What are the best 'short stories'?

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ONE OF THE NEW YORK TIMES BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR

Nine stunningly original, provocative, and poignant stories-two published for the very first time-all from the mind of the incomparable author of Stories of Your Life and Others... Read more about Exhalation

It has long been said that air (which others call argon) is the source of life. This is not in fact the case, and I engrave these words to describe how I came to understand the true source of life and...

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From the author of Exhalation, an award-winning short story collection that blends "absorbing storytelling with meditations on the universe, being, time and space ... raises questions about the nature of reality and what it is to be human" (The New Y... Read more about Stories of Your Life and Others

Were the tower to be laid down across the plain of Shinar, it would be two days’ journey to walk from one end to the other. While the tower stands, it takes a full month and a half to climb from its b...

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The Illustrated Man, a seminal work in Ray Bradbury's career, whose extraordinary power and imagination remain undimmed by time's passage, is available from Simon & Schuster for the first time.

Ray Bradbury brings wonders alive. For this peerless Ame... Read more about The Illustrated Man

IT was a warm afternoon in early September when I first met the Illustrated Man. Walking along an asphalt road, I was or the final leg of a two weeks’ walking tour of Wisconsin. Late in the afternoon ...

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One of the most terrifying stories of the twentieth century, Shirley Jackson's "The Lottery" created a sensation when it was first published in The New Yorker in 1948.

"Power and haunting," and "nights of unrest" were typical reader responses. Today... Read more about The Lottery

The morning of June 27th was clear and sunny, with the fresh warmth of a full-summer day; the flowers were blossoming profusely and the grass was richly green. The people of the village began to gathe...

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Featured in the Netflix series Love, Death & Robots

Bestselling author Ken Liu selects his multiple award-winning stories for a groundbreaking collection-including a brand-new piece exclusive to this volume.

With his debut novel, The Grace of Kings, ... Read more about The Paper Menagerie and Other Stories

There is no definitive census of all the intelligent species in the universe. Not only are there perennial arguments about what qualifies as intelligence, but each moment and everywhere, civilizations...

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Finalist for the National Book Award for Fiction

"[These stories] vibrate with originality, queerness, sensuality and the strange."-Roxane Gay

"In these formally brilliant and emotionally charged tales, Machado gives literal shape to women's memories... Read more about Her Body and Other Parties

In the beginning, I know I want him before he does. This isn’t how things are done, but this is how I am going to do them. I am at a neighbor’s party with my parents, and I am seventeen. I drink half ...

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A collection of tales to invade and paralyse the mind as the safe light of day is infiltrated by the shadows of the night.

As you read, the clutching fingers of terror brush lightly across the nape of the neck, reach round from behind to clutch and ... Read more about Night Shift

How good it was to step into the cold, draughty hall here at Chapelwaite, every bone in an ache from that abominable coach, in need of instant relief from my distended bladder—and to see a letter addr...

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Ray Bradbury's The Martian Chronicles is a must-read for any fan of science fiction or fantasy, a crucial precursor to films like Avatar and Alien and books like Kim Stanley Robinson's Red Mars and Dan Simmons' Hyperion, and a haunting prophesy of hu... Read more about The Martian Chronicles

One minute it was Ohio winter, with doors closed, windows locked, the panes blind with frost, icicles fringing every roof, children skiing on slopes, housewives lumbering like great black bears in the...

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THE YELLOW WALL-PAPER is a short story by Charlotte Perkins Gilman, first published in January 1892 in The New England Magazine. It is regarded as an important early work of American feminist literature, illustrating attitudes in the 19th century tow... Read more about The Yellow Wallpaper

If a physician of high standing, and one's own husband, assures friends and relatives that there is really nothing the matter with one but temporary nervous depression—a slight hysterical tendency—wha...

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WINNER OF THE PULITZER PRIZE

PEN/HEMINGWAY AWARD WINNER. With a new foreword by Domenico Starnone, this stunning debut collection flawlessly charts the emotional journeys of characters seeking love beyond the barriers of ... Read more about Interpreter of Maladies

THE NOTICE INFORMED THEM that it was a temporary matter: for five days their electricity would be cut off for one hour, beginning at eight P.M. A line had gone down in the last snowstorm, and the repa...

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