Short stories don’t always get the same respect as a novel, but they still pack a wallop. Even better for our broken attention spans, you can knock one off before bed.
In this six-story collection—which takes its name from the Inuktitut word for “unseen ones”—Norma Dunning shines a light on Inuk characters across generations, temperaments and even corporalities, inspired both by her own experiences and by cultural memory. March.
In her first collection of short stories, novelist Nicole Krauss delivers the family drama we might be missing right now—aging parents, unexpected divorces, daughters’ burgeoning sexual power, a dust-up at a bris—while exploring larger questions of inheritance. Out now.
This anthology of space heists, retooled fairy tales and speculative fiction is terrifically inclusive: 15 stories that feature protagonists of all abilities, ethnic backgrounds, sexual preferences and gender identities. It’s a book that can be passed from adults to teens and back again. Out now.
Although written mostly in the 1960s, and often set in far-flung places like Italy, China and Greece, Shirley Hazzard’s stories can still feel shockingly familiar: the absurdities of an office gig; the pleasures of solitude; and the disorientation of encountering a lover long after the affair is done. Out now.
The actual plot might involve a social media blunder, or a 1930s murder mystery, or a roller coaster of a wedding day, but each one of these stories is in some way a nuanced investigation of grief, belonging, Blackness in America and who gets to set the historical record. Out now. — Danielle Groen
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