Short Story Magic Tricks

2018 Favorites

We’re back here knocking on the New Year’s door for the fifth straight year.

That means we’re halfway there – 10 years of magic tricks. Halfway home and feeling good.

We hit the 1,000 story mark in the middle of the year. I didn’t even realize it at the time, so I can’t even tell you what story earned that distinction. But it happened. I know that much.

So many short stories. So many magic tricks. So much gratitude on my part for those who stop by the website, read, and leave comments and recommendations.

Here is the annual list ranking the stories I read this year in order of my own enjoyment.

Have a wonderful new year!

1. ‘The Adventure Of The Speckled Band’ by Arthur Conan Doyle
2. ‘Brokeback Mountain’ by Annie Proulx
3. ‘St. Lucy’s Home For Girls Raised By Wolves’ by Karen Russell
4. ‘The Man Of The World’ by Frank O’Connor
5. ‘Irish Revel’ by Edna O’Brien
6. ‘The Displaced Person’ by Flannery O’Connor
7. ‘Drown’ by Junot Díaz
8. ‘I Can Say Many Nice Things’ by Ben Marcus
9. ‘Then We’ll Set It Right’ by Robert Gorham Davis
10. ‘Petrified Man’ by Eudora Welty
11. ‘Where Is The Voice Coming From?’ by Eudora Welty
12. ‘Hair’ by William Faulkner
13. ‘Red From Green’ by Maile Meloy
14. ‘Daisy’s Valentine’ by Mary Gaitskill
15. ‘Clara’ by Roberto Bolaño
16. ‘The Comforts Of Home’ by Flannery O’Connor
17. ‘Shiloh’ by Bobbie Ann Mason
18. ‘Sister Imelda’ by Edna O’Brien
19. ‘ZZ’s Sleep-Away Camp For Disordered Dreamers’ by Karen Russell
20. ‘Haunting Olivia’ by Karen Russell
21. ‘Unlighted Lamps’ by Sherwood Anderson
22. ‘Dogs Go Wolf’ by Lauren Groff
23. ‘So Peaceful In The Country’ by Carl Ruthven Offord
24. ‘Thirteen And A Half’ by Maile Meloy
25. ‘Good Man, Bad Man’ by Jerome Weidman
26. ‘Negocios’ by Junot Díaz
27. ‘Attracta’ by William Trevor
28. ‘Bartleby, The Scrivener’ by Herman Melville
29. ‘Summer Voices’ by John Banville
30. ‘An Attack Of Hunger’ by Maeve Brennan
31. ‘Folie À Deux’ by William Trevor
32. ‘A Temple Of The Holy Ghost’ by Flannery O’Connor
33. ‘Probably Shakespeare’ by Jessamyn West
34. ‘Counting Breaths’ by Rosemarie Robotham
35. ‘The Short Happy Life Of Francis Macomber’ by Ernest Hemingway
36. ‘Dido’s Lament’ by Tessa Hadley
37. ‘A Pair Of Silk Stockings’ by Kate Chopin
38. ‘Tiny Smiling Daddy’ by Mary Gaitskill
39. ‘Jesse’ by Rosemarie Robotham
40. ‘Lady Yeti And The Palace Of Artificial Snows’ by Karen Russell
41. ‘The Wife’ by Jennifer Jordan
42. ‘The Barber’ by Flannery O’Connor
43. ‘Last Night’ by James Salter
44. ‘The Woman Of The House’ by William Trevor
45. ‘Ysrael’ by Junot Díaz
46. ‘Villa Marta’ by Clare Boylan
47. ‘The Wide Net’ by Eudora Welty
48. ‘Fedora’ by Kate Chopin
49. ‘The Midnight Zone’ by Lauren Groff
50. ‘Flowers For Algernon’ by Daniel Keyes
51. ‘Homecoming’ by William Maxwell
52. ‘Lily Daw And The Three Ladies’ by Eudora Welty
53. ‘God Bless America’ by John Oliver Killens
54. ‘Blood-Burning Moon’ by Jean Toomer
55. ‘On Trains’ by James Alan McPherson
56. ‘Tome’ by Maile Meloy
57. ‘The Doll’ by Edna O’Brien
58. ‘The Landlady’ by Roald Dahl
59. ‘Figures In The Distance’ by Jamaica Kincaid
60. ‘Nausea 1979’ by Haruki Murakami
61. ‘What We Talk About When We Talk About Anne Frank’ by Nathan Englander
62. ‘Lobster Night’ by Russell Banks
63. ‘How Old, How Young’ by John O’Hara
64. ‘The Fight’ by Stephen Crane
65. ‘The Christmas Miracle’ by Rebecca Curtis
66. ‘Christmas Longings’ by Elizabeth Spencer
67. ‘Muttsy’ by Zora Neale Hurston
68. ‘Sanctuary’ by Nella Larsen
69. ‘Miracle Polish’ by Steven Millhauser
70. ‘The Music Teacher’ by John Cheever
71. ‘The Rain Horse’ by Ted Hughes
72. ‘God Sees The Truth, But Waits’ by Leo Tolstoy
73. ‘Of The Cloth’ by William Trevor
74. ‘Boyfriend’ by Junot Díaz
75. ‘A Rose In The Heart Of New York’ by Edna O’Brien
76. ‘Aguantando’ by Junot Díaz
77. ‘The Rookers’ by Bobbie Ann Mason
78. ‘Nancy Culpepper’ by Bobbie Ann Mason
79. ‘Cafeteria’ by Isaac Bashevis Singer
80. ‘No Face’ by Junot Díaz
81. ‘Rollingwood’ by Ben Marcus
82. ‘Innocence’ by Sean O’Faolain
83. ‘The Widow’ by Edna O’Brien
84. ‘The Season Of Divorce’ by John Cheever
85. ‘ – And The Moon Be Still As Bright’ by Ray Bradbury
86. ‘Fiesta, 1980’ by Junot Díaz
87. ‘The Ingrate’ by Paul Laurence Dunbar
88. ‘The Lady, Or The Tiger?’ by Frank Stockton
89. ‘Dr. Heidegger’s Experiment’ by Nathaniel Hawthorne
90. ‘Everybody Knows Tobie’ by Daniel Garza
91. ‘Why Do The Heathens Rage?’ by Flannery O’Connor
92. ‘The Looking Glass’ by Anton Chekhov
93. ‘Truant’ by Claude McKay
94. ‘Landladies’ by Langston Hughes
95. ‘Kiswana Browne’ by Gloria Naylor
96. ‘Knowing He Was Not My Kind Yet I Followed’ by Barry Hannah
97. ‘Simple On Military Integration’ by Langston Hughes
98. ‘Condemned House’ by Lucille Boehm
99. ‘The Homecoming’ by Frank Yerby
100. ‘A Curtain Of Green’ by Eudora Welty
101. ‘Aqua Boulevard’ by Maile Meloy
102. ‘Sense Of Humor’ by Damon Runyon
103. ‘Key To The City’ by Diane Oliver
104. ‘The Undertaker’ by Alexander Pushkin
105. ‘Concerning The Bodyguard’ by Donald Barthelme
106. ‘Bullfighting’ by Roddy Doyle
107. ‘Keela, The Outcast Indian Maiden’ by Eudora Welty
108. ‘My Side Of The Matter’ by Truman Capote
109. ‘Simple Prays A Prayer’ by Langston Hughes
110. ‘Feet Live Their Own Life’ by Langston Hughes
111. ‘Steady Going Up’ by Maya Angelou
112. ‘Red’ by Maile Meloy
113. ‘A Memory’ by Eudora Welty
114. ‘Porte-Cochere’ by Peter Taylor
115. ‘Wunderkind’ by Carson McCullers
116. ‘Grammar Questions’ by Lydia Davis
117. ‘Exodus’ by James Baldwin
118. ‘Mother’ by Andrea Lee
119. ‘The Confidence Man’ by George Garrett
120. ‘Clap Hands, Here Comes Charlie’ by Beryl Bainbridge
121. ‘The Enchanted Bluff’ by Willa Cather
122. ‘The Lynching Of Jube Benson’ by Paul Laurence Dunbar
123. ‘After The Denim’ by Raymond Carver
124. ‘Wild Plums’ by Grace Stone Coates
125. ‘In The Reign Of Harad IV’ by Steven Millhauser
126. ‘Enoch And The Gorilla’ by Flannery O’Connor
127. ‘The Stout Gentleman’ by Washington Irving
128. ‘Solo On The Drums’ by Ann Petry
129. ‘Water Child’ by Edwidge Danticat
130. ‘Crusader Rabbit’ by Jess Mowry
131. ‘His New Mittens’ by Stephen Crane
132. ‘A Haunted House’ by Charles Dickens
133. ‘The Rosary’ by Robert Kelly
134. ‘Mary Elizabeth’ by Jessie Faucet
135. ‘A Meeting In Middle Age’ by William Trevor
136. ‘The South’ by Jorge Luis Borges
137. ‘The Lost Decade’ by F. Scott Fitzgerald
138. ‘The Three Hermits’ by Leo Tolstoy
139. ‘Jupiter Doke, Brigadier General’ by Ambrose Bierce
140. ‘One Wicked Impulse!’ by Walt Whitman
141. ‘Wisdom Of Children’ by Leo Tolstoy
142. ‘The Road To The Shore’ by Michael McLaverty
143. ‘Offerings’ by Bobbie Ann Mason
144. ‘Deer Season’ by Kevin Barry
145. ‘Anhedonia, Here I Come’ by Colin Barrett
146. ‘Living’ by Grace Paley
147. ‘Midair’ by Frank Conroy
148. ‘New York Mining Disaster’ by Haruki Murakami
149. ‘Christmas Song’ by Langston Hughes
150. ‘Present For Joyce’ by Langston Hughes
151. ‘Lost In The City’ by Edward P. Jones
152. ‘Mama’s Missionary Money’ by Chester Himes
153. ‘The Cold Outside’ by John Burnside
154. ‘Bumblebees’ by Bobbie Ann Mason
155. ‘The Man Who Disliked Cats’ by P.G. Wodehouse
156. ‘The Sire de Maletroit’s Door’ by Robert Louis Stevenson
157. ‘The Two Brothers And The Gold’ by Leo Tolstoy
158. ‘Four Men In A Cave’ by Stephen Crane
159. ‘The Snake’ by Stephen Crane
160. ‘Long Distances’ by Jewell Parker Rhodes
161. ‘The Colour Out Of Space’ by H.P. Lovecraft
162. ‘The Man Of Adamant’ by Nathaniel Hawthorne
163. ‘Signal’ by John Lanchester
164. ‘The Bog Girl’ by Karen Russell
165. ‘The Angel Of The Odd’ by Edgar Allan Poe
166. ‘The Dream Of A Ridiculous Man’ by Fyodor Dostoyevsky
167. ‘The Prize Lodger’ by George Gissing
168. ‘The Cat’ by Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
169. ‘Leg’ by Stephen Polansky
170. ‘Stuff’ by Joy Williams
171. ‘The Coffee-House Of Surat’ by Leo Tolstoy
172. ‘About Jessie Mae’ by James Purdy
173. ‘Filial Sentiments Of A Parricide’ by Marcel Proust
174. ‘The Dark Arts’ by Ben Marcus
175. ‘Horatio’s Trick’ by Ann Beattie
176. ‘The Night Of Chancellorsville’ by F. Scott Fitzgerald
177. ‘Home For Christmas’ by Jeffrey Shaffer
178. ‘Two Blue Birds’ by D.H. Lawrence
179. ‘An Experiment In Misery’ by Stephen Crane
180. ‘Simple On Indian Blood’ by Langston Hughes
181. ‘Conversation On The Corner’ by Langston Hughes
182. ‘The Diary Of An African Nun’ by Alice Walker
183. ‘Vacation’ by Langston Hughes
184. ‘A Mother’s Tale’ by James Agee
185. ‘The Man With Two Left Feet’ by P.G. Wodehouse
186. ‘The Knowers’ by Helen Phillips
187. ‘Three Short Moments In A Long Life’ by John L’Heureux
188. ‘My Mother’ by Andre Gide
189. ‘Between The Halves’ by John O’Hara
190. ‘Fable’ by Charles Yu
191. ‘Nightfall’ by Daniel Corkery
192. ‘Brother’ by Edna O’Brien
193. ‘Solstice’ by Anne Enright
194. ‘You Must Be This Happy To Enter’ by Elizabeth Crane
195. ‘Diem Perdidi’ by Julie Otsuka
196. ‘Watching Mysteries With My Mother’ by Ben Marcus
197. ‘Blueprints For St. Louis’ by Ben Marcus
198. ‘Storytellers, Liars, And Bores’ by Leonard Michaels
199. ‘First Love’ by Ben Marcus
200. ‘Spirituality; With Or Without A Prayer’ by Elmore Leonard
201. ‘Twilight’ by Wladyslaw Stanislaw Reymont
202. ‘Celebrations Of Thanksgiving: Cuban Seasonings’ by Ana Menéndez
203. ‘The Burning Baby’ by Dylan Thomas

As always, join the conversation in the comments section below, on SSMT Facebook or on Twitter @ShortStoryMT.

Subscribe to the Short Story Magic Tricks Monthly Newsletter to get the latest short story news, contests and fun.