Your Favourite Short Stories

A fan of Raymond Carver? or does Edgar Allen Poe's stories still give you chills everytime you read them?

Heres the place to discuss your love (and maybe dislike) for particular shortstories and their authors.

Ooh, I just love reading (and writing) short stories. I have so many collections that I've lost count...I think my favorite has to be Gothic! with stories by such greats as Vivian Vande Velde and Gregory MaGuire. I'd have to say that the best story in that particular book has to be Morgan Rohemar's Boys by Vivian Vande Velde. It gave me goosebumps. No joke. Angry ghosts, what's not to love?
Well...a lot. But reading about them (and writing about them, woot!) is fun.

Vivian Vande Velde - Oh her stories sound amazing novel, do you have the name of that story or a collection of hers? I love the macabre/gothic short stories that leave you lying in bed wide awake

It's in the collection called Gothic!: Ten Original Dark Tales. Linkage to a review. My personal favorite was "Morgan Rohemar's Boys" by Vivian Vande Velde. Also amazing was Neil Gaiman's "Forbidden Brides of the Faceless Slaves in the Nameless House of the Night of Dread Desire." It was so strange, but amazing.

Prom Nights from Hell was okay. I'm not going to lie, it was a bit of a letdown. More for the fangirly teenager than the true spooky story afficianado. Vampires I Have Kissed by Lydia Galt was okay, but nothing I would really read more than once.

I also love traditional stories for campfires. Scary Stories to Read in the Dark is among my favorite short story collections, although my absolute FAVORITE scary story has to be "Taily Po" which I tell every time the opportunity presents itself. It's so scary! Linkage.

Best story ever, I tell you. Although it's much more fun when it's told out loud instead of read.

My Favorite Short Story was by Neil Gaiman in Fragile Things titled "Forbidden Brides of the Faceless Slaves in the Secret House of the Night of Dread Desire." It had such a twist and I was enthralled on how it was narrated and kept wondering what wold happen.

It was narrated in a very unique way too, at least I found it unique. It would be the author writing and then would have his crow talking to him and turn third person. Then it would go back to first person when he was writing. I loved it!

Yeah, I agree.

I had to read it about three times before I understood it, but once I got it, it was aMAzing.

In no given order:

"The Lottery" by Shirley Jackson.

"A Rose for Emily" by William Faulkner.

"Eveline" by James Joyce.

"The Chaser" by John Collier.

"An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge" by Ambrose Bierce.

"Eleonora" by Edgar Allan Poe.

"Desiree's Baby" by Kate Chopin.

"Young Goodman Brown" by Nathaniel Hawthorne.

"A Telephone Call" by Dorothy Parker.

I love the Bradbury Thirteen Theater series where they took 13 of Ray Bradbury's short stories and did them like a radio show (with actors and everything). Some of the stories are "The Veldt", "A Sound of Thunder", "The Call", "The Man", "The Screaming Woman", "The Ravine", etc. I grew up listening to those since my Grandpa was an executive producer and they were produced at Brigham Young University in Provo, Utah. I think you can find some of the stories in print as well.

Some of Edgar Allen Poes stories, I can stand.

"The Story of an Hour" By Kate Chopin
"The Landlady" By Roald Dahl

"The Lottery" and "An Occurrence At Owl Creek Bridge" are pretty high on my list.

For simplicity, I like Jack London's "To Build A Fire".

For perfectly capturing that feeling of being seventeen--and making it stick--I really like Updike's "A&P".

And Cheever's "The Swimmer" shows his mastery of tone and pace. I don't think there's a single adverb in the whole piece--at least that's how I remember it.

I guess I'm gonna have to go read it again to find out.