Short stories

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Short story master Alice Munro would be justified in resting on her laurels at this point in her career — she's won Canada's Governor General's Literary Award three times, and the National Book Critics Circle Award. But in her new collection of stories, called The View from Castle Rock, Munro veers off into a fresh direction — exploring family history through fact and fiction.

Twilight of the Superheroes: Stories is a collection of short stories by Deborah Eisenberg that describe the attack on the World Trade Center and its aftermath.