Short Stories

Fresh Air book critic Maureen Corrigan reviews Jhumpa Lahiri's Unaccustomed Earth, a new collection of short stories that chronicles the cultural alienation that exists between Indian-born parents and their American-born children.

The debut short-story collection by Nigerian writer and Jesuit priest Uwem Akpan offers a sobering view of a world in which atrocity is commonplace, and the unthinkable is the everyday.

Junot Diaz's electric new collection of short stories centers around Yunior, a macho yet mournful Dominican-American man. In these stories about love, lust and infidelity, a good man is hard to find — and when he is found, he's always in bed with someone else.

2012 has been a very jittery year — what with the presidential election, extreme weather events and the looming "fiscal cliff." Fresh Air critic Maureen Corrigan found that her favorite fiction and nonfiction this year directly confronted the atmospheric uncertainty of the age.

The author of Swamplandia! has a new collection of short stories called Vampires in the Lemon Grove. Critic Maureen Corrigan says the stories are daring and devastating, and with them Russell establishes herself as one of the great American writers of our young century.

It's been 15 years since acclaimed writer Lorrie Moore has brought out a new short story collection. Bark has some clunkers and some keepers, but critic Maureen Corrigan says it was worth the wait.

Heads tend to roll, figuratively and otherwise, in Mantel's writing. Critic Maureen Corrigan says this new short story collection — about grotesque characters in the modern world — is breathtaking.

Book critic Maureen Corrigan says each of the "nouveau Gothic" stories in Helen Oyeyemi's new collection leaves a deep impression — like a scar that stubbornly refuses to fade.

Maureen Corrigan reviews Ling Ma's new collection of stories Bliss Montage.

The special effects are a lot more special than the stories in the Oscar-winning director's new Netflix anthology series. Still, most of the shows in this first, eight-episode run are worth watching.