4th Quarter 2024 favorites

4th Quarter 2024

The 4th Quarter (Oct-Dec) stories ordered solely by my personal tastes.

  1. ‘Peach Cobbler’ by Deesha Philyaw
  2. ‘The Pleasures Of Television’ by Rebecca Bernard
  3. ‘Pitch Memory’ by Ethan Canin
  4. ‘Hollywood Lanes’ by Megan Abbott
  5. ‘Former Marine’ by Russell Banks
  6. ‘Sarah Cole: A Type Of Love Story’ by Russell Banks
  7. ‘Eula’ by Deesha Philyaw
  8. ‘Rough Deeds’ by Annie Proulx
  9. ‘The Haunted And The Haunters’ by Edward Bulwer-Lytton
  10. ‘Christmas At The Cross’ by Maeve Murphy
  11. ‘The Finkelstein 5’ by Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah
  12. ‘A Country Christmas’ by Louisa May Alcott
  13. ‘The Ascent’ by Ron Rash
  14. ‘The Dune’ by Stephen King
  15. ‘First Dark’ by Elizabeth Spencer
  16. ‘The Music School’ by John Updike
  17. ‘It’s Like A Whisper’ by Megan Abbott
  18. ‘The Adventure Of The Musgrave Ritual’ by Arthur Conan Doyle
  19. ‘Oxford Girl’ by Megan Abbott
  20. ‘The Wind In The Rose-Bush’ by Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
  21. ‘Footfalls’ by Wilbur Daniel Steele
  22. ‘Monster’ by Michael Czyzniejewski
  23. ‘Our Eyes Couldn’t Stop Opening’ by Megan Abbott
  24. ‘The Wrong Man’ by Nella Larsen
  25. ‘We’ by Mary Grimm
  26. ‘Freedom’ by Nella Larsen
  27. ‘The Fog Horn’ by Ray Bradbury
  28. ‘The Wrong Shape’ by G.K. Chesterton
  29. ‘Today We Hit’ by Megan Abbott

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

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April 2015 favorites

April 2015

The April stories ordered solely on my personal tastes.

  1. ‘Bullet In The Brain’ by Tobias Wolff
  2. ‘The Shawl’ by Cynthia Ozick
  3. ‘The Bath’ by Raymond Carver
  4. ‘The Five-Forty-Eight’ by John Cheever
  5. ‘The Living’ by Mary Lavin
  6. ‘Why Don’t You Dance?’ by Raymond Carver
  7. ‘Feathers’ by Raymond Carver
  8. ‘Death Of A Right Fielder’ by Stuart Dybek
  9. ‘Death Of A Traveling Salesman’ by Eudora Welty
  10. ‘Everything Stuck To Him’ by Raymond Carver
  11. ‘The Vertical Ladder’ by William Sansom
  12. ‘The Most Dangerous Game’ by Richard Connell
  13. ‘A Small, Good Thing’ by Raymond Carver
  14. ‘The Patented Gate And The Mean Hamburger’ by Robert Penn Warren
  15. ‘One Throw’ by W.C. Heinz
  16. ‘One Gram Short’ by Etgar Keret
  17. ‘Game’ by Donald Barthelme
  18. ‘Alibi Ike’ by Ring Lardner
  19. ‘Smoke’ by Michael Chabon
  20. ‘The Jewbird’ by Bernard Malamud
  21. ‘The Pitcher And The Plutocrat’ by P.G. Wodehouse
  22. ‘The Hitchhiking Game’ by Milan Kundera
  23. ‘Tony’s Wife’ by Alice Dunbar-Nelson
  24. ‘The Man Who Saw Through Heaven’ by Wilbur Daniel Steele

June 2014 favorites

June 2014

The June stories ordered solely on my personal tastes.

  1. ‘Venus, Cupid, Folly And Time’ by Peter Taylor
  2. ‘Blackberry Winter’ by Robert Penn Warren
  3. ‘Babylon Revisited’ by F. Scott Fitzgerald
  4. ‘Upon The Sweeping Flood’ by Joyce Carol Oates
  5. ‘Good Country People’ by Flannery O’Connor
  6. ‘My Old Man’ by Ernest Hemingway
  7. ‘I’m A Fool’ by Sherwood Anderson
  8. ‘Sonny’s Blues’ by James Baldwin
  9. ‘Only The Dead Know Brooklyn’ by Thomas Wolfe
  10. ‘Double Birthday’ by Willa Cather
  11. ‘The View From The Balcony’ by Wallace Stegner
  12. ‘The Magic Barrel’ by Bernard Malamud
  13. ‘No Place For You, My Love’ by Eudora Welty
  14. ‘The Schreuderspitze’ by Mark Helprin
  15. ‘The Hartleys’ by John Cheever
  16. ‘O City Of Broken Dreams’ by John Cheever
  17. ‘A Day In The Open’ by Jane Bowles
  18. ‘The Lottery’ by Shirley Jackson
  19. ‘In The Zoo’ by Jean Stafford
  20. ‘The Lost Phoebe’ by Theodore Dreiser
  21. ‘Welcome To The Monkey House’ by Kurt Vonnegut Jr.
  22. ‘How Beautiful With Shoes’ by Wilbur Daniel Steele
  23. ‘The Little Wife’ by William March
  24. ‘A Distant Episode’ by Paul Bowles
  25. ‘The Faithful Wife’ by Morley Callaghan
  26. ‘The Golden Honeymoon’ by Ring Lardner
  27. ‘Resurrection Of A Life’ by William Saroyan
  28. ‘The State Of Grace’ by Harold Brodkey
  29. ‘A Telephone Call’ by Dorothy Parker
  30. ‘The Survivors’ by Elsie Singmaster