Popular North American Short Story Books
Find short story books written by authors from North America for the next part of the Read Around The World Challenge. (76)
21.
El Llano in Flames by Juan Rulfo EN
Country: North America / 
Mexico
Mexico
Description:
For a writer so reserved in what he saw into print, Juan Rulfo has had a disproportional influence on writers of literature, in Spanish and beyond, on a par with Jorge Luis Borges and Gabriel García Márquez. His single story collection, El Llano in flames, provides a pithy and moving expression of life in central and western Mexico in the decades following the Revolution. These stories have the quality of an oral testimony to harsh years and are delivered in a spare and exquisite voice. This new translation by Stephen Beechinor marks the first time this masterpiece of Latin American literature... continue
22.
Filthy Animals by Brandon Taylor EN
Country: North America / 
United States of America
United States of America
Description:
INSTANT NATIONAL BESTSELLER WINNER OF THE STORY PRIZE SHORTLISTED FOR THE DYLAN THOMAS PRIZE NAMED A BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR BY USA TODAY, NPR, VULTURE, MARIE CLAIRE, THE TIMES OF LONDON, GOOD HOUSEKEEPING, AND PUBLISHERS WEEKLY A group portrait of young adults enmeshed in desire and violence, a hotly charged, deeply satisfying new work of fiction from the author of Booker Prize finalist Real Life In the series of linked stories at the heart of Filthy Animals, set among young creatives in the American Midwest, a young man treads delicate emotional waters as he navigates a series of sexually frau... continue
23.
Country: North America / United States of America
United States of America
Description:
In Ancient Greece, a skilled marble sculptor has been blessed by a goddess who has given his masterpiece - the most beautiful woman the town has ever seen - the gift of life. Now his wife, he expects Galatea to please him, to be obedience and humility personified. But she has desires of her own, and yearns for independence
24.
Good Bones and Simple Murders by Margaret Atwood EN
Country: North America / 
Canada
Canada
Description:
A collection of short works includes parables, monologues, prose poems, condensed science fiction, and reconfigured fairy tales
25.
If I Had the Wings : Short Stories by Helen Klonaris EN
Country: North America / 
Bahamas
Bahamas
Description:
Growing up gay is fraught with constraints and even danger in the small Greek-Bahamian community that feels its traditional culture and religious pieties are under threat. The main characters in Helen Klonaris's poetic, inventive and sometimes transgressive collection of short stories confront this reality as part of their lives. Klonaris focuses closely on family relationships, in particular on the difficult and sometimes abusive connections between fathers and daughters. Sharply realised as individuals, her characters are also very much part of the wider changes in Bahamian society, and show... continue
26.
In a Free State by Vidiadhar Surajprasad Naipaul EN
Country: North America / 
Trinidad and Tobago
Trinidad and Tobago
Description:
No writer has rendered our boundariless, post-colonial world more acutely or prophetically than V. S. Naipaul, or given its upheavals such a hauntingly human face. A perfect case in point is this riveting novel, a masterful and stylishly rendered narrative of emigration, dislocation, and dread, accompanied by four supporting narratives. In the beginning it is just a car trip through Africa. Two English people—Bobby, a civil servant with a guilty appetite for African boys, and Linda, a supercilious “compound wife”—are driving back to their enclave after a stay in the capital. But in between lie... continue
27.
In Other Rooms, Other Wonders by Daniyal Mueenuddin EN
Country: North America / United States of America
United States of America
Description:
A volume of linked stories describes the intertwined lives of landowners and their retainers on the Gurmani family farm in Pakistan, in a collection that explores such themes as culture, class power, and desire.
28.
Islands of Decolonial Love: Stories and Songs by Leanne Betasamosake Simpson EN
Country: North America / Canada
Canada
Description:
In her debut collection of short stories, Islands of Decolonial Love, renowned writer and activist Leanne Simpson vividly explores the lives of contemporary Indigenous Peoples and communities, especially those of her own Nishnaabeg nation. Found on reserves, in cities and small towns, in bars and curling rinks, canoes and community centres, doctors offices and pickup trucks, Simpson's characters confront the often heartbreaking challenge of pairing the desire to live loving and observant lives with a constant struggle to simply survive the historical and ongoing injustices of racism and coloni... continue
30.
Krik? Krak! by Edwidge Danticat EN
Country: North America / 
Haiti
Haiti
Description:
When Haitians tell a story, they say "Krik?" and the eager listeners answer "Krak!" In Krik? Krak! In her second novel, Edwidge Danticat establishes herself as the latest heir to that narrative tradition with nine stories that encompass both the cruelties and the high ideals of Haitian life. They tell of women who continue loving behind prison walls and in the face of unfathomable loss; of a people who resist the brutality of their rulers through the powers of imagination. The result is a collection that outrages, saddens, and transports the reader with its sheer beauty.