Anthologies or Short Story Collections: Recommendations for Adult Summer Reading 2025Like this list

20 items

• Exhalation

  Chiang, Ted,

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  This collection of stories explores revelatory ideas and second chances in such tales as "The Merchant and the Alchemist's Gate," "Exhalation," and "The Lifecycle of Software Objects."

• Old Babes in the Wood

  Stories

  Atwood, Margaret, 1939-

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  The internationally acclaimed, award-winning author of "The Handmaid’s Tale" presents these short stories that showcase both her creativity and her humanity as she explores family relationships, marriage, loss, and memory and what it means to spend…Read moreRead more of this annotation

• Stag Dance

  a Novel & Stories

  Peters, Torrey,

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  Peters offers a new book consisting of a novel and three novellas, one featuring a lumberjack dance, another spotlighting a secret romance between roommates, all focused on identity.

• The Lottery and Other Stories

  Jackson, Shirley, 1916-1965

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  This collection of twenty-five tales exploring a world of horror and the macabre features the author's haunting story of a small town's yearly ritual of evil.

• Your Utopia

  Chung, Bora, 1976-

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  Suffused with the author's inimitable wry humor as well as surprisingly tender moments, this brilliantly written collection is filled with stories of loss and discovery, idealism and dystopia, and death and immortality.

• Night of the Living Rez

  Talty, Morgan, 1991-

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  Set in a Native community in Maine, Talty's riveting debut collection is about what it means to be Penobscot in the twenty-first century and what it means to live, to survive, and to persevere after tragedy.

• Walk the Blue Fields

  Keegan, Claire

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  A masterful portrait of a country wrestling with its past and of individuals struggling toward their futures, Keegan continues her outstanding work with this collection of quietly wrenching stories of despair and desire in modern-day Ireland.

• You Like It Darker

  Stories

  King, Stephen, 1947-

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  Delving into the darker parts of life, both metaphorical and literal, King presents this exhilarating collection of twelve tales, many never-before-published, about fate, mortality, luck, and the folds in reality where anything can happen.

• Afterparties

  Stories

  So, Anthony Veasna, 1992-2020,

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  So's short stories portray the lives of Cambodian Americans still dealing with the inherited weight of the Khmer Rouge genocide, including a young, disillusioned teacher obsessed with Moby-Dick and a child whose mother survived a school shooting.

• Gods of Want

  Stories

  Chang, K-Ming,

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  Told in Chang's feminist fabulist style, these uncanny stories take on a surrealism that mixes myth and migration, corporeality and ghostliness, and queerness and the quotidian.

• The Last Suspicious Holdout

  Stories

  Hubbard, Ladee,

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  Spanning from 1992 to 2007, these thirteen gripping tales deftly chronicle poignant moments in the lives of an African American community located in a “sliver of southern suburbia.”

• Life Ceremony

  Stories

  Murata, Sayaka, 1979-

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  Blending together humor and horror, this stellar short story collection portrays weird love, heartfelt friendships, and the unsettling nature of human existence.

• Green Frog

  Stories

  Chung, Gina, 1989-

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  This short story collection from an award-winning Korean American writer includes the tales of a pair of talking dolls that try to help twins escape a stifling home and a fox demon who considers avenging her sister’s death.

• Never Whistle at Night

  An Indigenous Dark Fiction Anthology

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  Celebrating Indigenous peoples’ survival and imagination, these spine-tingling stories from best-selling and award-winning authors introduce readers to ghosts, curses, hauntings, monstrous creatures, intricate family legacies, desperate deeds, and…Read moreRead more of this annotation

• A Sunny Place for Shady People

  Stories

  Enriquez, Mariana,

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  Enriquez offers twelve unsettling stories where ordinary people living in Argentina, particularly women, must confront terrifying and surreal encounters with the supernatural.

• Rainbow Rainbow

  Stories

  Conklin, Lydia, 1983-

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  In this exuberant, prize-winning collection, queer, trans, and gender-nonconforming characters seek love and connection in hilarious and heart-rending stories that reflect the complexity of our current moment.

• Night Side of the River

  Ghost Stories

  Winterson, Jeanette, 1959-

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  Combining Winterson's own supernatural encounters with spine-tingling fiction, this gothic and unsettling collection of ghost stories examines grief, revenge, and the myriad ways in which technology can disrupt the boundary between life and death.

• Neighbors and Other Stories

  Oliver, Diane, 1943-1966,

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  Filled with unforgettable characters dealing with the dangers of Jim Crow racism, this powerful story collection paints incisive and intimate portraits of African American families in everyday moments of anxiety and crisis.

• The Consequences

  Stories

  Muñoz, Manuel, 1972-

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  Set in the 1980s and '90s, these stories feature people living in severely straitened and threatened circumstances: the families of Mexican and Mexican American farmworkers in California's Central Valley, gay men in an age of AIDS and widespread…Read moreRead more of this annotation

• Adult Summer Reading 2025

  View on bpl.org

  Visit our webpage to learn more about the Adult Summer Reading Program, which runs from June 1 to August 31.