Short Story Reviews

A

Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah:

• In Retail
• The Finkelstein 5

Sherman Alexie:

• A Drug Called Tradition
• The First Annual All-Indian Horseshoe Pitch and Barbecue 
• The Only Traffic Signal On the Reservation Doesn't Flash Red Anymore (1)
• The Only Traffic Signal on the Reservation Doesn't Flash Red Anymore (2)
• Because My Father Said He was the Only Indian Who Saw Jimi Hendrix Play "The Star Spangled Banner"at Woodstock
• Crazy Horse Dreams
• The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven

Sherwood Anderson:

• Adventure
• The Other Woman

Isaac Asimov:

• Jokester
• The Last Question
• Liar!
• Silly Asses

Margaret Atwood:

• Happy Endings

B

Isaac Babel:

• First Love

James Baldwin:

• The Man Child
• Sonny's Blues

J.G. Ballard:

• The Garden of Time
• Prima Belladonna
• Venus Smiles
• The Drowned Giant
• The Dead Astronaut
• My Dream of Flying to Wake Island
• The Overloaded Man
• The Subliminal Man

Toni Cade Bambara:

• The Lesson
• Gorilla, My Love

Donald Barthelme:

• The School (Reviewed in 2023)
• The School (Reviewed in 2020)
• Jaws
• Chablis
• Concerning the Bodyguard
• Critique de la Vie Quotidienne
• On the Deck
• The Genius
• Eugénie Grandet
• The Glass Mountain
• Game
• Languishing, Half-Deep in Summer
• The Phantom of the Opera's Friend
• Me and Miss Mandible
• Robert Kennedy Saved From Drowning
• A Shower of Gold
• The President
• The Emerald
• The Indian Uprising
• The New Music
• Porcupines at the University
• Conversations with Goethe
• Rebecca
• Rif
• The Great Hug
• Pepperoni
• The Captured Woman
• The Balloon
• At the Tolstoy Museum
• The Flight of Pigeons from the Palace
• Some of Us Had Been Threatening Our Friend Colby
• The City of Churches
• The Party
• The Zombies
• The King of Jazz
• The Leap
• The Rise of Capitalism
• The Dolt
• The New Owner
• The Educational Experience 
• Views of my Father Weeping
• Wrote a Letter...

Peter S. Beagle:

• Mr. McCaslin

Elizabeth Bear:

• Deriving Life
• Tideline

Lucia Berlin:

• A Manual for Cleaning Women 
• Angel's Laundromat
• A Love Affair
• El Tim
• Carmen
• Silence
• Dr. A.H. Moynihan
• Phantom Pain
• Wait a Minute
• Sex Appeal
• So Long
• Stars and Saints
• My Jockey
• Teenage Punk
• B.F. and Me
• Mama
• Her First Detox
• Point of View

David Bezmozgis:

• Natasha

Ambrose Bierce: 

• The Boarded Window

Terry Bisson:

• Bears Discover Fire
• They're Made Out of Meat

Jorge Luis Borges:

• The Circular Ruins 
• The Library of Babel
• The Aleph 
• The Garden of Forking Paths
• Tlön, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius

Ray Bradbury:

• Embroidery
• Fire Balloons
• Gotcha!
• A Medicine for Melancholy
• All Summer in a Day
•  The Wonderful Ice-Cream Suit
• The Sound of Thunder
• The Flying Machine
• The City
• The Pedestrian 
• The Garbage Collector
• The Night
• The Last Night of the World
• The Small Assassin
• The Scent of Sarsaparilla
• The Toynbee Convector
• The Dragon
• Perchance to Dream
• No Particular Night or Morning
• The Veldt
• The Great Wide World Over There
• The October Game

Kaliane Bradley:

• Doggerland

Dionne Brand:

• Blossom: Priestess of Oya, Goddess of Winds, Storms and Waterfall

Morley Callaghan:

• Let Me Promise You

Angela Carter: 

• Werewolf
• The Snow Child

Raymond Carver: 

• Bicycles, Muscles, Cigarettes
• Fat
• Chef's House
• What We Talk About When We Talk About Love
• The Bath
• Why Don't You Dance?
• Vitamins
• Night School

John Cheever:

• Reunion
• The Five-Forty-Eight
• Torch Song

K-Ming Chang:

• Xífù

Ted Chiang:

• The Great Silence
• Understood 
• Hell is the Absence of God
• Division of Zero
• Omphalos
• The Life Cycle of Software Objects

Anton Chekhov:

• The Lady With the Little Dog
• Oyster
• The Bet

Agatha Christie:

• A Fairy in the Flat / A Pot of Tea
• A Fruitful Sunday
• Accident
• Blindman's Buff
• Philomel Cottage
• Motive vs. Opportunity
• Ingots of Gold
• Sing a Song of Sixpence
• The Adventure of the Cheap Flat
• The Jewel Robbery at the Grand Metropolitan 
• The Listerdale Mystery
• The Adventure of the Ancient Tomb
• The Blood Stained Pavement
• The Mystery of Hunter's Lodge
• The Affair of the Pink Pearl
• The Adventure of the Sinister Stranger
• The Case of the Missing Lady
• The Manhood of Edward Robinson
• The Kidnapped Prime Minister
• The Thumb Mark of St. Peter
• The Adventure of the Western Star
• The Tuesday Night Club
• The Idol House of Astarte
• The Million Dollar Bond Robbery

Sandra Cisernos:

• Barbie-Q

Arthur C. Clarke:

• The Star

Austin Clarke:

• Canadian Experience

J.M. Coetzee:

• A House in Spain

Robert Coover:

• A Sudden Story

Julio Cortázar:

• The Continuity of Parks

Stephen Crane:

• The Bride Comes to Yellow Sky

D

Roald Dahl:

• Lamb to the Slaughter
• The Landlady
• The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar
• The Swan

Edwidge Danticat:

• Night Women

Samuel R. Delany:

• Aye, and Gomorrah

Stuart Dybek:

• Ordinary Nudes
• We Didn't

Junot Diaz:

• Boyfriend
• How to Date a Brown Girl (Black Girl, White Girl or Halfie)
• This is How You Lose Her (collection)
• Miss Lora

Philip K. Dick:

• Explorers We
• If There Were No Benny Cemoli
• The Short Happy Life of the Brown Oxford
• The Wub
• The Colony
• The Gun
• The Skull
• The Electric Ant
• The Golden Man

Arthur Conan Doyle:

• A Scandal in Bohemia

Nicky Drayden:

• The Simplest Equation

E

Umberto Eco:

• How to Travel with a Salmon
• The Gorge

Greg Egan:

• Appropriate Love
• Learning to Be Me
• The Moral Virologist 
• The Hundred-Light Year Diary
• The Cutie
• Eugene
• The Infinite Assassin 
• Riding the Crocodile
• The Way She Smiles, the Things She Says

Harlan Ellison:

• "Repent, Harlequin!" Said the Tick Tock Man
• Prince Myshkin and Hold the Relish
• I Have No Mouth and I Must Scream
• The Paladin of the Lost Hour

F

William Faulkner:

• Mountain Victory
• Dry September

Richard Ford:

• Sweethearts
• Fireworks

Kim Fu:

• Bridezilla

G

Neil Gaiman:

• Chivalry
• How the Marquis Got His Coat Back
• How to Talk to Girls at Parties

William Gibson:

• Burning Chrome
• Fragments of a Hologram Rose
• Johnny Mnemonic

H

Ernest Hemingway:

• A Very Short Story
• Hills like White Elephants
• The Killers

Amy Hempel:

• A Full Service Shelter
• In the Cemetery Where Al Jolson is Buried 
• Housewife

Robert Heinlein:

• All You Zombies

O. Henry:

• The Cactus
• The Gift of the Magi
• The Ransom of Red Chief 
• The Love-Philtre of Ikey Schoenstein
• A Cosmopolite in a Cafe
• The Romance of a Busy Broker
• The Skylight Room
• The Cop and the Anthem
• The Furnished Room
• Springtime A La Carte
• After Twenty Years
• Mammon and the Archer
• The Last Leaf
• The Green Door
• Transients in Arcadia
• A Retrieved Reformation
• The Brief Debut of Tildy
• A Harlem Tragedy 
• Witches' Loaves

Aleksandra Hill:

• Galaxy Girl and the November Monstrosity

A.M. Homes:

• A Real Doll

Nalo Hopkinson: 

• Something to Hitch Meat To

I

J

Shirley Jackson:

• The Possibility of Evil

N.K. Jemisin:

• The Ones Who Stay and Fight
• On the Banks of the River Lex
• Cuisine des Memoires
• The City Born Great

Denis Johnson:

• Emergency
• Steady Hands at Seattle Hospital
• Dirty Wedding
• Work

Miranda July:

• Something that Needs Nothing
• The Swim Team

K

Yasunari Kawabata:

• The Grasshopper and the Bell Cricket

Michelle Lynn King:

• One Hundred Percent Humidity 

Stephen King:

• The Lawnmower Man

Jamaica Kinkaid:

• Girl

Naomi Kritzer:

• Better Living Through Algorithms 

R.F. Kuang:

• The Nine Curves River

L

D.H. Lawrence:

• The Rocking-Horse Winner

Stephen Leacock

• The Errors of Santa Claus
• My Financial Career

Ursula Le Guin:

• The Fliers of Gy
• The Wife's Story

Elmore Leonard:

• 3:10 to Yuma
• No Man's Guns 
• Only Good Ones
• The Tonto Woman

Thomas Ligotti:

• Cocoon
• The Frolic

Kelly Link:

• The New Boyfriend

Sam Lipsyte:

• My Apology

Clarice Lispector: 

• Fifth Story
• The First Kiss

Ken Liu: 

• Mono No Aware
• Staying Behind

Jack London:

• All Gold Canyon
• Negore, the Coward
• To Build a Fire
• The Hobo and the Fairy

Audrey Lorde:

• Uses of the Erotic

M

Ling Ma:

• Los Angeles 

Carmen Maria Machado:

• Help Me Follow My Sister into the Land of the Dead

Bernard Malamud:

• Angel Levine
• Idiots First
• The Mourners
• The Jewbird
• The First Seven Years
• The Magic Barrel

Kevin Maloney:

• Oliver
• Five Weddings

Katherine Mansfield:

• The Doll's House

Gabriel Garcia Marquez:

• A Very Old Man with Enormous Wings
• There Are No Thieves in this Town
• Death Constant Beyond Love
• Eyes of a Blue Dog
• The Handsomest Drowned Man in the World
• One of These Days

Richard Matheson: 

• Dying Room Only
• Witch War
• Dress of White Silk
• Shipshape Home
• Now Die in It
• Third from the Sun
• Born of Man and Woman
• Counterfeit Bills
• The Prisoner
• Nightmare at 20,000 Feet
• Haircut

Guy de Maupassant:

• The Necklace
• The Diary of a Madman

Carson McCullers:

• A Tree. A Rock. A Cloud.
• Home for Christmas

Steven Millhauser: 

• Flying Carpets
• Eisenheim the Illusionist 

Lorrie Moore:

• Referential
• Subject to Change

Ottessa Moshfegh:

• The Weirdos

Alice Munro: 

• Turkey Season
• The Bear Came Over the Mountain

Walter Dean Myers:

• Kitty and Mack: A Love Story

Haruki Murakami:

• A Perfect Day for Kangaroos
• The Year of Spaghetti
• Dabchick
• Barn Burning
• On Seeing the 100% Perfect Girl One Beautiful April Morning
• The Second Bakery Attack
• Lederhosen
• Men Without Women
• New York Mining Disaster
• Super-Frog Saves Tokyo
• The Ice Man
• The Elephant Vanishes

N

Vladimir Nabokov:

• The Passenger
• That in Aleppo Once

O

Tim O'Brien:

• The Things They Carried

Frank O'Connor:

• The Mad Lomansneys
• Guests of the Nation
• The Drunkard

Joyce Carol Oates: 

• Where Are You Going? Where Have You Been?
• Donald Barthelme Saved from Oblivion 

Tommy Orange:

• Capgras

Cynthia Ozick: 

• The Shawl

P

Grace Paley:

• A Conversation with My Father
• Love

Dorothy Parker:

• The Waltz
• Oh! He's Charming!

Deesha Philyaw:

• When Edie Levert Comes by

Edgar Allan Poe:

• The House of the Fall of Usher
• The Masque of the Red Death

Terry Pratchett:

• Death and What Comes Next
• Troll Bridge

Q

R

Rebecca Roanhorse:

• Welcome to Your Authentic Indian Experience 
• White Hills

Mary Robinson:

• Yours

Sally Rooney:

• At the Clinic

Philip Roth:

• The Conversion of the Jews

Joanna Russ: 

• When it Changed

S

J.D. Salinger:

• For Esme with Love and Squalor
• Uncle Wiggily in Connecticut 

Sofia Samatar:

• The Huntress
• How to Get Back to the Forest

George Saunders:

• Pastoralia
• Jon

Isaac Bashevis Singer:

• The Cafeteria
• Gimpel the Fool

Cordwainer Smith:

• The Game of Rat and Dragon

Gilbert Sorrentino:

• The Moon in its Flight

Rachael Swirsky:

• If You Were a Dinosaur, My Love 

Theodore Sturgeon:

• Microscopic God
• Poor Yorick 

T

Amy Tan:

• Rules of the Game

Morgan Talty:

• Burn

Kimmisha Thomas:

• Berry

Souvankham Thammavongsa:

• Slingshot

William Trevor:

• Lovers of Their Time

Mark Twain:

• Punch, Brothers, Punch! 

Cadwell Turnbell:

• Jump

U

• A&P
• Giving Blood
• Marching Through Boston
• Nakedness
• Snowing in Greenwich Village
• Taste of Metal
• Twin Beds in Rome
• Plumbing
• The Lovely Troubled Daughters of Our Old Crowd
• The Red-Herring Theory 
• Waiting Up
• Walter Briggs
• Wife Wooing
• When Everyone Was Pregnant
• Your Lover is Calling

V

Guy Vanderhaeghe:

• Ray

Kurt Vonnegut:

• 2BR02B
• Long Walk to Forever
• The Hyannis Port Story
• EPICAC
• D.P.
• Deer in the Works
• Adam
• Where I Live
• Harrison Bergeron  
• Who Am I This Time?

W

Harold Waldrop:

• The Ugly Chickens

Alice Walker:

• Her Sweet Jerome

Jess Walter:

• Mr. Voice

Eudora Welty:

• A Worn Path

Eley Williams:

• Smote, or When I Find I Cannot Kiss You in Front of a Print

Connie Willis:

• Schwarzschild Radius

Wendy Wimmer: 

• Ghosting

Edith Wharton:

• Souls Belated

P.G. Wodehouse:

• Leave it to Jeeves

Tobias Wolff:

• Bullet in the Brain

Virginia Woolf: 

• Kew Gardens

X

Y

Charles Yu: 

• Bookkeeper, Narrator, Gunslinger

Z