October 2023 favorites

October 2023

The October stories ordered solely by my personal tastes.

  1. ‘Seven Floors’ by Dino Buzzati
  2. ‘Behzin Meadow’ by Ivan Turgenev
  3. ‘The Yellow Ranch’ by Kali Fajardo-Anstine
  4. ‘Moist House’ by Kate Folk
  5. ‘Scenes From The Left Of A Double Monster’ by Vladimir Nabokov
  6. ‘Time And Again’ by Breece D’J Pancake
  7. ‘A Tree Of Night’ by Truman Capote
  8. ‘2 B R 0 2 B’ by Kurt Vonnegut Jr.
  9. ‘Out There’ by Kate Folk
  10. ‘Thrawn Janet’ by Robert Louis Stevenson
  11. ‘The Hidden Cause’ by Machado de Assis
  12. ‘Blind Girls’ by Jayne Anne Phillips
  13. ‘Luvina’ by Juan Rulfo
  14. ‘Diary Of A Madman’ by Lu Xun
  15. ‘Catskin’ by Kelly Link
  16. ‘The Eyes Have It’ by Philip K. Dick
  17. ‘Brad Carrigan, American’ by George Saunders
  18. ‘Frights’ by Allegra Hyde
  19. ‘The Horla’ by Guy de Maupassant
  20. ‘The Intruder’ by Nada Alic
  21. ‘The Price’ by Neil Gaiman
  22. ‘The Self-Improvement Of Salvadore Ross’ by Henry Slesar
  23. ‘A Little More Research’ by Joan Hess
  24. ‘Death Of A Romance Writer’ by Joan Hess
  25. ‘What A Thought’ by Shirley Jackson
  26. ‘The Hammer Of God’ by G.K. Chesterton
  27. ‘Asleep At The Wheel’ by T. Coraghessan Boyle
  28. ‘The Call Of Cthulhu’ by H.P. Lovecraft
  29. ‘The Jewel Robbery At The Grand Metropolitan’ by Agatha Christie
  30. ‘Man-Size In Marble’ by Edith Nesbit
  31. ‘The Temple’ by Joyce Carol Oates

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.

May 2023 favorites

May 2023

The May stories ordered solely on my personal tastes.

  1. ‘A Strange And Sometimes Sadness’ by Kazuo Ishiguro
  2. ‘Some Of Us Had Been Threatening Our Friend Colby’ by Donald Barthelme
  3. ‘My Father’s Friends’ by William Maxwell
  4. ‘The Young Painters’ by Nicole Krauss
  5. ‘The First Day’ by Edward P. Jones
  6. ‘The Things They Carried’ by Tim O’Brien
  7. ‘Panther Eyes’ by Luisa Valenzuela
  8. ‘The Baby Party’ by F. Scott Fitzgerald
  9. ‘The War Of The Alligators’ by Horacio Quiroga
  10. ‘New York Girl’ by John Updike
  11. ‘Baster’ by Jeffrey Eugenides
  12. ‘Circus At Dawn’ by Thomas Wolfe
  13. ‘Future Cat’ by Xuan Juliana Wang
  14. ‘A Nursery Tale’ by Vladimir Nabokov
  15. ‘The Sorrows Of Gin’ by John Cheever
  16. ‘Tomorrow’ by Lu Xun
  17. ‘Apple Cake’ by Allegra Goodman
  18. ‘When We Were Happy We Had Other Names’ by Yiyun Li
  19. ‘Everything Is Far From Here’ by Cristina Henríquez
  20. ‘The Flood’ by Emile Zola
  21. ‘Now More Than Ever’ by Zadie Smith
  22. ‘Talpa’ by Juan Rulfo
  23. ‘Gideon’ by ZZ Packer
  24. ‘Alms’ by Stuart Dybek
  25. ‘They Tell Me… Now I Know’ by Shay Youngblood
  26. ‘In The West Country’ by Leslie Norris
  27. ‘The Starlet Apartments’ by Jonathan Lethem
  28. ‘The Voter’ by Chinua Achebe
  29. ‘The $30,000 Bequest’ by Mark Twain
  30. ‘The Huntress’ by Sofia Samatar
  31. ‘Two Ruminations On A Homeless Brother’ by David Means

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.

February 2021 favorites

February 2021

The February stories ordered solely on my personal tastes.

  1. ‘A Family Supper’ by Kazuo Ishiguro
  2. ‘Filling Up With Sugar’ by Yuten Sawanishi
  3. ‘A Perfect Day For Kangaroos’ by Haruki Murakami
  4. ‘The Rocking-Horse Winner’ by D.H. Lawrence
  5. ‘Gómez Palacio’ by Roberto Bolaño
  6. ‘Two Gentle People’ by Graham Greene
  7. ‘The Confession’ by Leïla Slimani
  8. ‘A Family Like Any Other’ by Carlos Fuentes
  9. ‘The Kangaroo Communiqué’ by Haruki Murakami
  10. ‘The Adopted Son’ by Guy de Maupassant
  11. ‘The Lazy River’ by Zadie Smith
  12. ‘I Arrive First’ by Emma Jane Unsworth
  13. ‘Saint Julian The Hospitaller’ by Gustave Flaubert
  14. ‘Tell Them Not To Kill Me!’ by Juan Rulfo
  15. ‘The Switchman’ by Juan José Arreola
  16. ‘Kew Gardens’ by Virginia Woolf
  17. ‘The Hammam’ by Hervé Guibert

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.