Writer Kseniya Melnik moved with her family from Magadan to Alaska when she was 15. In this collection of short stories, she deftly introduces readers, who most likely are unfamiliar with Siberia — home of the Gulag prison camp system, to the people of the cold and remote city of Magadan in the Russian Northeast. The stories are set in the post-Stalin years, from the 1950s with the Khruschev thaw, through the Brezhnev stagnation and into the age of Glasnost and Perestroika. These are not […]
Dresden Files in short story format
This collection of stories from Butcher’s famous The Dresden Files are a nice discovery for someone who thought she had read all of Harry Dresden’s adventures and had to sit and twiddle her thumbs until Butcher’s inspiration—or publisher—next strikes. The stories range from Butcher’s first-ever Dresden story written as a college assignment to a post-Harry reminiscence, of a sort, by his would-be lover. The thing that makes these stories such fun is that they are written from various perspectives, including that of his enigmatic vampire […]
Sherman Alexie is one of my favorites.
*Disclaimer: this book was read via audiobook.* Sherman Alexie’s writing never ceases to astonish me. He is brutally honest while also being personal, funny, and witty at once. I appreciate the stories he tells, and the way he tells them keeps me interested and engaged. I saw the audiobook at my library and what got me to check it out was his narration of the book–well worth it. War Dances is a collection of short stories and poetry, like much of his other work. One […]
Like talking to a cross-section of ordinary people at a pub, England and Other Stories is a collection of twenty-five short stories that peer into everyday worries, thoughts and lives.
These are ordinary people. Mostly male, they are often fixated on small minutia, worried and fixated on something out of their control. The subjects vary wildly, from a weary window cleaner reflecting on his life around London before the recession of 2007; a reunion at a teacher’s funeral that hides an adolescent secret; a suburban oddball with a perchance for alternative medicine and a darker side; or a love letter never delivered to its recipient. Unlike most conventional short stories, the short tales in this […]