Brief Encounters – Page 12 – That Shakespearean Rag

31 Days of Stories 2020, Day 3: “Musique Concrète” by Amparo Dávila; Audrey Harris and Matthew Gleeson, trans.

Amparo Dávila’s uncanny story of psychological torment has echoes of Poe and Kafka.

Jean Stafford’s story is a close and incisive work of psychological fiction.

Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah’s story is a satire about the cascading violence that results from institutional racism.

Short stories offer a different kind of pleasure from other forms of literature, a pleasure not curtailed by a story’s relatively small size.

Stephen King’s short story “I Am the Doorway” rides the line between science fiction and horror.

Editor Michael Hingston and designer Natalie Olsen celebrate five years of producing the Short Story Advent Calendar.

Robert Louis Stevenson’s 1884 chiller “The Body-Snatcher” is a tale of supernatural horror with moral overtones.

Muriel Spark’s pitiless treatment of her characters is on full display in the merciless irony of “A Member of the Family.”