Short Fiction – 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.

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.”