Books like The Scribner Anthology of Contemporary Short Fiction by Michael Martone

Anthony Bourdain tells the candid, behind‑the‑pan stories of his rise from dishwasher to celebrated chef, mixing culinary insight with personal anecdotes.

A collection of nine short stories by Jhumpa Lahiri that follows Indian and Indian‑American characters navigating identity, displacement, and complex relationships.

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

This collection explores love's power, passion, betrayal, and intimacy, revealing how it can transform relationships and lives.

306 pages ; 21 cm

This anthology assembles 27 distinguished short stories—from classic American voices to contemporary Canadian writers—capturing the breadth of 21st‑century fiction across cultural and thematic lines.

"Presents a collection of the best short stories by American and Canadian women since 1945."

The South - within its diversity of voices and experiences lies "a shared legacy: the act of speech - of stories handed down in which a distinctive language is honored, a language rich in Biblical and regional contexts; the love of place where individuals, relationships, and family histories not only matter but buttress everyday life. Both are part of that rarest and most indispensable groundspring of literature, memory. The memory of being 'Downhome.'". Susie Mee has gathered a wealth of short fiction by southern women who - from their various backgrounds, from their different eras - draw on that shared legacy she describes in her introduction. That memory of "downhome," whether it is used lovingly or ironically, echoes throughout the seven sections here, which range from Growing Up to Kinfolk and Courtship to Passing On, and in the words of these special authors.