Today, on World Storytellers Day, depending on what kind of reader you are, pick from these five short story collections that range from sci-fi to satire, and romance
Representation Pic/istock
For the sci-fi geeks: Buy Jupiter and Other Stories
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Isaac Asimov
This collection of 24 stories has been collated from two decades of the master of science fiction Isaac Asimov’s oeuvre. Asimov gives us plenty of bizarre characters, whose conversations draw us in instantly. A friend claims he built a time machine to travel to the Mesozoic era and now knows what happened to the dinosaurs; Uncle Otto creates a flute that can be played by the power of mind alone, no skill necessary; a pair of explorers find habitable planets far, far away, where plants control everything.
For the mystery fanatics: The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes
Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
Meet the inimitable detective Sherlock Holmes and his loyal companion Dr Watson in 12 thrilling stories by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. A true Holmes experience includes entering a world where powers of deduction, logic, and forensics — matters of exact science — take precedence over emotions. The collection includes The Musgrave Ritual, where an old acquaintance’s butler goes missing, The Greek Interpreter, where his brother Mycroft reports of a kidnapping, as well as The Final Problem, where readers meet his archnemesis, Professor Moriarty.
For the horror lovers: Dark Tales
Shirley Jackson
Seventeen chilling stories by Shirley Jackson lay bare the horrors of our everyday lives. Louisa escapes from her home and disappears but when she returns her family fails to recognise her; two friends joke about a painting and their grandfather’s spirit wandering about it before one of them gets trapped inside it; Margaret has terrifying thoughts of killing her husband; Ethel and Jim move into the Sanderson house but something sinister begins to take place. In the haunting world of Jackson, the inside is as unsettling as the outside.
BONUS: Her Body and Other Parties
Carmen Maria Machado
Carmen Maria Machado’s collection is becoming a genre-bending modern classic. Stories draw on urban legends, or are tales about a sales clerk finding something unusual in the seams of prom dresses in a store, a woman’s weight-loss bringing in an unwanted houseguest, a reimagining of Law-and-Order episodes.
For the ticklers and the dreamers: Petersburg Tales
Nikolai Gogol. Pics Courtesy/Wikimedia Commons
Nikolai Gogol’s satirical short stories were written during his time at St. Petersburg, Russia, in the 1830s. A nose falls off an official’s face and develops a life of its own; a poor government clerk, seeing his old overcoat in tatters, dreams of buying a new one and later haunts the city as a ghost; a lieutenant and his acquaintance pursue two women on Nevsky Prospect. In the final story, readers encounter the mind of the protagonist that descends from displaying its oddities into revealing his insanity. The theme of alienation is central to Gogol’s stories.
For the modern-day romantics: The Women Who Forgot to Invent Facebook and Other Stories
Nisha Susan
Nisha Susan’s women are mostly creatives navigating virtual and real worlds in these humorous, endearing, and dazzling stories of intimacy and everyday quandaries. Friends plan to create a map of their hook-ups online, two lovers speak over Facebook messenger, a debut author is under attack by an army of trolls, a classical singer connects with a prince in a chat room. Susan’s stories are refreshingly modern, often fast-paced and never dull. Her characters are among us; they’re flawed, they lie. They laugh out loud, cry and look for ways to survive.
Others reccos
>> Bloodchild and Other Stories by Octavia Butler
>> The Night Train at Deoli and Other Stories by Ruskin Bond
>> Breast Stories by Mahasweta Devi
>> A Haunted House and Other Stories by Virginia Woolf
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