Books like The best American short stories, 1986 by Raymond Carver

James Joyce’s Dubliners is a landmark collection of fifteen short stories set in late‑19th‑century Dublin, capturing ordinary lives and suppressed dreams while exploring themes of lost innocence, paralysis, and the moral fabric of Irish society.

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 linked short stories that follows a platoon of American soldiers and their experiences, thoughts, and burdens during the Vietnam War.

Stephen King's Different Seasons brings together four interconnected novellas—Rita Hayworth & Shawshank Redemption, Apt Pupil, The Body, and The Breathing Method—examining themes of injustice, survival, and the shadows of past sins.

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

Raymond Carver’s second short‑story collection, ‘What We Talk about When We Talk about Love’, showcases everyday American lives with plain, powerful prose and a focus on ordinary, unheard voices.

A 1974 collection of four short stories by Roald Dahl that explores seduction and suspense, featuring the notorious hedonist Uncle Oswald (Oswald Hendryks Cornelius) in tales ranging from black comedy to darker desires.

An anthology of classic American short stories, including works by Washington Irving, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Edgar Allan Poe, Mark Twain, Bret Harte, Ambrose Bierce, Henry James, and O. Henry.

A curated collection of 22 ghost stories by women authors—including Edith Wharton, Kate Chopin, and Zora Neale Hurston—explores marriage, motherhood, and the social realities of women through supernatural tales across the United States.

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.

A comprehensive collection of Eudora Welty’s short stories, drawn from works published before 1980, showcasing her vivid portrayals of Southern life, humor, irony, and keen observation of social customs.