Recommended Short Stories, Authors, and Story Collections

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Recommended Short Stories, Authors, and Story
Collections

• Cathy Belben, Librarian
• Burlington-Edison High School

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Characteristics of Short Stories

• Focus one main conflict or situation
• Generally take place in short period of time
• Focus on few characters often just one main
  character
• Usually take place in a single setting

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Story Collections byIndividual Authors
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The Wonder Spot by Melissa Bank

• A series of interconnected stories about the
  life of Sophie Applebaum, who's looking for a
  career but lacks a calling, and looking for love
  but never quite finding it.

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Trouble With Girlsby Marshall Boswell

• Contains ten connected stories which follow
  Parker Hayes from his early teens in the 1970s to
  his thirties, chronicling his attempts to connect
  with women.

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The House on Mango Street by Sandra Cisneros

• Vignettes focusing on the lives of children and
  other members of a Mexican-American neighborhood.

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Woman Hollering Creekby Sandra Cisneros

• A collection of vignettes (very short stories)
  focusing on Mexican-Americans and their lives on
  both sides of the border.

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RattleboneBy Maxine Clair

• Stories of the citizens of Rattlebone, a
  fictional black community north of Kansas City in
  the 1950s.

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Athletic Shorts by Chris Crutcher

• A collection of short stories featuring
  characters--primarily athletes--from earlier
  books by Chris Crutcher.

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The Umbrella Man by Roald Dahl

• Thirteen stories that grab you right from the
  start and include surprise twist endings. The
  collection includes "The Great Automatic
  Grammatizator," "Mrs. Bixby and the Colonel's
  Coat," and "Vengeance is Mine Inc."

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Arranged Marriage by Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni

• Stories highlighting the changes experienced by
  Indian women who emigrate to the United States
  and face the many differences between the two
  cultures, especially in regards to relationships.

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Lucky Girls by Nell Freudenberger

• Five stories set in Southeast Asia and on the
  Indian subcontinent narrated by young women who
  find themselves face to face with the
  circumstances of adult love.

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Truly Grim Talesby Patricia Galloway

• A guilt-ridden prince with a foot fetish seeking
  his glass-slippered dance partner and a beauty
  contest winner as Snow White's murderous
  stepmother are featured in two of the original
  "grim" plots in this collection loosely based on
  eight traditional fairy tales.

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The Circuitby Francisco Jimenez

• These independent but intertwined stories follow
  a migrant family through their circuit, from
  picking cotton and strawberries to topping
  carrots-and back again-over a number of years.

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Breaking Throughby Francisco Jimenez

• This moving sequel is a fictionalized memoir of
  Jimenez's teenage years in the late
  1950's...growing up poor, yet he celebrates his
  Mexican roots even as he learns to be an American

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Birds of America by Lorrie Moore

• Contains twelve short fiction stories by American
  author Lorrie Moore featuring characters dealing
  with assorted and often unsettling situations,
  such as the death of a child, a home invasion, or
  a family game of charades that goes terribly
  wrong.

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Bad Haircutby Tom Perrotta

• Interrelated, funny short stories follow
  Buddy's boyhood and adolescent adventures trying
  to understand race relations, sex, and family
  dynamics during the 1970s.

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Doing Time Notes from the Undergrad by Rob Thomas

• Ten stories focus on the unexpected consequences
  when teens are required to complete volunteer
  service as a high school graduation requirement.

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Short Story Anthologies
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Ultimate Sports short stories by outstanding
writers for young adults
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Twelve Shots Outstanding Stories about Guns
edited by Harry Mazer
12 authors explore the emotion-driven world of
guns. Stories include Cocked locked / Chris
Lynch -- Hunting bear / Kevin McColley -- God's
plan for Wolfie and X-Ray / David Rice -- Custody
/ Frederick Busch -- Shotgun Cheatham's last
night above ground / Richard Peck -- The war
chest / Rob Thomas -- Eat your enemy / Nancy
Springer -- War game / Nancy Werlin -- Until the
day he died / Harry Mazer -- Fresh meat / Ron
Koertge -- Chalkman / Rita Williams-Garcia.

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Every Man for Himself Short Stories about Being
a Guy edited by Nancy Mercado

• An anthology of ten original short stories about
  such things as family problems, sexuality, and
  courage, written by well-known authors.
• Stories include The prom prize by Walter Dean
  Myers, Jump away by René Saldaña, Jr., No more
  birds will die today by Paul Acampora, Shockers
  by David Lubar, Pig lessons by Edward Averett,
  Princes by David Levithan, Fear / by Terry
  Trueman, and It's complicated by Ron Koertge.

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One Hot Second Stories about Desireby Cathy
Young

• A collection of eleven stories by award-winning
  authors that explore the many varieties of
  teenage desire, including first crushes, first
  kisses, and first times.