Short Fiction for Short Attention Spans
Discover the best short fiction books for short attention spans! Dive into quick, captivating reads perfect for busy lives. Find your next favorite story now.
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The Elephant Vanishes
by Haruki Murakami
In the tales that make up The Elephant Vanishes, the imaginative genius that has made Haruki Murakami an international superstar is on full display. In these stories, a man sees his favorite elephant vanish into thin air; a newlywed couple suffers attacks of hunger that drive them to hold up a McDonald’s in the middle of the night; and a young woman discovers that she has become irresistible to a little green monster who burrows up through her backyard. By turns haunting and hilarious, in The Elephant Vanishes Murakami crosses the border between separate realities—and comes back bearing remarkable treasures. Includes the story "Barn Burning," which is the basis for the major motion picture Burning.
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The Wall of the Sky, The Wall of the Eye
by Jonathan Lethem
Seven stories by the author of Gun, with Occasional music, Amnesia Moon, and the bestselling As She Climbed Across the Table. Genre-bending, acid, extravagant, funny, surreal, and above all brilliant, Johnathan Lethem is "the hottest young author in the science fiction field."(The Washington Post) Enter his world at your own risk...and prepare to be changed.
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Born Bad
by Andrew Vachss
From a writer whose novels have been acclaimed for their unflinching exploration of evil comes a brilliant collection of short stories—some never before published—that distill dread back down to its essence—and inject it straight into the reader's back brain. Andrew Vachss might have scissored his characters from today's headlines: a stalker prowling around an anonymous high-rise; a serial killer whose transgressions reflect a childhood of hideous abuse; an inner-city gunman who is willing to take out a blockful of victims in order to win a moment of acceptance. Tautly written and endowed with murderous ironic spin, Born Bad plunges us into the hell that lies just outside our bedroom windows.
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Apostrophes & Apocalypses
by John Barnes
Before novels like Mother of Storms, A Million Open Doors, Finity, and Earth Made of Glass, John Barnes was known for quirky, powerful short stories, many published by SF magazines in the late 1980s. Now the best of them are finally collected--along with several new stories that appear here for the first time ever. Also here are several examples of Barnes's trenchant writings on the art of SF, ranging from provocative polemics like "Deep in the Heart of Genre" and "That Style Thingie" to his classic "How to Build a Future," the definitive modern esay on the construction of science-fictional plausibility.
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Bible Stories for Adults
by James Morrow
The author of Only Begotten Daughter unabashedly delves into matters both sacred and secular in this collection of eleven short stories buoyed by his delicious irreverent wit. Humorous, cheerfully blasphemous, and ultimately poignant, these tales show Morrow at his divine best.
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Where I'm Calling From
by Raymond Carver
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. • “Among the masterpieces of American fiction." —The New York Times Book Review 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.