great short story writers of our time” (The Philadelphia Inquirer) features classic stories from Cathedral, What We Talk About When We Talk About Love, and earlier volumes. By the time of his early death in 1988, Raymond Carver had established himself as one of the great practitioners of the American short story, a writer who had not only found his own voice but imprinted it in the imaginations of thousands of readers. Where I’m Calling From, his last collection, includes seven new works previously unpublished in book form. Together, these 37 stories give us a superb overview of Carver’s life work and show us why he was so widely imitated but never equaled. The stories in this collection are arranged, generally, in the order of their being written. A number of them were revised by the author for the Atlantic Monthly Press edition of 1988, and in a few cases the titles were changed. (Dust Jacket)

Location: Gohstand Reading Room ; PS648.S5 B4 1999

Summary: Selected by author John Updike from the 1915 through 1998 editions of The Best American Short Stories series, The Best American Short Stories of the Century brings together the best of the best - fifty-five extraordinary stories that represent a century's worth of unsurpassed accomplishments in this quintessentially American literary genre. Here are the stories that have endured the test of time: masterworks by such writers as Ernest Hemingway, William Faulkner, Willa Cather, F. Scott Fitzgerald, William Saroyan, Flannery O'Connor, John Cheever, Eudora Welty, Philip Roth, Joyce Carol Oates, Raymond Carver, Cynthia Ozick, and others. These are the writers who have shaped and defined the landscape of the American short story, who have unflinchingly explored all aspects of the human condition, and whose works will continue to speak to us as we enter the next century."--Jacket.