Aren't short stories wonderful? What are your favorites?

The Last Leaf, The Gift of the Magi - O Henry

The Necklace, La Maison Tellier, The Piece of String - de Maupassant

Dubliners by James Joyce (best collection by a single author)

Then, the Three Furies of the South: Katherine Anne Porter, Eudora Welty, and Flannery O'Connor

The mostest with great consistency of quality: Alice Munro

the monkey's paw by W. W. Jacobs

The Yellow Wallpaper by Charlotte Gilman Perkins

Bartelby The Scrivner by Melville

The Snows of Kilimanjaro by Hemingway

The Things They Carried by Tim O'Brien

I love the short story form and have a very large collection. The writing has to be so tight, and each word counts.

I love Eudora Welty's, "Why I Live at the P.O."

Anything by Alice Munro.

The only short stories I've read in the past decade have been from Nifty or GayAuthors. Do they count? ;)

I've never been a big fan of shorties but one that I really like is Brokeback Mountain by Annie Proulx. It's just gorgeous.

A Christmas Memory and the collections Music for Chameleons and Answered Prayers.

R8 a Christmas memory is my favourite too. Facts of life by Somerset Maugham is hilarious and the deluge in Nordeney by Karen Blixen is the epitom of paradox. Edgar Poe don't know which to choose. La premiere gorgée de bière by Delerm (the first swallow of beer - free translation), chroniques italiennes par Stendhal (Italian chronicles), Les diaboliques by Barbey d'Aurevilly.

Anything by Ambrose Bierce

The Lottery by Shirley Jackson could be the best short story ever written. A Good Man is Hard to Find by Flannery O'Connor is a close second Crazy Sunday by F. Scott Fitzgerald Everything That Rises Must Converge by Flannery O'Connor

The Lottery by Shirley Jackson could be the best short story ever written.

A Good Man is Hard to Find by Flannery O'Connor is a close second

Crazy Sunday by F. Scott Fitzgerald

Everything That Rises Must Converge by Flannery O'Connor

I'm presently reading a book of short stories, most 6 to 8 pages, and Agatha Christie's 'Miss Marple' figures in each one. They are a delight.

I agree with the up-threaders about "The Lottery." Suspenseful, well-written and once read, never forgotten.

Would Muriel Sparks' "Nasty Habits" qualify? What about the 'Rumple' stories?

Death and the Compass, The Library of Babel by Borges.

The short story for Rear Window is quite different from the film

For Esme - With Love and Squalor by JD Salinger

Another cheer for The Lottery!

"From the Diary of a New York Lady" by Dorothy Parker is the funniest short story I've ever read. Her stories are quite good overall, and seem to be underrated nowadays.

The collection [italic]World's End[/italic] by Paul Theroux is perhaps his best fiction writing.

I liked Anne Beatty's short stories back in the seventies.

The Toys of Peace -- Saki (HH Munro).

Oscar wrote some cool ones: The Selfish Giant

"Bliss" and "The Garden Party" by Katherine Mansfield

"Hateship Friendship Courtship Love" by Alice Munro

"The Trains" and "The Inner Room" by Robert Aickman

Raymond Carver 's collection of short stories from "What we talk about when we talk about love"

The Last Pennant Before Armageddon by W.P. Kinsella

And not quite usual fare when thinking short stories but much of The Illustrated Man by Ray Bradbury esp. The Veldt and the Long Rain

Somerset Maugham has a lot of good ones: Flotsam and Jetsam, The Letter, Rain, The Book Bag, The Verger, Mr. Know-All.....

"O Youth and Beauty" by John Cheever

Chekhov. All that I have read make my soul & spirit weep & and sing over the human condition.

Good thread OP - tnx

R2 -- Fionulla Flanagan's reading of "The Dead" is light years beyond amazing. I was almost hallucinating that the party was taking place in front of me.

Surprised no one has mentioned "Where are you going? Where have you been?" by Joyce Carol Oates. The audio of that one (part of the Selected Shorts series, as is The Dead) scared the hell outta me.

Dorothy Parker's "The Old Gentleman" is incredibly sad, reminding me a bit of Daisy and Hyacinth.

Faulkner's The Bear

Of course Chekov, Hemingway, and Carver. Flannyer O'Connor too. Multiple brilliant stories from each of them. But here's a shortlist of some unheralded or unheard of short story collections...

- Jesus' Son by Denis Johnson. - Steps by Kosinski. Deeply strange and creepy. - Oblivion by David Foster Wallace.

I'm unsure of DFW's reputation on this website, but his Oblivion spoke to me in ways I cannot explain. Good Old Neon in particular is probably the most tragic, haunting, yet uplifting and instructive piece of writing I laid my eyes upon.

Everyone who is a fan of fiction should read Good Old Neon.

"Silent Snow, Secret Snow" by Conrad Aiken

"The Working Party" by Elizabeth Bowen

"Babylon Revisited" by F. Scott Fitzgerald

"The Story of an Hour" by Kate Chopin

"Uncle Wiggly in Connecticut" by JD Salinger

"Everything that Rises Must Converge" by Flannery O'Connor

"Boule de suif" by Guy de Maupassant

"A Good Man is Hard to Find"

I love Damon Runyon. Also Saki "The Open Window".

The Yellow wallpaper is fantastic r4 and left me with such a creepy feeling.

Anyone who wants to read it can just google it. The whole thing is online.

A lot that have already been mentioned. Here are a few others:

"The Gospel of Mark" and "The Garden of the Forking Paths" by Borges "Rich" by Ellen Gilchrist "The Burning House" and "Dwarf House" by Ann Beattie "Goodbye, My Brother" by Cheever "The Sweatheart of the Song Tra Bong" by Tim O'Brien "Good Country People" by Flannery O'Conner "A Rose for Emily" by Faulkner "The Beauty Treatment" by Stacey Richter several stories by Charles Chestnut "A Woman on the Roof" by Doris Lessing "The Moment before the Gun Went Off" by Nadine Gordimer Chinua Achebe's stories in the collection "Girls at War" Ha Jin's stories in the collection "Under the Red Flag" "To Dadu, in Memoriam" by Paule Marshall "Sonny's Blues" by James Baldwin "Paul's Case" by Willa Cather "The Open Boat" by Stephen Crane "Roman Fever" by Edith Wharton "The Pupil" by Henry James I could go on but won't.

R35 here. Please forgive the lack of punctuation. I had posted that as a list, but it didn't come out that way.

Anything by Saki!

Nathan Englander's book of short stories, What We Talk about When We Talk about Anne Frank. Beautiful storytelling, beautiful sentences.

"A Hard Man Is Good to Find" by Buck Naked

Ethan Canin "The Palace Thief"

YES! "The Lottery" (Shirley Jackson); "Paul's Case" (Willa Cather); "Richard Cory" by (_____aaaaack; forget...); ANY number of short stories by John Cheever; agree with the poster upthread who mentioned "The Swimmer"; also, "The 5:48...(from________"????; again, can't remember); "For Esme with Love and Squalor", J.D. Salinger - LOVE the short story form.

And yet, few if any of these writers graduated from the Iowa Writers' Workshop, and none had PhDs in creative writing...

Big Blonde by Dorothy Parker - just knocks me out.

The Night the Bed Fell by James Thurber

Katherine Anne Porter--Noon Wine. J. D. Salinger--Raise High the Roof Beam, Carpenters All the Sakis and Runyons Ethan Mordden's story about the talking dog that was in The New Yorker. I forget the title. Also T. Coraghessan Boyle's New Yorker story about anti-abortion protesters. Another title I forget. John O'Hara's short stories are marvelous. He always leaves out the tiresome explanations of where it is, who they are, what they want, etc. You have to figure it out from what he tells you. There's a great one about two smart alecs having fun in a bar with an apparently slow-witted cowboy that ends in violence. Love that one.

I also love short short stories. Here's one of my favourites, by Langston Hughes

The Tell Tale Heart, Edgar Allan Poe

It's also wonderful to hear a talented performer read an excellent short story. For years I went to Symphony Space to hear the Selected Shorts readings, until Isaiah died -- I haven't had the heart to go back since.

My favorite reading, performed by Isaiah Sheffer himself, was "Part of the Story," a wonderful comic story by Stephen Dobyn. Unfortunately it's not available as a podcast but it's on a collection of readings called "Getting There From Here." I had read it and loved it but then hearing Isaiah read it brought it to a whole new level.

The Rocking Horse Winner, DH Lawrence.

I assigned Rocking Horse Winner to my students at Le Rosey. Fun!

Does Le Rosey have helicopter parents now, or are they still laissez faire?

It was 15 years ago. Bad pay, moved on. It was laissez faire!

Graham Greene wrote so many wonderful short stories. His short story collection "May We Borrow Your Husband? And Other Comedies of the Sexual Life" is my favorite. The plot of the title story revolves around a vicious gay male couple in the south of France in the 1950's and it's hilarious, mean, and a bit sad and world-weary.

Another favorite with a gay theme is "When I Was Thirteen" by Denton Welch. It perfectly captures the experience and longings of being gay and adolescent.

I wish I'd read The Necklace.

Some of these are novellas, but I included them as well. . .

Fitzgerald's "May Day"

Melville's "Benito Cereno" and "Bartleby, the Scrivener: A Story of Wall Street"

James' "Turn of the Screw" and "Beast in the Jungle"

Tolstoy's "The Death of Ivan Ilyich"

Poe's "The Tell-Tale Heart" & "The Black Cat"

Kafka's "A Country Doctor"

Oates' "Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?"

Mary Wilkins Freeman's "A Country Mouse" & "An Independent Thinker"

Hawthorne's "The Birth-mark"

O'Connor's "Good Country People" & "A Good Man Is Hard to Find"

And if I can mention something more lightweight, Stephen King's "Quitters, Inc."

If you're a fan of E.M. Forster, The Celestial Omnibus is an excellent collection of some of his short stories.

R41 Richard Cory is a poem not a short story. It's by Arlington Robinson.

I think The Lottery is #1 as well.

Also liked the Rocking-Horse winner, JD Salinger stories (in my JD Salinger phase, Ring Lardner stories are very good too, and HH Munro (please not Alice Munro), John Cheever Stories, Raymond Bradbury stories

I love great short fiction, Op. Every year since the '80's, in October, I have picked up my copy of Best American Short Stories. Too many wonderful stories to list. They're like old friends.

("Brokeback Mountain" and "In the Gloaming" were based on short stories, btw.)

I've collected many editions from previous decades too. BASS has been going since about 1919 or thereabouts.

John Updike was chosen to select the Best of the Century in 2000. A nice volume to have.

Hope you check out BASS. Ebay is a great resource for getting past edition on the cheap, some times in lots.

To expand on R44's recommendation, all of the pieces in James Thurber's " My Life and Hard Times".

I remember being introduced to some of the stories recommended here in my sophomore high school English class-"The Monkey's Paw". "The Rocking Horse Winner" and our overwhelming favorite "The Lottery". The class adopted the lottery for choosing the first person to present when we were doing oral book reports-black dot went first. That was one of the best classes ever, material, teacher and classmates.

I hope kids are still being introduced to these stories.

I have tucked away somewhere an anthology of short stories from the New Yorker that was published in 1939. Some very good ones in there. "The Fury", which follows the movements and thought of a pedophile as he seeks his prey around the city, is hard to imagine as having been published in the New Yorker in the 30s. I can't remember the author, alas, but the anthology shouldn't be hard to find.

"A Hard Man Is Good To Find"

Excellent thread. Echoing everyone upthread who said...

Anything by John Cheever

The Illustrated Man by Ray Bradbury

Bartelby The Scrivener by Herman Melville

The Nick Adams Stories by Ernest Hemingway

Big Blonde by Dorothy Parker

An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge by Ambrose Beirce:

As others have said, Saki (Ambrose Bierce) is simply, consistently, amazing. And J.D. Salinger's stories utterly charmed me in a way his Catcher in the Rye never did.

The Star, The Sentinal, and the Nine Billion Names of God by Arthur C. Clarke.

I'm not a big Ray Bradbury guy, but surprised no one has mentioned him yet.

The opening story of the dolphin who saves the diver suffering from the bends in Ram Dass's book How Can I Help?"

"The most beautiful eye I've ever seen"

It's the intro called Natural Compassion.

I worried about the dolphin being beached as it took me to the shore. Then we stared into each others eyes which seemed like eternity. Then it departed, knowing I was safe and joined it's pod"

It's the intro called Natural Compassion.

I worried about the dolphin being beached as it took me to the shore. Then we stared into each others eyes which seemed like eternity. Then it departed, knowing I was safe and joined it's pod"

It's the intro called Natural Compassion.

I worried about the dolphin being beached as it took me to the shore. Then we stared into each others eyes which seemed like eternity. Then it departed, knowing I was safe and joined it's pod"

It's the intro called Natural Compassion.

I worried about the dolphin being beached as it took me to the shore. Then we stared into each others eyes which seemed like eternity. Then it departed, knowing I was safe and joined it's pod"

It's the intro called Natural Compassion.

I worried about the dolphin being beached as it took me to the shore. Then we stared into each others eyes which seemed like eternity. Then it departed, knowing I was safe and joined it's pod"

la vie en piss by shitta.

The Swimmer was an article not a story. It was published in a magazine.

Can someone share the Natural Compassion ontro?

R63, I think you meant that Saki was a.k.a. H.H. Munro, and R64, several of us have mentioned Ray Bradbury, whose prose was like poetry.

Two brilliant recordings I used to have on cassette and would LOVE to replace. Haven't heard them in years. Shirley Booth doing Dorothy Parker short stories and Maureen Stapleton doing Shirley Jackson short stories.

"Children on Their Birthdays" by Truman Capote

The New Penguin Book of American Short Stories edited by Kasia Boddy is really great.

I didn't read the above responses, so pardon me if this is a repeat:

Anything by Donald Barthelme. Anything.

My personal favorite, by a hair, is "Cortes and Montezuma." Perfection.

Every "Year's Best" of New Stories From the South edited by Shannon Ravenel is full of gems. So so sad that Algonquin stopped publishing them.

R2, in Dubliners, what was the deal w/the priest? Homo?

Stephen King's Nightshift stories are good. Paritcularly the Boogeyman.

R72, tk. I meant the intro to How Can I Help?

Nightfall -- Isaac Asimov

Harrison Bergeron -- Kurt Vonnegut

Before the Law -- Kafka

Sheener

To Build a Fire -- Jack London

Flowers for Algernon - Daniel Keyes

By the way, these can all be accessed online for free.

The SwI met by Cheever IS a short story. That it was published first in a magazine does not make it an article. cluck.

I love horror short stories, this is one of my favorites

The Family of the Vourdalak

Almost all of the Sherlock Holmes stories are short stories and I love them, especially 'The Red-Headed League'. Edith Wharton wrote some really great short stories. My favorite is 'Xingu'.

James Tiptree Jr. has some good sci fi short stories. “Houston, Houston, do you read?” Is a good one. As is “Love is the Plan the plan is death.”

Museums and Women by John Updike

R6 I agree. Anything by Alice Munro. Conversely, I HATE anything by Joyce Carol Oates. I'll never understand why she is so revered.

Greasy Lake by T.C. Boyle.

It was made into a short film with Eric Stotz (as TC) and James Spader. I can't bring myself to see it for fear of being disappointed.

Greasy Lake by T.C. Boyle.

It was made into a short film with Eric Stotz (as TC) and James Spader. I can't bring myself to see it for fear of being disappointed.

The Collected Stories of Noel Coward.