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Can't and won't (2014)
Published
Start with the title story, which takes a writing-prize objection to contractions and answers it in the very words under dispute. The tiny joke also gives you a fully formed speaker. Davis mixes these quick pieces with dreams, letters, and longer work, so you can stop after a few or stay for a change of pace.
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Palm-of-the-hand stories (1988)
8.0/10on Open Library
Published
Start with “The Grasshopper and the Bell Cricket,” where children’s lanterns transform an insect hunt into a scene someone remembers much later. The light lets you see something the children miss. Lane Dunlop and J. Martin Holman translated the collection, which often lets an image linger where another story might explain it.
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Complete Works and Other Stories
Read “The Dinosaur” and notice how a single sentence makes you imagine a whole before and after. Then try “The Eclipse” to see how Monterroso uses a little more room to build a reversal. Edith Grossman’s translation brings together two books, so the rhythms and lengths vary around those tiny stories.
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Ecstatic Cahoots (2014)
Published
“Misterioso” gives you two lines of talk and lets the watch and the cross suggest what kind of encounter the speakers are having. Try it next to “The Start of Something,” which follows a chance exchange about a pair of vintage trousers. The fifty pieces vary widely in length, but little things keep giving you a way in.
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Fine, fine, fine, fine, fine (2016)
Published
In “The Great Passion and Its Context,” an injured passenger’s racing questions give way to children singing on public transportation. The interruption is a good way to get used to Williams. Her very short pieces can make a funny observation and a frightening thought sit side by side without smoothing out the join.
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Thank Your Lucky Stars (2018)
Published
Begin with the opening story and its moment of gratitude. A small arrival or exchange can change what one of Flick’s characters thinks they have to look forward to. Across the fifty pieces, the stories move between ordinary errands and tall-tale situations. Read a pair if you want to see how well that attention travels.
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First Law of Holes (2024)
Published
The woman in “The Hedgehog House” keeps looking at her new home from the outside. The shape of the roof is funny at first, then it starts to tell you something about the marriage she’s moved into. The collected stories are a good choice if you like a peculiar image that changes meaning while you’re still reading.
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Wild Life (2018)
Published
Try “Collective Nouns for Humans in the Wild,” where the format of a list makes you rethink what the final group has in common. The shift is sharp enough to reward a second look at the earlier entries. Fish’s collected works move from experiments like this to short scenes about families and strangers.
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Death, Desire, and Other Destinations (2020)
Published
Start with “Alligators,” the opening piece, to see how quickly Zambrano can turn intimacy into unease. The collection moves between realism and speculation, sometimes with a matter-of-fact line that makes an impossible situation feel ordinary. Some pieces are longer, so treat the opening as one way into the book.
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Best Small Fictions 2024 (2025)
Published
Start with Jeffrey Yamaguchi’s “Last Day Cupcakes.” An office worker imagines the usual farewell and starts finding new places for objects that will outlast the job. This annual anthology includes short fiction and hybrid pieces. Comparing that familiar workplace story with a more experimental neighbor is part of the appeal.
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Flash fiction international (2015)
Published
Try Franz Kafka’s “An Imperial Message,” where the distance between a ruler and a single reader makes a small task feel impossible. The anthology moves among writers from several languages and kinds of storytelling. The effects differ enough that it’s worth reading two neighboring pieces and asking what each trusts you to supply.
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A peculiar feeling of restlessness (2008)
Published
Four stand-alone chapbooks give you time to settle into one writer’s rhythms before the voice changes. Try Amy L. Clark’s Wanting and Claudia Smith’s The Sky Is a Well side by side. The pieces stay within a thousand words each, so it’s easy to sample how two writers build tension in the same tight space.
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