Books like Like you'd understand, anyway by Jim Shepard

A collection of short stories by George Saunders, featuring unforgettable characters and Saunders’s signature blend of exuberant prose, deep humanity, and stylistic innovation.

A collection of eight short stories that follows modern Bengali‑American families across India, Thailand, Cambridge, and Seattle, revealing the quiet mysteries of love, duty, and identity.

John Grisham’s debut short‑story collection, Ford County, gathers seven novellas set in Mississippi, exploring human foibles and Mississippi life with Grisham’s trademark blend of suspense and moral inquiry.

Laura Groff’s Florida navigates the state’s weather, wildlife, and history as backdrop for stories of love, loss, and loneliness that pulse with wit, sadness, and hunger for connection.

A collection of thirteen darkly comic short stories that push the limits of everyday reality.

Joyce Carol Oates’ collection of thirteen short stories explores the dark, complex depths of human desire and moral ambiguity in vivid, American settings.

A New York Times‑reviewed collection of American short stories where a student, a late‑night dinner party and a matchmaker each explore love, loss, and the past.

Four friends in a high‑school drama find their lives spiraling into danger when secrets surface—one is imprisoned, another suspects a murder, and a fourth clings to life in a hospital.

In this collection of surreal short stories, Aimee Bender weaves fantastical worlds where extraordinary beings—a boy with key‑fingers, a woman’s potato children, a pumpkin‑headed family—explore themes of love, identity, and the human condition.

After the moon Cresta is destroyed, League civil war escalates while Sandy Kresnov faces her past and a new synthetic threat. Amid alien Talee fears, a child’s implanted technology could spark another war or change humanity forever.

A collection of 11 uncollected stories that follow the unlikely friendship between Elizabeth Short, the Black Dahlia, and her roommate Norma Jeane Baker, who would become Marilyn Monroe, exploring the hidden menace of 1940s Los Angeles and its transformative cost.

After a fatal party crash, a teenage boy hides a lifelong secret. Years later, his mother’s disappearance forces him and his mother to confront buried family truths that turn their lives upside down.

Eighth‑grade newcomer Edwin Hanratty navigates a jarring school environment, cliques and a disaffected sixth‑grader while his only ally, Flake, helps him cope with bullying and parental uncertainty, leading to a desperate, revenge‑driven struggle.

First short‑story collection by Aurelie Sheehan, featuring lyrical, often humorous portraits of women who challenge gender expectations, set amid American social norms.

A sweeping collection of short stories that traverses time and geography, from Arctic explorers to eighteenth‑century balloonists, and examines ordinary lives against extraordinary events.

Fenstad's Mother / Charles Baxter -- Customs of the country / Madison Smartt Bell -- Living to be a hundred / Robert Boswell -- The black hand girl / Blanche McCrary Boyd -- Kubuku Rides (This is it) / Larry Brown -- Ralph the Duck / Frederick Busch -- White angel / Michael Cunningham -- The flowers of boredom / Rick DeMarinis -- Edie: a life / Harriet Doerr -- The concert party / Mavis Gallant -- Why I decide to kill myself and other jokes / Douglas Glover -- Disneyland / Barbara Gowdy -- Aunt Moon's young man / Linda Hogan -- Displacement / David Wong Louie -- The management of grief / Bharati Mukherjee -- Meneseteung / Alice Munro -- What men love for / Dale Ray Phillips -- Strays / Mark Richard -- The boy on the train / Arthur Robinson -- The letter writer / M.T. Sharif. Responsibility: selected from U.S. and Canadian magazines by Margaret Atwood with Shannon Ravenel ; with an introduction by Margaret Atwood.