Sixteen books that helped put 2025 in perspective
What our literary output offers is not a vision of perfectibility but an attempt to reckon with our world in all its contradiction, ambiguity, and fractiousness.
A European sensibility infuses the stories in Montreal resident Mikhail Iossel’s latest story collection
Iossel's chosen technique has the paradoxical effect of simultaneously speeding the prose up and slowing it down.
Gothic tropes and lush language characterize A Song for Wildcats, the debut story collection from Caitlin Galway
Galway's rich feel for language and her ability to inhabit a wide range of characters and milieus is impressive.
A chilly chamber quartet: Four Canadian writers craft uncanny tales in different registers
Each entry in the book contains, perhaps unsurprisingly, references to at least one dead writer.
Joyce Carol Oates continues a late-career hot streak with a collection of subversive suspense stories
Oates's pervading theme across her entire career involves an investigation into the nature of consciousness and the mysteries of personality.
“The language drives the story”: Caroline Adderson on process, Chekhov’s influence, and the importance of laughter in short fiction
"The problem in this country is that people seem to feel that if it's funny it's not serious."
Naben Ruthnum, Silvia Moreno-Garcia, and Camilla Grudova are included in an anthology perfect for shorter days with chillier temperatures
The most blazingly unforgettable tale in the anthology has to be EC Dorgan's "Prairie Teeth."
Literary nightmares: Nineteen writers contribute to an anthology about the spooky side of literature
The books in these stories are dangerous not just for the ideas they contain, but the wounds that they inflict.
World enough and time: A new collection of speculative fiction from Palestinian writers addresses real-world issues
The writers are for the most part clear-eyed about the realities of the world and adept at placing them in the context of speculative fiction.
The harsh realities of rural Newfoundland provide the backdrop for Susie Taylor’s debut story collection
The Newfoundland of Vigil is an unforgiving place, and Taylor treats it, along with her cast of characters, without an ounce of sentimentality.